The election laws confined the electorate to the few property-holders and professional men of the country. In 1890, out of 1,800,000 male citizens, 133,000 were qualified electors.
II
These were the conditions that prevailed when the Socialists quite suddenly appeared on the scene. There had been a Socialist propaganda for years in Belgium. Brussels was a city of refuge to many fleeing revolutionists of 1848. In 1857 a labor union was organized among the spinners and weavers of Ghent. The same year Colin published his book, What Is Social Science? This volume prepared the way for the remarkable collectivist movement, which was stimulated into modern activity by Anselee, a workingman of Ghent and organizer of the Vooruit Co-operative Society. Cæsar de Paepe, a disciple of Colin and a man of remarkable intellectual endowments, tried to bring unity to the Belgian movement. But the factionalism was not cast aside until 1885, when the Belgian Labor Party (Parti Ouvrier Belge) was organized.
Now Socialists of all factions were drawn together. But, unlike Socialists in other countries, they did not expend their energies on political action. The Belgian labor movement had a threefold origin—the co-operative movement of Colin, the labor-union movement, and the Socialistic or political movement of de Paepe. These three activities, united in the Labor Party, have continued to develop, until they are a model for Socialists in all countries.
The organization of the party is simple. The various organizations are federated into large groups, e.g., the co-operative group, each with a separate organization. The provinces and communes have their local committees for each separate activity. Over the entire party sits a general council (conseil général). An executive committee of nine is chosen from this council, and this committee has practical control of the party. The annual convention is the supreme authority. It elects the general council and decides, in democratic fashion, all important questions of policy and activity. Every constituent organization, such as the co-operative societies, etc., contributes from its funds to the support of the party. The party is therefore a federation of many societies with various activities, not a vast group of individual voters, as the German Social Democracy. Its solidarity is not individual, but federal.
The organization of the Labor Party proved a stimulus to all the constituent societies. From 1885 to 1895 over 400 co-operative societies were formed, and within a few years 7,000 mutual aid societies were organized. The membership of the labor unions increased from less than 50,000 in 1880 to 62,350 in 1889, and nearly 150,000 in 1905.
The Socialist movement had now achieved solidarity, and was prepared to enter into a conflict for power. Its issues were two: universal suffrage and free secular education. The second was necessarily included in the first; for without parliamentary power it would be impossible to secure liberal educational laws, and without a liberal franchise it would be impossible to get parliamentary power. All their political energies were therefore devoted to the reform of the election laws.
It is in this activity that the Belgian movement forms for our purpose one of the most instructive chapters of European Socialism. Here is a proletarian horde deprived of participation in government in a constitutional monarchy, struggling toward political recognition. It is armed with all the weapons of militant Socialism: a revolutionary tradition; a national history rich in mob violence, street brawls, and conflicts with police and soldiers; possessed of a well-organized party, a class solidarity, and capable and courageous leaders who are willing to go, and do go, to the extreme of the general strike and violence in order to achieve their goal.
In short, here we have the Socialist political ideal working itself from theory into reality through class struggle. But there is the usual important modification of the Marxian conditions; viz., the liberal bourgeois prove a potent ally to the Socialists in the press and on the floor of the Chamber of Representatives. While the Socialists were surging in vehement earnestness around the Parliament House, the Liberals were as earnestly pleading their cause within.
The definite fight for universal suffrage began a few years before the organization of the Labor Party. In 1866 a group of workingmen issued an appeal to their fellows to begin the battle for the ballot. In 1879 the Socialists issued a manifesto which stated the case as follows: "'All powers are derived from the nation; all Belgians are equal before the law,' says the Constitution of 1831.