Against such a development, if it come in the manner described and anticipated, nobody can properly protest. But the Socialists of the international school—and this is what makes international Socialism a menace to all governments and gradually but surely undermined the German state—will not wait upon the slow processes of transition. Upon peoples for whom the flags of their respective countries are still emblems of interests transcending any conceivable interests of peoples outside their own state boundaries, emblems of an idea which must be unquestioningly and unthinkingly accepted and against which no dictates of the brotherhood of other men or the welfare of other human beings have any claim to consideration, the Socialists would impose over night their idea of a world without artificial state lines, and would substitute the red flag for those emblems which the majority of all mankind still reverence and adore. It requires no profound thinking to realize that such a change must be preceded by a long period of preparation if anarchy of production and distribution is to be avoided. To impose the rule of an international proletariat under the present social conditions means chaos. The world has seen this exemplified in Russia, and yet Russia, where the social structure was comparatively simple and industry neither complex nor widely developed, was the country where, if anywhere today, such an experiment might have succeeded.
Socialist leaders, including even the internationalists, have perceived this. The murdered Jaurès saw it clearly. But in the very nature of things, the vast majority of the adherents of these doctrines are not profound thinkers. Socialism naturally recruits itself from the lower classes, and it is no disparagement to these to say that they are the least educated. Even in states where the higher institutions of learning are free—and there are very few such places—the ability of the poor man's son to attend them is limited by the necessity resting upon him to make his own living or to contribute to the support of his family. The tenets of national Socialism naturally appeal to the young man, who feels that he and his fellows are being exploited by those who own the "instruments of production," and who sees himself barred from the educational advantages which wealth gives. From the acceptance of the economic tenets of national Socialism to advocacy of internationalism is but a small step, easy to take for one who, in joining the Socialist party, finds himself the associate of men who address him as "comrade" and who look forward to a day when all men, white, black or yellow, shall also be comrades under one flag and enlisted in one cause—the cause of common humanity. These men realize no more than himself the fact that existing social conditions are the result of historical development and that they cannot be violently and artificially altered without destroying the delicate balance of the whole machine. And since this is the state of mind of the majority of the "comrades," even the wisest leaders can apply the brakes only with great moderation, for the leader who lags too far behind the majority of his party ceases to be a leader and finds his place taken by less intelligent or less scrupulous men.
Ferdinand Lassalle, the brilliant but erratic young man who organized the first Socialist party in Germany, was a national Socialist. His party grew slowly at first, and in 1864, when he died, it had but 4,600 members. In 1863 Marx aided by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, [8] formed the rival Confederation of German Unions upon an internationalistic basis. This organization joined the Internationale at its congress in Nuremburg in 1868. The parties of Marx and Lassalle maintained their separate identities until 1875, when they effected a fusion at a congress in Gotha. The Marx adherents numbered at that time about 9,000 men and the Lassalle adherents some 15,000, but the latter had already virtually accepted the doctrines of international Socialism and the Internationale, and the German Socialists had until the breaking out of the World War maintained their place as the apostles and leaders of internationalism.
[ [8] Called "the elder Liebknecht" to distinguish him from his son Karl Liebknecht, who was killed while under arrest in Berlin in the winter of 1919.
Socialism first showed itself as a political factor in Germany in 1867, when five Socialists were elected to the North German Diet. Two Genossen [9] were sent to the first Reichstag in 1871, with a popular vote of 120,000, and six years later nearly a half million red votes were polled and twelve Socialists took their seats in the Reichstag. The voting-strength of the party in Berlin alone increased from 6,700 in 1871 to 57,500 in 1877, or almost ninefold.
[ [9] Genosse, comrade, is the term by which all German-speaking Socialists address each other.
A propaganda of tremendous extent and extreme ability was carried on. No bourgeois German politician except Bismarck ever had such a keen appreciation of the power of the printed word as did those responsible for Socialism's missionary work. Daily newspapers, weekly periodicals and monthly magazines were established, and German Socialism was soon in possession of the most extensive and best conducted Socialist press in the world. The result was two-fold: the press contributed mightily to the spreading of its party's doctrines and at the same time furnished a school in which were educated the majority of the party leaders. Probably three quarters of the men who afterward became prominent in the party owed their rise and, to a great extent, their general education to their service on the editorial staffs of their party's press. By intelligent reports and special articles on news of interest to all members of the Internationale, whether German, French, English, or of what nationality they might be, this press made itself indispensable to the leaders of that movement all over the world, and contributed greatly to influencing the ideas of the Socialists of other lands.
Bismarck's clear political vision saw the menace in a movement which openly aimed at the establishment of a German republic and at the eventual overthrow of all bourgeois governments and the elimination of local patriotism and state lines. In 1878 he secured from the Reichstag the enactment of the famous Ausnahmegesetze or special laws, directed against the Socialists. They forbade Socialist publications and literature in general, prohibited the holding of Socialist meetings or the making of speeches by adherents of the party. Even the circulation of Socialist literature was prohibited. The Ausnahmegesetze legalized as an imperial measure the treatment that had already been meted out to Socialists in various states of the Empire. Following the Gotha congress in 1875, fifty-one delegates to the congress were sent to prison. Wilhelm Liebknecht received a sentence of three years and eight months and Bebel of two years and eleven months. In Saxony, from 1870 to 1875, fifty Socialists underwent prison sentences aggregating more than forty years.
But Socialism throve on oppression. In politics, as in religion, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It would be praising any statesman of the '80's too highly to say that he had learned that ideas cannot be combated with brute force, for the rulers of the world have not yet learned it. But Bismarck did perceive that, to give any promise of success, opposition to Socialism must be based upon constructive statesmanship. To many of the party's demands no objection could be made by intelligent society. And so, in the address from the throne in 1881, an extended program of state socialism was presented. With the enactment of this program into law Germany took the first important step ahead along the road of state Socialism, and all her legislation for the next thirty years was profoundly influenced by socialistic thought, in part because of a recognition of the wisdom of some of Socialism's tenets, in part because of a desire to draw the party's teeth by depriving it of campaign material.
More than a decade earlier the Catholic Church in Germany had recognized the threatening danger and sought to counteract it by the organization of Catholic labor unions. It succeeded much better in its purpose than did the government, which is not to be wondered at, since the temporal affairs of the church have always been administered more intelligently than have the state affairs of any of the world's governments. For many years Socialism made comparatively small gains in Roman Catholic districts. A similar effort by the Lutheran (State) Church in 1878 accomplished little, and Bismarck's state Socialism also accomplished little to stop the spread of Socialist doctrines.