Many eyes were upon that Congress; for it was the first the German socialists had held since they had recovered their freedom and proved their strength. They were now clearly stronger than any socialist party the world had yet seen, and much stronger than most revolutionary parties who have made successful revolution. Would then the word now be revolution? people asked. It was not: the word was caution. The first effect of the victory in February had been otherwise, and in June, Herr Bebel was still calling, Steady. "The majority of his party colleagues," he said at a public meeting in Berlin on the 20th of that month, "had been intoxicated by the result of the elections of February 20th, and believed they could do what they liked with the middle class, as it was already on the point of going under." But before October steadier counsels prevailed, and the spirit of the Congress was moderation itself. Although the Congress did not agree to the motion to restore to the party programme the phrase "by lawful means," which had been deleted from the opening paragraph of the second part of it by the Wyden Congress of 1880, in consequence of the Anti-Socialist Laws no longer giving them any choice except recourse to unlawful means, the general and decided feeling of the Congress certainly was that only lawful means could now answer their purposes. The controversy was repeatedly raised by an extreme section of the party from Berlin, who complained that the work of their parliamentary representatives had hitherto entirely ignored the real aims of social democracy, and that a return should now be made to its socialism and its revolution. But the voice of the meeting was invariably against this Berlin movement. There was a time, said M. Fleischman—and his speech was applauded—when it was counted the right thing in the party to make revolutionary speeches, and point to the coming day of account when mankind were to be emancipated at one blow; but that was not a road they could make any progress by. And as for boycotting, which had been spoken of, he declared he was all for boycotting; but it was the boycotting of the military in such a way as to give them no occasion for the use of their weapons. Liebknecht, the chief leader of the party, followed, and was quite as emphatic in the same line. People spoke of revolution, he said; but they should remember that roast pigeons don't fly into one's mouth by themselves. It was easy enough to make bitter speeches, and any fool and donkey could throw bombs; but the misadventures of the anarchists showed plainly enough that nothing could be done in that way. The socialists had now 20 per cent. of the population; but what could 20 per cent. do against 80 per cent. by the use of force? No, it was not force; it was reason they must use if they would succeed. What, then, he asked, was the Social Democracy to do? They must avoid divisions among themselves, and go out and convert the still indifferent masses. The electoral suffrage was their best weapon of agitation, and their surest means of increasing the party. Prince Bismarck had been represented in a popular book as practising peasant-fishery and elector-fishery. "Peasant-fishery and elector-fishery—" said Liebknecht, amid much applause, "that is the word for the Social Democrats to-day."
Another suggestion of the extreme section was that the party should now assail the Church and religion, as socialist and revolutionary parties have so generally done; but this bit of their old traditional policy received scant regard from the Halle Congress. A strong feeling was expressed that the party had damaged itself in the past by its assaults on the Church, and that its present policy ought, in self-preservation, to be one of religious neutrality and toleration. "Instead," said Liebknecht, "of squandering our strength in a struggle with the Church and sacerdotalism, let us go to the root of the matter. We desire to overthrow the State of the classes. When we have done that, the Church and sacerdotalism will fall with it, and in this respect we are much more radical and much more definite in purpose than our opponents, for we like neither the priests nor the anti-priests." The old revolutionary policy of stirring up hatred against all existing institutions is thus relegated from the present to the distant future, after the present class-State is overthrown and the working-class or socialist State established in its place.
"Well, then," suggested another old-world socialist, "let us, at any rate, issue a pamphlet describing the glories of this socialist State, and get the people prepared to flock into it"; but this suggestion was also frowned down. "For," said Liebknecht, "who could say what the Zukunft Staat—the socialist State of the future—is to be? Who could foresee so much as the development of the existing German State for a single year?" In other words—I think I am not misinterpreting their meaning—the State of the future is the concern of the future; the business of a living party is within the needs and within the lines of the living present.
What, then, is to be the business of this formidable Social Democratic party? Peasant-catching is the word. The elections showed that while the party was very strong in the large towns, it was very weak in the rural districts, and among special populations like the Poles and Alsatians; and although previous revolutionists thought everything was gained if the large towns were gained, the Social Democrats generally admit that the social revolution is impossible without the adherence of the peasantry. The peasants, therefore, must be won over to the party. Once in the party, they may learn socialism and revolution, but they must first be brought in, and for that purpose there must be started a special peasants' cry—a cry, that is, for the redress of some immediate grievance of that class; and one suggestion made at the Congress was, that the cry for the peasantry should be the abolition of the German Gesinde (farm-servant) system. In the same spirit the Congress recommended the parliamentary party to take up the question of seamen's rights, and agitate for better regulations for securing the wellbeing of that class. The advance towards practicality is even more evident in their determination upon strikes. Hitherto, for the most part, socialists have either looked on strikes with lofty disdain as poor attempts to get a petty rise in wages instead of abolishing the present wages system altogether, or they have thrown themselves into strikes for the mere purpose of fomenting labour troubles, and breaking perchance the power of the large capitalist class; and this latter view was not unrepresented at the Halle Congress. The resolution of the Congress, however, declared (1st) that strikes and boycotting were often useful means of improving the social position of the labouring class; but (2nd) that they were to be resorted to even for that purpose with great circumspection. "Whereas, however, strikes and boycotting are double-edged weapons which, when used in unsuitable places and at an inopportune moment, are calculated to do more harm than good to the interests of the working class, this Congress recommends German working men carefully to weigh the circumstances under which they purpose to make use of those weapons." The revolutionary ideal seems thus to be retreating—perhaps insensibly—in the socialistic mind into an eschatological decoration, into a kind of future Advent which is to come and to be believed in; but the practical concerns of the present must be more and more treated in their own practical way.
Since the Congress, the party has issued a manifesto to the peasantry, in which, after promising a new and happy day that is coming for them, which is to restore to them the beautiful earth and the poetry of life, they declare against the patriarchal system, and the increase of brandy distilling; and then, confessing that few socialists know anything about agricultural questions, invite information and discussion for the enlightenment of the party. Here again they forget that they have a theory which is as applicable to agriculture as to manufactures, and they want to make practical investigations with a view to practical solutions.
Of course the movement will always generate revolutionary elements as occasions arise, and these sometimes of the wildest character. Most and Hasselman, and their following, who were expelled at the Congress of Wyden in 1880, were anarchists of a violent type, and Mosts and Hasselmans may arise again. But at present anarchism hardly exists in Germany, and the Social Democratic party is peacefully trying to make people as comfortable as possible till the fulness of time arrives.
It may be added that the present income of the party, as stated at the last Congress, is £19,525, and that since February, 1890, they have established nineteen daily newspapers and forty weekly, with a total circulation of 254,000.
The socialist movement in other countries may be disposed of much more briefly, for in no other country has it worn anything like the same importance, except in Russia, and of the Russian agitation I shall treat more fully in a subsequent chapter on "Russian Nihilism." I may observe here, however, that the Russian agitation has not been without its influence on the nations of Western Europe. It was Bakunin who first kindled the socialist movements of Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Holland, and the anarchist fermentations of the last six years have been due in no inconsiderable measure to the new leaven of Russian ideas introduced by men like Prince Krapotkin and the two hundred other Russian refugees that are scattered abroad in the free countries of Europe.
In France there is much animated socialist agitation, but no solid and coherent socialist party such as exists in Germany. The movement is disunited and fragmentary, and confined almost entirely to the large towns, where many circumstances conspire to favour its growth. The French working class are born to revolutionary traditions. The better portion of them, moreover, though they long since gave up all belief in the old native forms of socialism, never ceased to be imbued with socialist ideas and aspirations; and M. de Molinari said in 1869, from his experience of French working men's clubs, that out of every ten French working men who had any interest beyond eating and drinking, nine were Socialists. Then there is in France a larger proportion of the working class than in most countries, who are kept in constant poverty and discontent and commotion by their own improvident habits. A pamphlet called "Le Sublime," which attracted considerable attention some years ago, stated that only forty per cent. of the working men of Paris were out of debt; and Mr. Malet reported to the English Foreign Office that they were, as a body, so dissipated that none of them had grandchildren or grandfathers. But, on the other hand, France enjoys a solid security against the successful advance of socialism in her peasant proprietors. Half the French population belong to that class, and their industry, thrift, and comfort have long been held up to our admiration by economists. According to M. de Lavergne, they are not so well fed, so well clad, or so well lodged as the farm labourers of England; but, living in a different climate, they have fewer wants, and are undoubtedly more contented. Among people like these, passing their days in frugal comfort and fruitful industry, and looking with quiet hope and confidence to the future, socialism finds, of course, no open door. On the contrary, every man of them feels he has something to lose and nothing to gain by social revolution; the fear of socialism is, indeed, one of the chief influences guiding their political action; and as they are as numerous as all the other classes in the community put together, their worldly contentment is a bulwark of enormous value to the existing order of things. The impression of their substantial independence is so marked that even the Frenchmen who were members of the International Working Men's Association would not assent to the abolition of a peasant proprietary, but always insisted, contrary to the principles of the Association, on the continued maintenance of that system as a necessary counterpoise to the power of the Government.
The present socialist groups and sects of France are all believers in the so-called scientific socialism of Marx and Lassalle, and the most important of them work for a programme substantially identical with that of Gotha. Marx's ideas were introduced among the French by the International, and they were adopted by a section of the Revolutionary Committee of the Paris Commune, 1871; but after the suppression of the Commune, they made so little stir for some years that Thiers declared, in his last manifesto as President of the Republic, that socialism, which was then busy in Germany, was absolutely dead in France. Its recrudescence was chiefly due to the activity of the Communards. Some of them had escaped to London, where they got into closer communion with Marx and his friends; and in 1874, thirty-four of these refugees, all military or administrative officers of the Commune, and most of them not professed socialists before, issued a manifesto pronouncing entirely for socialism, and describing the Commune as "the militant form of the social revolution"; but it was not till after the amnesty of the Communards, and their return from New Caledonia and elsewhere in 1880, that the first sensible ripple of socialist agitation was felt in France since the downfall of the second Republic. Numbers of socialist journals began to appear, and a general congress of working men, held at Havre in 1880, adopted a programme modelled on the lines of that of the German Social Democrats, and made preparations for an active propaganda and organization.