The following year Kropotkin wrote two articles in the Bulletin, July 22 and 29, which vigorously attacked socialist parliamentary tactics. "At what price does one succeed in leading the people to the ballot boxes?" he asks in the first article. "Have the frankness to acknowledge, gentlemen politicians, that it is by inculcating this illusion, that in sending members to parliament the people will succeed in freeing themselves and in bettering their lot, that is to say, by telling them what one knows to be an absolute lie. It is certainly not for the pleasure of getting their education that the German people give their pennies for parliamentary agitation. It is because, from hearing it repeated each day by hundreds of 'agitators,' they come to believe that truly by this method they will be able to realize, in part at least, if not completely, their hopes. Acknowledge it for once, politicians of to-day, formerly socialists, that we may say aloud what you think in silence: 'You are liars!' Yes, liars, I insist upon the word, since you lie to the people when you tell them that they will better their lot by sending you to parliament. You lie, for you yourselves, but a few years since, have maintained absolutely the contrary." [(13)]
What infuriated the anarchists was the amazing growth of the socialist political parties. It was only after The Hague congress that the socialist movement was in reality free to begin its actual work. With ideas diametrically opposed to those of the anarchists, the socialists set out to build up their national movements by uniting the various elements in the labor world. There were now devoted disciples of Marx in every country of Europe, and in the next few years, in France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, and Germany, the foundations were laid for the great national movements that exist to-day. In France, Jules Guesde, Paul Lafargue, and Gabriel Deville launched a socialist labor party in 1878. A Danish socialist labor party was formed the same year by an agreement with the trade unions. In the early eighties the Social-Democratic Federation was founded in England, and in 1881 a congress of various groups of radicals, socialists, and republicans launched a political movement in Italy. In Germany the socialists had already built up a great political organization. This had been done directly under the guidance of Marx and Engels through Liebknecht and Bebel. Marx's ideas were there perfectly worked out, and nothing so much as that living, growing thing incensed the anarchists. Indeed, they seemed to be convinced that there was more of menace to the working class in these growing organizations of the socialists than in the power of the bourgeoisie itself.
The controversial literature of this period is not pleasant reading. The socialists and anarchists were literally at each other's throats, and the spirit of malignity that actuated many of their assaults upon each other is revolting to those of to-day who cannot appreciate the intensity of this battle for the preservation of their most cherished ideas. And in all this period the socialist and labor movement was overrun with agents provocateurs, and every variety of paid police agents sent to disrupt and destroy these organizations. And, as has always been the case, these "reptiles," as they were called, were advocating among the masses those deeds which the chief anarchists were proclaiming as revolutionary methods. Riots, insurrections, dynamite outrages, the shooting of individuals, and all forms of violence were being preached to the poor and hungry men who made up the mass of the labor movement. Under the guise of anarchists, these "reptiles" were often looked upon as heroic figures, and everywhere, even when they did not succeed in winning the confidence of the masses, they were able to awaken suspicion and distrust that demoralized the movement. The socialists were assailed as traitors to the cause of labor, because they were preaching peaceable methods. They were accused of alliances with other parties, because they sought to elect men to parliament. They were denounced as in league with the Government and even the police, because they disapproved of dynamite.
On the other hand, the socialists were equally bitter in their attacks upon the anarchists. They denounced their methods as suicidal and the Propaganda of the Deed as utter madness. In La Période Tragique, when Duval, Decamps, Ravachol, and the other anarchists in France were committing the most astounding crimes, Jules Guesde and other socialist leaders condemned these outrages and protested against being associated in the public mind with those who advocated theft and murder as a method of propaganda. Indeed, the anarchists in the late seventies and in the eighties lost many who had been formerly friendly to them. Guesde and Plechanoff, both of whom had been influenced in their early days by the Bakouninists, had broken with them completely. Later Paul Brousse and Andrea Costa left them. And, in fact, the anarchists were now incapable of any effective action or even education. Without committees, executives, laws, votes, or chairmen, they could not undertake any work which depended on organized effort, and, except as they managed from time to time to gain a prominent position in some labor or radical organization built up by others, they had no influence over any large body of people. They were fighting desperately to prevent extinction, and in their struggle a number of extraordinarily brilliant and daring characters came to the front. But during the next decade their tragic desperation, instead of advancing anarchism, served only to strengthen the reactionary elements of Europe in their effort to annihilate the now formidable labor and socialist movements.
Turning now to the struggle for existence of the socialist parties of the various countries, there is one story that is far too important in the history of socialism to be passed over. It was a magnificent battle against the terrorists above and the terrorists below, that ended in complete victory for the socialists. Strangely enough, the greatest provocation to violence that has ever confronted the labor movement and the greatest opportunity that was ever offered to anarchy occurred in precisely that country where it was least expected. Nowhere else in all Europe had socialism made such advances as in Germany; and nowhere else was the movement so well organized, so intelligently led, or so clear as to its aims and methods. An immense agitation had gone on during the entire sixties, and working-class organizations were springing up everywhere. Besides possessing the greatest theorists of socialism, Marx and Engels, the German movement was rich indeed in having in its service three such matchless agitators as Lassalle, Bebel, and Liebknecht. Lassalle certainly had no peer, and those who have written of him exhaust superlatives in their efforts to describe this prodigy. He, also, was a product of that hero-producing period of '48. He had been arrested in Düsseldorf at the same time that Marx and his circle had been arrested at Cologne. He was then only twenty-three years of age. Yet his defense of his actions in court is said to have been a masterpiece. Even the critic George Brandes has spoken of it as the most wonderful example of manly courage and eloquence in a youth that the history of the world has given us.
Precocious as a child, proud and haughty as a youth, gifted with a critical, penetrating, and brilliant mind, and moved by an ambition that knew no bounds, Lassalle, with all his powerful passion and dramatic talents, could not have been other than a great figure. When a man possesses qualities that call forth the wonder of Heine, Humboldt, Bismarck, and Brandes, when Bakounin calls him a "giant," and even George Meredith turns to him as a personality almost unequaled in fiction and makes a novel out of his career, the plain ordinary world may gain some conception of this "father of the German labor movement." This is no place to deal with certain deplorable and contradictory phases of his life nor even with some of his mad dreams that led Bismarck, after saying that "he was one of the most intellectual and gifted men with whom I have ever had intercourse, ..." to add "and it was perhaps a matter of doubt to him whether the German Empire would close with the Hohenzollern dynasty or the Lassalle dynasty." [(14)] Such was the proud, unruly, ambitious spirit of the man, who, in 1862, came actively to voice the claims of labor.
Setting out to regenerate society and appealing directly to the working classes, Lassalle lashed them with scorn. "You German workingmen are curious people," he said. "French and English workingmen have to be shown how their miserable condition may be improved; but you have first to be shown that you are in a miserable condition. So long as you have a piece of bad sausage and a glass of beer, you do not notice that you want anything. That is a result of your accursed absence of needs. What, you will say, is this, then, a virtue? Yes, in the eyes of the Christian preacher of morality it is certainly a virtue. Absence of needs is the virtue of the Indian pillar saint and of the Christian monk, but in the eyes of the student of history and the political economist it is quite a different matter. Ask all political economists what is the greatest misfortune for a nation? The absence of wants. For these are the spurs of its development and of civilization. The Neapolitan lazaroni are so far behind in civilization, because they have no wants, because they stretch themselves out contentedly and warm themselves in the sun when they have secured a handful of macaroni. Why is the Russian Cossack so backward in civilization? Because he eats tallow candles and is happy when he can fuddle himself on bad liquor. To have as many needs as possible, but to satisfy them in an honorable and respectable way, that is the virtue of the present, of the economic age! And, so long as you do not understand and follow that truth, I shall preach in vain." [(15)] Other nations may be slaves, he added, recalling the words of Ludwig Börne; they may be put in chains and be held down by force, but the Germans are flunkies—it is not necessary to lay chains on them—they may be allowed to wander free about the house. Yet, while thus shaming the working classes, he pleaded their cause as no other one has pleaded it, and, after humiliating them, he held them spellbound, as he traced the great rôle the working classes were destined to play in the regeneration of all society.
The socialism of Lassalle had much in common with that of Louis Blanc, and his theory of coöperative enterprises subsidized by the State was almost identical. Chiefly toward this end he sought to promote working-class organization, although he also believed that the working classes would eventually gain control of the entire State and, through it, reorganize production. He agitated for universal suffrage and even plotted with Bismarck to obtain it. He was confident that an industrial revolution was inevitable. The change "will either come in complete legality," he said, "and with all the blessings of peace—if people are only wise enough to resolve that it shall be introduced in time and from above—or it will one day break in amid all the convulsions of violence, with wild, flowing hair, and iron sandals upon its feet. In one way or the other it will come at all events, and when, shutting myself from the noise of the day, I lose myself in history—then I hear its tread. But do you not see, then, that, in spite of this difference in what we believe, our endeavors go hand in hand? You do not believe in revolution, and therefore you want to prevent it. Good, do that which is your duty. But I do believe in revolution, and, because I believe in it, I wish, not to precipitate it—for I have already told you that according to my view of history the efforts of a tribune are in this respect necessarily as impotent as the breath of my mouth would be to unfetter the storm upon the sea—but in case it should come, and from below, I will humanize it, civilize it beforehand." [(16)] Thus Lassalle saw that "to wish to make a revolution is the foolishness of immature men who have no knowledge of the laws of history." [(17)] Yet he stated also that, if a revolution is imminent, it is equally childish for the powerful to think they can stem it. "Revolution is an overturning, and a revolution always takes place—whether it be with or without force is a matter of no importance ... when an entirely new principle is introduced in the place of the existing order. Reform, on the other hand, takes place when the principle of the existing order is retained, but is developed to more liberal or more consequent and just conclusions. Here, again, the question of means is of no importance. A reform may be effected by insurrection and bloodshed, and a revolution may take place in the deepest peace." [(18)]
Through the agitation of Lassalle, the Universal German Working Men's Association was organized, and it was his work for that body that won him fame as the founder of the German labor movement. Not a laborer himself, nor indeed speaking to them as one of themselves, he led a life that would probably have ended disastrously, even to the cause itself, had it not been for his dramatic ending through the love affair and the duel. Fate was kind to Lassalle in that he lived only so long as his influence served the cause of the workers, and in that death took him before life shattered another idol of the masses. "One of two things," said Lassalle once before his judges. "Either let us drink Cyprian wine and kiss beautiful maidens—in other words, indulge in the most common selfishness of pleasure—or, if we are to speak of the State and morality, let us dedicate all our powers to the improvement of the dark lot of the vast majority of mankind, out of whose night-covered floods we, the propertied class, only rise like solitary pillars, as if to show how dark are those floods, how deep is their abyss." [(19)] With such marvelous pictures as this Lassalle created a revolution in the thought and even in the action of the working classes of Germany. At times he drank Cyprian wines, and what might have happened had he lived no one can tell. But he was indeed at the time a "solitary pillar," rising out of "night-covered floods," a heroic figure, who is even to-day an unforgettable memory.
Bebel and Liebknecht appeared in the German movement as influential figures only after the disappearance of Lassalle. And, while the labor movement was already launched, it was in a deplorable condition when these two began their great work of uniting the toilers and organizing a political party. One of the first difficult tasks placed before them was to root out of the labor movement the corruption which Bismarck had introduced into it. That great and rising statesman was a practical politician not excelled even in America. In the most cold-blooded manner he sought to buy men and movements. For various reasons of his own he wanted the support of the working-class; and, as early as 1864, he employed Lothar Bucher, an old revolutionist who had been intimately associated with Marx. Possessed of remarkable intellectual gifts and an easy conscience, Bucher was of invaluable service to Bismarck, both in his knowledge of the inside workings of the labor and socialist movement and as a go-between when the Iron Chancellor had any dealings with the socialists. Through Bucher, Bismarck tried to bribe even Marx, and offered him a position on the Government official newspaper, the Staats Anzeiger. Bucher was also an intimate friend of Lassalle's, and it was doubtless through him that Bismarck arranged his secret conferences with Lassalle. The latter left no account of their relations, and it is difficult now to know how intimate they were or who first sought to establish them. About all that is known is what Bismarck himself said in the Reichstag when Bebel forced him to admit that he had conferred frequently with Lassalle: "Lassalle himself wanted urgently to enter into negotiations with me." [(20)] It is known that Lassalle sent to the Chancellor numerous communications, and that one of his letters to the secretary of the Universal Association reads, "The things sent to Bismarck should go in an envelope" marked "Personal." [(21)] Liebknecht later exposed August Brass as in the employ of Bismarck, although he was a "red republican," who had started a journal and had obtained Liebknecht's coöperation. Furthermore, when he was tried for high treason in 1872, Liebknecht declared that Bismarck's agents had tried to buy him. "Bismarck takes not only money, but also men, where he finds them. It does not matter to what party a man belongs. That is immaterial to him. He even prefers renegades, for a renegade is a man without honor and, consequently, an instrument without will power—as if dead—in the hands of the master." [(22)] "I do not need to say ... that I repelled Bismarck's offers of corruption with the scorn which they merited," Liebknecht continues. "If I had not done so, if I had been infamous enough to sacrifice my principles to my personal interest, I would be in a brilliant position, instead of on the bench of the accused where I have been sent by those who, years ago, tried in vain to buy me." [(23)] As early as 1865 Marx and Engels had to withdraw from their collaboration with Von Schweitzer in his journal, the Sozialdemokrat, because it was suspected that he had sold out to Bismarck. This was followed by Bebel's and Liebknecht's war on Von Schweitzer because of his relations to Bismarck. Von Schweitzer, as the successor of Lassalle at the head of the Universal Working Men's Association, occupied a powerful position, and the quarrels between the various elements in the labor movement were at this time almost fatal to the cause. However, various representatives of the working class already sat in Parliament, and among them were Bebel and Liebknecht.
