Socialism as it is

by William English Walling

In contrasting his section of the French Party with the German movement, Jaurès claimed that the French were both more revolutionary than the German, and more practical in their efforts at immediate reform. "You," he said, speaking to the Germans, "have neither a revolutionary nor a parliamentary activity." He reminded them that having never had a revolution they could not have a revolutionary tradition, that universal suffrage had been given to them from above (by Bismarck), instead of having been conquered from below, that they had been forced tamely to submit when they had recently been robbed of it in Saxony. "You continue in this way too often," he continued, "to obscure and to weaken, in the German working class, the force of a revolutionary tradition already too weak through historic causes." And finally he asserted that the German Socialists, who, a year or so before this conference, had obtained the enormous number of 3,000,000 votes, had been able to do nothing with them in the Reichstag. He said that this was due in part to the character of the German movement, as shaped by the circumstances of the past, and partly to the fact that the Reichstag was powerless in the German government, and claimed that they would have been only too glad to follow the French reformists' course, if they could have done so, just as their only reason for not using revolutionary measures was also that the German government was too strong for them.

"Then," concluded Jaurès, "you do not know which road you will choose. There was expected from you after this great victory a battle cry, a program of action, a policy. You have explored, you have spied around, watched events; the public's state of mind was not ripe. And then before your own working class and before the international working class, you masked the feebleness of your activity by taking refuge in extreme theoretical formulas which your eminent comrade, Kautsky, will furnish to you until the life goes out of him." As time has not yet tested Jaurès's accusations, they cannot yet be finally disproved or proved. The replies of his revolutionary opponents at the Congress were chiefly counter-accusations. But the later development of the German movement gives, as I shall show, strong reasons why Jaurès's criticisms should be accepted as being true only of the reformist minority of the German Party.

Jaurès referred to the British unionists as an example of the success of reformist tactics. Bebel was able to dispose of this argument. "The capitalists of England are the most able in the world," he said. "If next year at the general elections English Liberalism is victorious, it will again make one of you, perhaps John Burns, an Under Secretary of State, not to take an advance towards Socialism, but to be able to say to the working people that it gives them voluntarily what has been refused after a struggle on the Continent, in order to keep the votes of the workers." (This is just what happened.)

"Socialism," he concluded, "cannot accept a share of power; it is obliged to wait for all of the power."

The Amsterdam resolution, passed by a large majority after this debate, was almost identical with that which had been adopted by a vote of 288 to 11 at the German Congress at Dresden in the previous year (1903), and although the Austrian delegates and others, nearly half the total, had expressed a preference for a substitute of a more moderate character, they did not hesitate, when this motion was defeated, to indorse the more radical one that was finally adopted. And in 1909, when this Dresden (or Amsterdam) resolution came up for discussion at the German Congress of Leipzig, it was unanimously reaffirmed. Those opposing it did not dare to dispute it at all in principle, but merely expressed the mental reservation that it was qualified by another resolution adopted at a recent Congress which had declared that the party should be absolutely free to decide the question of temporary political alliances in elections. As such electoral combinations, valid only for the second ballot, and lapsing immediately after the elections, had always been common, the Dresden resolution was never meant by the majority of those voting for it to forbid them. Its purpose was only to insist that the object of the Socialists must always be social revolution and not reform, since, to use its own words, supreme political power "cannot be obtained step by step."

"The Congress condemns most emphatically," the Dresden resolution declared, "the revisionist attempt to alter our hitherto victorious policy, a policy based upon the class struggle; just as in the past we shall go on achieving power by conquering our enemies, not by compromising with the existing order of things." (My italics.) In a recent letter widely quoted by the continental press, August Bebel contended that in Germany at least the Social Democracy and the other political parties have grown farther and farther apart during the last fifty years. While Bebel claims that Socialists support every form of progress, he insists that nevertheless they remain fundamentally opposed even to the Liberal parties, for the reason, as he explained at the Jena Congress (1905), that "an opposition party can, on the whole, have no decisive influence until it gains control of the government," that until the Socialists themselves have a majority, governments could be controlled only by an alliance with non-Socialist parties. "If you (the Socialist Party) want to have that kind of an influence," said Bebel, "then stick your program in your pocket, leave the standpoint of your principles, concern yourself only with purely practical things, and you will be cordially welcome as allies." (Italics mine.) At the Nuremburg Congress (1908) he said: "We shall reach our goal, not through little concessions, through creeping on the ground, and coming down to the masses in this way, but by raising the masses up to us, by inspiring them with our great aims."

Another question arose in the German Party which at the bottom involved the same principles. It had been settled that Socialists could not accept a share in any non-Socialist administration, no matter how progressive it might be. But if a social reform government is ready to grant one or more measures much desired by Socialists, shall the latter vote the new taxes necessary for these measures, thus affording new resources to a hostile government, and shall it further support the annual budget of the administration, thus extending the powers of the capitalist party that happens to be in power? The Socialist policy, it is acknowledged, has hitherto been to vote for these individual reforms, but never to prolong the life of an existing non-Socialist government. The fundamental question, says Kautsky, is to whom is the budget granted, and not what measures are proposed. "To grant the budget," he says, "means to give the government the right to raise the taxes provided for; it means to put into the hands of the governor the control of hundreds of millions of money, as well as hundreds of thousands of people, laborers and officeholders, who are paid out of these millions." That is to say, the Socialist Party, according to the reasoning of Kautsky and the overwhelming majority of Socialists, wherever it has become a national factor of the first importance, must remain an opposition party—until the main purpose for which it exists has been accomplished; namely, the capture of the government, and for this purpose it must make every effort to starve out one administration after another by refusing supplies. At the National Congress at Nuremburg in 1908 it was decided by a two-thirds vote that in no one of the confederated governments of Germany would Socialists be allowed to vote for any government other than that of their own party, no matter how radical it might be, unless under altogether extraordinary circumstances, such as are not likely to occur. Some of the delegates of South Germany said that they would not be bound by this decision, but later a number expressed their willingness to accede to it, while others of them were forced to do so by the local congresses of their own party.

This question was brought up at the German Congress at Leipzig in 1909. The parties in possession of the government had proposed a graduated inheritance tax, which nearly all Socialists approve. Moreover, a part of the taxes of the year would be used for social reforms. Favoring as they did the change in the method of taxation, would the Socialist members of the Reichstag be justified in voting for the proposed tax at the third reading? All agreed that it was well to express their friendly attitude to this form of tax at the earlier readings, but approval at the third reading might have the effect of finally turning over a new sum of money to an unfriendly government; although it would be collected from the wealthier classes alone, it might be expended largely for anti-democratic purposes. The revolutionaries, with whom stood the chairman of the convention, the late Paul Singer, were against voting for the tax on the third reading, for they argued that if the Socialists granted an increased income to a hostile government merely because they were pleased with the form of the taxes proposed, it might become possible in the future for capitalist governments to secure Socialist financial support in raising the money for any kind of reactionary measures merely by proving that they were not obtaining the means for carrying them out from the working people.

Half of the members of the Parliamentary group, on the other hand, decided in favor of voting for the tax on the third reading, the reformists largely on the ground that it would furnish the means for social reforms, Bebel and others, however, on the entirely different ground that if the upper classes had to pay the bill for imperialism and militarism, the increase of expenditures on armaments would not long continue.

The "radical" Socialists represented by Ledebour proposed that not one penny should be granted the Empire except in return for true constitutional government by the Kaiser. Certainly this was not asking too much, even though it would constitute a political revolution, for the majority of the whole Reichstag afterwards adopted a resolution proposed by Ledebour demanding such guarantees. In other words, he would make all other questions second to that of political power—no economic reform whatever being a sufficient price to compensate for turning aside from the effort to obtain democratic government, i.e. more power.