Democracy and Liberalism have never been strong enough to break the fetters of national habit; and nearly all the democracy, certainly all the workingman's democracy, in Germany to-day is found in the Social Democratic Party.
In order to understand the development of Social Democracy in Germany, it is necessary to bear in mind the bureaucratic, autocratic, paternalistic character of the German government.[1]
It is the German governmental policy to do everything for the welfare of its citizens that can be done; and, in return, it expects the people to let the government alone. The medieval conception of class responsibility survives. It is the attitude of a self-righteous parent toward ignorant and wilful children. The government assumes the right, and possesses the power, to regulate every phase of the citizen's life, in domestic, industrial, educational, moral, and political affairs. It is a regal survival of the theory that government is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.
Germany is a made-to-order country that clings to medieval conservatism in government; a country that is thoroughly modern in industry and distinctly middle-age in caste; where the workingman has always been treated with patronizing condescension and his political acts watched with jealousy; and where he has, against great odds, determined to work out his own salvation. Surrounded by preordained and rigid conditions, he has perfected an organization that is the most remarkable example of proletarian achievement found anywhere in history. To the development and description of this organization we will now address ourselves.
German Social Democracy, while Marxian in theory, owes its active existence to Ferdinand Lassalle, one of those brilliant and daring geniuses who flash, in an hour of adventure, across the prosaic days of history.[2] He was pronounced a Wunderkind by William von Humboldt; dashed his way through university routine; attracted the friendship of poets, philosophers, and politicians; was lionized by society; became a revolutionist in 1848, and was, at the age of twenty-three, indicted for inciting a mob of Düsseldorf workingmen to acts of violence. He defended himself in a brilliant speech which launched him fully into the campaign of the workingman.[3]
Early in his career he volunteered to defend the cause of the Countess Hatzfeldt, whose unfaithful husband was squandering his estates and suffering her to live in want. Lassalle fought the case through thirty-six courts for nine years, and won an ample fortune for the countess, who became the main financial support of Lassalle's campaigns.
After his first arrest, Lassalle was kept under vigilance by the government. But finally, through the interposition of distinguished friends, he was allowed to return to Berlin. There, in 1862, he delivered a series of addresses that soon brought him into conflict with the police. His defense in the court was published later under the title, Science and the Workingman. This he followed with a letter, Might and Right,[4] sent broadcast over the land.
In these two publications he succinctly enunciated his theory of democracy: "With Democracy alone dwells right, and in Democracy alone will might be found. No person in the Prussian state to-day has the right to speak of 'rights,' except the Democracy, the old and true Democracy. For Democracy alone has constantly clung to the right, and has never lowered herself by compromising with might."[5]
In the political turmoil of that period, when new forces were awakening to their power and feudalism, conservatism, Cobdenism, and democracy were all contending for supremacy, there were three predominating currents of thought. The first was naturally the feudal, the absolutist that would put down by the police power, and failing in that by the soldiery, every attempt at changing the organization of the government. This was embodied in the reactionary, or Conservative Party, which held then, as it still does, the high places in army and government. Bismarck was its leader. It had ample nationalist aims, and was called the "Great German Party" ("Gross Deutschland"); Austria was included in its ambitions, and monarchic supremacy was the token of its power. It comprised the landowners, the nobles, and the agrarians.
The second tendency was commercial, bourgeois. It found expression in the National Liberal Party, which was liberal in name only. It was the "Small German" ("Klein Deutschland") Party, preferring the ascendency of Prussia. It comprised the enterprising traders, manufacturers, and bankers, and was strongest in the cities. It was attached to monarchy, cared little for military or political glory, except as it affected trade and taxes.