The public of to-day know the high-priests of socialism only from the thick books in which their solemn declarations are spread out, and from the interpretations of these given at working-men’s congresses. The personal motives from which the whole movement sprang are forgotten. Carl Marx, when he gazes over from his London cottage upon the new German Empire, can exclaim with pride that after thirty years his seed has brought forth abundantly. Whoever wishes to see this sower more closely and in his true character need only read Carl Vogt’s pamphlet, Life of Fugitives in London. Here are the revelations not of an opponent but an adherent of the cause and an admirer of Marx, but a disillusionized admirer. He sees that the meanest of tricks were practised by Marx and his entourage in the meanest manner; and that the desire for power is as strong among these levellers as it is in the court of a king. Here, for instance, are extracts from Carl Vogt’s pamphlet:
“In the end it is all the same whether this contemptible Europe falls—an event that must presently occur without the revolution. They (Carl Marx and his Janissaries) care nothing for the German common people. They desire only to remain eternally in the opposition, without which the revolution would go to sleep.... We drank first porter, then claret, then red Bordeaux, then champagne. After the red wine Marx was quite drunk. This was very desirable, for he became more open-hearted. I heard much that otherwise would have been concealed. But he kept up the conversation to the end; he impressed me as a man of singular mental superiority and of remarkable personality. Had he as much heart as mind, as much love as hatred, I would go through the fire for him. I am sorry for our cause that he does not possess a noble heart. His ambition has eaten up all the good qualities in him. He laughs over the fools who repeat his proletariat catechism, as well as over communists à la Willich or the bourgeoisie. He cares only for the aristocrats, purely and consciously so. To drive them from power he employs a force that he finds only in the proletariat, and for that reason has adapted his system to it.”
So much for Marx. The true portraiture of Lassalle would be as amusing. But the contrast between the living and the preaching, between the private mode of thought and the public utterances of the German upper and middle classes generally, is equally observable. And in this respect they remind one of the marquises and viscounts of the eighteenth century. They do not dance on the volcano, but gather the fuel for the pile on which they themselves are to be consumed; and the cry Sancta simplicitas! resounds, not sympathetically from the mouth of the victim, but mockingly from the throat of the executioner. The fact that the internationalists, far away from German shores, send mandates from beneath the shelter of their English homes for the destruction of our civil comity, would give us little cause for alarm, if men unwillingly united, and doubly important by their positions and their number, were not seeking to accomplish this work within our own walls. The fruits of their activity are observable everywhere.
Many will answer: In these symptoms appears the development of a healthy process, similar to the unconscious self-dissolution of the French aristocracy which brought about the revolution and thus conferred the greatest benefit upon posterity. So it is now the duty of the people—“the third class”—to make room for its legitimate successor, “the fourth class.” Whether it was fortunate for the world that the French Revolution was accomplished we shall not say. There is, however, not a single analogous characteristic between the epoch of that revolution and the present time.
One of the most absurd weaknesses of our time is that it hurries on with formulas of a dialectic development, and transforms them into the business of life before they are properly digested. What is more ludicrous than the introduction of parliamentary systems into countries semi-barbarous? The attempt to cure Russia, Turkey, Roumania, and Egypt with parliamentary constitutions reminds us of the peasant who, when the doctor has prescribed a medicine for him, employs the same for his wife and child in every disease. He falls into the same error who fancies that the German people have arrived at that stage of their development when, like the French nobility of the eighteenth century, they should betake themselves with a good grace out of the world. The very contrary is the case. Never have extremes met more closely than in the common attack of reaction and socialism against the German people. While the temperate socialistic ideal has for its end the revival of the state of society during the middle ages, the internationalists aim at the dissolution of all that has been gained since our ancestors were barbarians. There is a lower depth yet, for a school exists which, going only a step farther, calls itself “anarchist.”[[92]]
The support given the socialists by the agrarians and the ultramontanes is more than an ordinary political coalition. Their sympathy reposes on inward concurrence; and for Germany it is especially dangerous, because their attacks are directed against a people neither matured nor secured. Germany is almost wholly wanting in everything needful for the formation of a united, intelligent, and independent body politic. The strong material groundwork is yet wanting. The complaints made against our industrial products are not groundless. Nor can they be ascribed to the passing influence of commercial folly which characterized the period immediately following the war. We have to do with evils as old as the century. Improvement of workmanship, increase of general prosperity, and elevation of political prestige bear the closest relationship to each other. The intoxication of victory led to a foolish application of the booty extorted from France. Those who undertook the solution of this stupendous financial problem approached it with too small a measure of its importance. But everywhere we meet with the same technical inadequacy in Germany. Earnest work alone in domestic as well as public economy can lead us to the firm establishment of a healthy, civilized state. Only fools can propose to dispense with the forms requisite for the collection of strength which has made possible the stage of culture we now are in, and only sophists can attempt to establish this power without capital, and capital without property. But instead of allowing the German people to attain its development, the inimical elements are now all pouncing upon it, and telling it that it has outlived itself and is ready for dissolution.
In England, France, and Italy there is an aristocracy with strong self-respect and conservative principles—an erudite community, filled with the quiet consciousness of its intellectual superiority. But these classes do not separate the task of their self-preservation from that of the preservation of the people. There he who seeks to bring forward particular ideas endeavors to carry them into the great community of the people.
There are eccentric persons everywhere; but only in Germany exist entire groups of aristocratic, learned, and religious men who make war upon the people their business. Aristocrats who take the field against capital, professors who teach that the road to wealth leads to prison, bishops who conspire with demagogues, are to be found only in Germany. First one and then another of these groups wish to make experimentum in anima vili with the people. Its pains give them no care—nay, in some cases secret joy; all are deluded by the idea that they can abuse it without imperilling their own safety.... The nation, as a whole, does not feel responsible for its own support. It still believes that the supreme power, reposing upon itself, would take care to preserve order. For this reason it does not permit any interference with attacks against itself,[[93]] and sometimes takes pleasure in joining in the sport.
The ruling class is scarcely wiser. Its nerves are somewhat more susceptible; but as for a true insight into the state of affairs it is as much in the dark as the governed. It suspects, in small degree, the extreme danger that threatens, but it is at sea concerning the origin and nature of the danger. If alarmed by a fresh incident, it thinks that more stringent laws are all that is needed,[[94]] or the revival of a buried belief.
It is an error to measure Germany by English or French ideas. Here immature conditions have penetrated over-ripe ideals. The lesson of the war of classes has, with us, fallen on a soil which for pernicious growth is better adapted than that of any country in the world, Russia excepted. The conjunction of our strongly-developed intellectual life with our crude and immature political and social systems has generated an atmosphere in which the poisoned germs of these seeds yielded fruit with unparalleled rapidity and plenty.