§ IV. The Present State of Socialism

1. After this brief sketch of the notion and history of scientific socialism it may be well to review its present condition first of all in the land of its birth, in Germany. The growth of German social democracy is sufficiently indicated by the following statistics:

In the elections for the Imperial Diet (Reichstag) there were polled for social democratic candidates:

Social democracy is therefore by far the most numerous party in the empire. In 1898 more than one fourth of a total of about 7,600,000 votes was polled for socialist candidates; and in 1903 they reached nearly one third of not quite 9,500,000 votes. The Hanseatic towns, Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck; the capitals of the federated states, Berlin, Dresden, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, etc., in fact almost all the large cities are represented in the Reichstag by socialists. Of cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants Crefeld and Aix-la-Chapelle alone carried a conservative candidate at the first ballot.

Of course, it must be taken into account that, as experience has proved, many give their votes for socialist candidates, not because they approve of their principles, but because they wish to give forcible expression to their dissatisfaction with certain conditions or with the candidates of the other parties. Moreover, social democrats more than any other party everywhere put up polling candidates, in order to brag about their number of votes. In the elections for the Reichstag in 1898, and again in 1903, they were running candidates in every one of the 397 election districts.

In the elections of 1898 the number of socialist members of the Reichstag rose from 48 to 58, in 1903 from 58 to 81. According to the report of the executive party committee, July 1, 1902, the party press showed the following figures. Besides the central organ, the Berlin Vorwärts, and the scientific weekly Neue Zeit the socialist press in Germany comprised:

Moreover, two bi-weekly comic papers and two weekly illustrated journals besides the Gleichheit, a magazine devoted to the interests of workingwomen. The socialist trade-union press numbers

Up to the present writing these figures have remained unchanged. The Neue Weltkalender, the official party almanac, had in 1901 a circulation of 140,000 copies. Numerous pamphlets are scattered broadcast through the land. Millions of copies of an illustrated tract published by the executive committee were spread through the whole empire even in the meanest hamlets. During the fiscal year July 1901–July 1902 the party fund expended $80,843.00 for purposes of propaganda, for the support of members of the Reichstag, etc.¹

¹ Cf. Report of the Transactions of the Social Democratic Party Convention of 1902, pp. 25–31.

The chief representatives of German social democracy are at present A. Bebel, K. Kautsky, E. Bernstein, J. Auer, P. Singer, G. von Vollmar, W. Heine, H. Molkenbuhr, A. Stadthagen, A. von Elm, etc.; they as well as their whole party base their demands on Marxian principles exclusively, at least ever since 1891. Formerly, from 1875 on, they upheld the so-called Gotha platform or programme, as German socialists term it.

In that year the partisans of Marx—the so-called Eisenacher under the leadership of Liebknecht and Bebel—and those of Lassalle—the Lassalleans led by von Schweitzer—assembled in convention at Gotha and drew up a joint compromise platform. Against the first draft of this document Marx raised some objections and criticisms, which he handed in writing to the leaders of the social democratic party. His remarks were entitled “Marginal Notes on the Platform of the German Labor Party.” With regard to some points the criticisms of Marx found favor with the convention, not so with regard to others. Owing to this circumstance Engels thought fit in 1891 to publish the “ Marginal Notes” from the unpublished papers of his friend, and thus they appeared in the Neue Zeit. It was a disagreeable surprise sprung on the socialist members of the Reichstag, but after all it compelled them to take the revision of their platform into serious consideration. The discussion took place in the party convention at Erfurt, Oct. 14–20, 1891, resulting in a new platform, the so-called Erfurt programme.

For the sake of comparison both platforms, the earlier Gotha programme and the present Erfurt programme, will be printed here in extenso.

I. Labor is the source of all wealth¹ and culture; and since universally efficient labor is possible only through society, it follows that, the universal duty of labor being supposed, the entire product of labor belongs with equal right to the entire body of society—that is, to its individual members—each according to his individual wants.

¹ In his Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Programms Marx has declared this statement to be false, and so it is undoubtedly. Hence some have concluded that Marx has abandoned his theory of all value being derived from labor. This, however, is not the case. According to Marx the national wealth consists of use-values which are due to nature at least as much as to labor. Whether a land is rich or poor in wine, cereals, coal, etc., depends a good deal on the nature of the soil and on the geological formation and geographical position of the country, a fact which Marx noways denies. But from this very dependence of labor on the means of production springs the servitude of workingmen in all social conditions where they are not themselves the owners of capital. Marx's theory of value goes no further than to say that the exchange-value which gives to merchandise its distinctive character consists of the labor necessary for its production. But from these premises he draws the conclusion that during the capitalist era the formation of private wealth—in opposition to national wealth—or, in other words, the accumulation of surplus-values in the hands of capitalists, is effected by the appropriation of the labor of others.

In the present state of society labor materials are monopolized by capitalists; and the dependence of the laboring class thence arising is the cause of misery and slavery in all its forms.

The liberation of labor requires the transformation of all labor materials into the common property of society, and the social control of all labor, together with the application and just distribution of the entire proceeds of labor, for the use of all.

The liberation of labor must be the work of the laboring class, which is opposed by all the other classes as by reactionary masses.

II. Proceeding from these principles, the socialistic labor party of Germany seeks by all means to bring about a free state and a socialistic organization, the abolition of the iron law of wages and of the system of wage-working, the removal of oppression of every form, and of all social and political inequality.

The socialist labor party of Germany, though operating within the confines of the nation, is conscious of the international character of the labor movement and is determined to discharge all the duties which this universality imposes upon the laborers to bring about the brotherhood of all men.

The socialist party of Germany demands, in order to prepare the way for the solution of the social problem, the institution of socialistic industrial associations at the public expense under the democratic control of the laboring people. These associations are to be of such dimensions that from them the socialistic organization of the entire people may be developed.

This portion of the programme contains the economic aims and, consequently, the gist of the social democratic aspirations. It is followed by a second political programme which voices the political aims of the movement—in the first place, the final and permanent ends and, in the second place, the means which are gradually to transform our present society into a socialistic state.

The socialist labor party of Germany demands that the constitution of the state should rest upon the following principles: (x) Universal, equal, and direct suffrage with private ballot, and obligatory voting of all subjects of the state from the age of twenty upward, for all elections in state and municipality. The election-day is to be on a Sunday or a holiday. (2) Immediate legislation by the people. Decisions regarding peace and war by the people. (3) Universal military service. Civil militia instead of standing armies. (4) The abolition of all exceptional legislation, especially regarding the freedom of the press, of association, and of holding public meetings, and generally of all laws which in any way restrict the free expression of opinion, free thought and research. (5) Administration of justice by the people. Administration of justice free of expense to all. (6) Universal and equal education of the people by the state; universal compulsory education; free instruction in all educational institutions. Religion to be declared a private matter.

The socialist labor party of Germany demands in the present existing social circumstances:

(1) The greatest possible extent of political rights and franchises in conformity with the above demands. (2) One only progressive income-tax for state and municipality in the place of all existing taxation—particularly in the place of the indirect taxation which weighs so heavily upon the people. (3) Unlimited right of association. (4) A normal working day suited to social circumstances.¹ Prohibition of Sunday labor. (5) Prohibition of child labor, and of such labor for women as is injurious to health and morality. (6) Laws protecting the life and health of the laborers. Sanitary control of the workmen’s dwellings. The supervision of mines, factories, workshops, and domestic industries by officers elected by the workmen. Efficient employers’ liability law. (7) The regulation of prison labor. (8) Independent administration of all aid and benefit funds.

¹ By normal working day is meant here the maximum of working hours permitted by law in any given industry. Others, again, understand by the normal working day the necessary social labor time of an individual, which varies in proportion to his natural wants and to the productiveness of his labor. The length of this normal working day would be ascertained by figuring out the number of hours required for the manufacture of the entire national product, and how much of this time would fall to the share of each laborer. This normal working day presupposes a collectivist organization of society, and seems to be what Marx understands by the term.

Rodbertus and others understand by the normal working day the number of hours which a laborer of medium health and strength and of medium effort, under ordinary conditions, can work daily. This time, of course, varies in each industry. The more laborious and dangerous the work, the shorter also the working hours.

I. The economical development of civil society necessarily leads to the destruction of small industries, the basis of which is private ownership of the laborer in the means of production. It divests the laborer of all means of production and transforms him into a penniless proletarian, while the means of production become the sole property of a comparatively small number of capitalists and real-estate owners.

Hand in hand with the monopoly of capital goes the abolition of the disorganized small industries by the formation of vast industrial organizations, the development of work-tools into machines, and a gigantic increase of the productiveness of human labor. But all the advantages of this change are monopolized by the capitalists and landowners. For the proletariat and the declining middle classes—common citizens and farmers— this social change is tantamount to a growing insecurity of existence, of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation.

The number of proletarians increases, the army of superfluous laborers assumes greater dimensions from day to day; the conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed is becoming more and more violent—that conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat which divides modern society into two hostile camps and is the common characteristic of all industrial nations.

The chasm between rich and poor is widened by those financial crises which are grounded in the very nature of capitalistic production—crises which become ever more extensive and destructive, make universal insecurity the normal state of society, and give evidence that the productive forces of our age have become uncontrollable by society, and that private property in the means of production has become incompatible with their proper utilization and full development.

Private property in the means of production, which formerly was a means of securing to the producer the ownership of his produce, has nowadays become a means of dispossessing farmers, laborers, and small merchants, and of making the non-laborers —capitalists and landowners—the possessors of the produce of labor. Only the transformation of private capitalistic property in the means of production—i.e., land, mines and mining, raw materials, tools, machinery, and means of communication— into common property, and the change of private production into socialistic—i.e., production for and through society—can effect that the extensive industry and the ever-increasing productiveness of social labor shall become for the exploited classes, instead of a source of misery and oppression, a source of the highest prosperity and of universal and harmonious perfection.

This social revolution implies the liberation, not only of the laboring class, but of the entire human race, which is suffering under our present condition. But this emancipation can only be the work of the laboring classes, since all other classes, notwithstanding their clashing interests, take their stand on the platform of private property in land and in the means of production, and make the preservation of modern society on its present basis their common object.

The struggle of labor against capitalistic oppression is necessarily a political one. The laboring class cannot carry on its industrial struggles and develop its economic organization without political rights. It cannot effect the transfer of the means of production into the possession of the body social without possessing itself of political power.

To give to this struggle of the laboring class spontaneous activity and unity, and to assign to it its natural direction—this is the end and aim of the social democratic party.

The interests of the laboring classes are the same in all countries where capitalistic industry exists. Owing to the extent of international commerce and industry the condition of labor in every country becomes more and more dependent on the condition of labor in all other countries. The emancipation of the laboring classes is therefore a work in which the laborers of all civilized countries should take part. In this conviction the social democratic party of Germany feels and declares itself to be at one with the intelligent organized laborers of all other countries.

The social democratic party of Germany does not contend for new rights or privileges for the laboring classes, but for the abolition of the rule of the classes and of the classes themselves, and for the equal rights and equal duties of all without distinction of sex or pedigree. Proceeding from these views social democracy in modern society opposes not only the exploitation and oppression of the laboring class, but every kind of exploitation and oppression, no matter against what class, party, race, or sex they may be brought to bear.

II. Proceeding from these principles, the social democratic party of Germany demands for the present:¹

¹ Namely, as long as the present state of society with its private ownership of the means of production remains.

1. Universal, equal, direct suffrage by private ballot for all citizens over twenty years of age, without distinction of sex, in all elections and ballotings. Representation proportioned to the number of population, and meanwhile a redistribution of election districts after each census. Biennial elections. Elections and other ballotings to be held on a legal holiday. Compensation for representatives. Abolition of every restriction of political rights except in the case of legal disfranchisement.

2. Direct legislation by the people through the right of initiative and referendum. Self-rule and self-administration by the people in empire, state, province, and community. Election of magistrates by the people; their responsibility in solidarity to the people. Annual grant of taxation.

3. Education for universal military service. Popular militia instead of standing armies. Decisions regarding peace and war by the representatives of the people. International disputes to be settled by arbitration.

4. Abolition of all laws which restrict or suppress freedom in the expression of opinion; the right of forming associations and holding conventions.

5. Abolition of all laws which subordinate woman to man in public and private life.

6. Religion is to be declared a private concern; the use of public funds for ecclesiastical and religious purposes to be abolished. Ecclesiastical and religious communities are to be regarded as private societies which are perfectly free to manage their own affairs.

7. Secularization of the schools.² Compulsory attendance at the public schools. Instruction, use of all the means of instruction (books, etc.), and board free of charge in all public elementary schools, and in the higher institutions of learning for such pupils of both sexes as, on account of their talents, are judged fit for higher studies.

² The book of Kautsky and Schönlank, Grundsätze und Forderungen der Sozialdemokratie (Berlin, 1892), p. 44, remarks on this passage: “If religion is a private concern, . . . then the school is in consequence a purely secular institution. . . . To mix up the instruction of the children with religious affairs would be a fundamental error. Therefore the co-operation of ecclesiastical persons in the work of instruction is inadmissible.”

8. Gratuitous administration of justice and legal advice. Administration of justice by judges elected by the people. The right of appeal in criminal cases. Indemnification of those who have been. unjustly accused, arrested, or condemned. Abolition of capital punishment.

9. Free medical attendance, also in childbirth; free medicine. Free burial.

10. Graded and progressive taxation on income and property to meet all public expenses which are to be defrayed by taxes. Obligatory self-valuation. Taxation on hereditary property, graded progressively according to the extent of the property and the degree of kindred of the heirs. Abolition of all indirect taxes, customs, and other economical imposts, which subordinate the general interests to the interests of the few.

For the protection of the laboring class the social democratic party of Germany demands for the present:

1. National and international legislation for the protection of labor on the following basis: (a) The determination of a normal work-day not exceeding eight hours. (6) Prohibition of industrial labor by children under the age of fourteen years. (c) Prohibition of night-work, except in those branches of industry which of their nature, for mechanical reasons or for the common welfare, require night-work. (d) An uninterrupted rest of at least thirty-six hours every week for each laborer. (e) Abolition of the force system.

2. Supervision of all industries. Investigation and regulation of the condition of labor in town and country by means of imperial and provincial labor bureaus and labor councils. An effectual system of industrial hygiene.

3. Equality between agricultural laborers or servants and industrial laborers; abolition of the domestic relations between masters (or mistresses) and servants.

4. Maintenance of the right of coalition.

5. Insurance of laborers to be regulated by the imperial government, with due co-operation of laborers in the administration.

The adoption of the Erfurt programme scored a decisive victory for the partisans of Marx as against those of Lassalle. The chief points of distinction between it and its predecessor are the following: The Erfurt programme lays far more stress on the so-called materialistic conception of history, which, according to Marxian ideas, is supposed to effect the transition from the capitalistic to the socialistic order of society by means of a natural, irresistible process, and especially by the monopolist concentration of the means of production. On the other hand, the assertion that labor creates all wealth and also the iron law of wages were cancelled. Nor is there any further mention of co-operative societies and of “reactionary masses’? opposed to the workingmen. Besides the capitalists the new platform mentions also the landowners as monopolizing the means of production. Finally, the Erfurt platform takes a more decided stand on the woman question. Equal rights with men are claimed for women in public as well as in private affairs.

2. As regards essentials German social democrats all take their stand on the above-mentioned platform; yet of late there have arisen different factions which are probably destined to wield a far-reaching influence on the further development of socialism.

The young socialists, led by Werner, Wildberger, Auerbach, and others, made their appearance in the early nineties and insisted on a “double-quick tempo”’ and a more open profession of revolutionary principles. They blamed the socialist leaders of laying too much stress on “parliamenting,”’ a means to which they themselves assigned rather the rôle of an advertising medium. They evidently broached anarchistic principles à la Most and Hasselmann. Some of their number were excluded from the social democratic party and endeavored to form a new party, the “Union of independent socialists.”’ Their attempt never became of any importance, yet it cannot be doubted that among social democrats there are still many adherents of principles similar to those of the “young socialists,” clamoring for more vigorous manifestations of the revolutionary character of social democracy.

Of greater significance for the future of socialism is the division into orthodox Marxists and the so-called revisionists who are headed by G. von Vollmar and of late by E. Bernstein.

Already in the beginning of the nineties Vollmar protested energetically against proceeding too impetuously, and thereby caused a lively controversy among socialists. Vollmar wished to base his efforts upon the present state of society, to advance the betterment of the workingman by such reforms as are possible under existing circumstances, and thus step by step to effect the organic transition from the old order of society to the new. The party leaders, especially those of Northern Germany—Vollmar himself is a Bavarian —Bebel, Liebknecht, etc., attacked him in no measured terms, casting up to him that he is a “state socialist,”’ endeavoring to form an opportunist national reform party, etc. Genuine socialism, however, Bebel remarked, “looks upon these proximate demands as accidental trifles and lays the principal stress upon the final aims, not vice versa, as Vollmar insists on doing.”

The dispute between Vollmar and his opponents waxed warmest concerning the notion of “state socialism.” Being charged with advocating state socialism, Vollmar published an essay bearing that title in the Revue bleue, in which he expresses his opinion as follows: State socialism, speaking generally, may be taken to mean that the existing state is not merely an organization for political purposes, but that its sovereignty embraces the entire field of economics, so that it belongs to its province not only to regulate all the relations between workingmen and employers but also to effect the transfer of any branch of production to the supervision or even into the immediate administration of the state. Vollmar sees no reason why this kind of state socialism should be so strenuously opposed; he rather thinks that social democracy might do well to approve and support a good many projects proposed by state socialism.

This opinion was fiercely assailed in the Vorwärts by Liebknecht, and in the Neue Zeit by Kautsky. There was talk of treason to party principles. But as Vollmar rightly remarked, there was in the whole controversy a good deal of beating about in the fog.

Indeed, Vollmar’s definition is rather vague. It might be endorsed even by such as are not social democrats. Socialists can adopt it as their own, if they consider state socialism not as their ultimate goal, but only as a means or as the natural transition to their ulterior socialistic purpose. In this sense Vollmar had propounded his opinion, as is plain from the statements made in the above-mentioned article and from his later declarations. Therefore he did not hesitate to move in common with Liebknecht the following resolution, which was almost unanimously adopted by the Berlin party convention, 1892:

“The party convention declares: Social democracy has nothing in common with so-called state socialism. This state socialism, in so far as it aims at state ownership for fiscal purposes, proposes to place the state in lieu of the private capitalist and to endow it with the power of putting upon the people the twofold yoke of economic exploitation and political slavery.

“This so-called state socialism, in so far as it is occupied in social reform or in improving the condition of the laboring classes, is a system of half-hearted measures, owing its existence to fear of social democracy. By trifling concessions and all manner of palliatives it endeavors to alienate workingmen from social democracy and thereby to paralyze the latter.

“Social democracy has never disdained to demand such measures on the part of the state or to approve them when proposed by others, whenever they were calculated to effect an improvement in the condition of the laboring classes in the present economic system. But it considers such measures merely as some trifling part payment, which will in no wise influence our striving after the socialistic reorganization of state and society.

“ Social democracy is essentially revolutionary, state socialism is conservative. Social democracy and state socialism are irreconcilable opposites.”

The first part as well as the concluding sentence speak for Liebknecht, the second last paragraph for Vollmar. With the latter it was more a question of tactics than of principles; and since with regard to tactics his opinion had prevailed, he actually came out victorious despite the full-mouthed verbiage against state socialism.

The most interesting point of the whole discussion, however, is the fact that all parties appealed to the social democratic convention for an authentic declaration on state socialism, a declaration which should put a stop to the quarrel. Here then we have a supreme doctrinal authority in regular form, an ex cathedra decision of the party convention! Vollmar disputed the competence of the convention for any such declaration; the adoption of this resolution, he said, would transform the party convention into a “Church Council.” Kautsky, on the other hand, was for the decision. There was not question, he thought, of the scientific value of state socialism, but of the attitude which social democracy as a political party should assume regarding it.¹ But the attitude of the party depended first of all on a correct definition of state socialism. If Vollmar’s definition was correct and in harmony with socialist principles, then it was highly unjust and tyrannical to take him to task or perhaps even to exclude him from the party on that account. But can the party convention, composed as it is for the most part of men without much higher education, be qualified to decide whether a given definition of state socialism is correct and in harmony with socialist principles? Most assuredly not. And in fact Kautsky, Liebknecht, and the rest, by appealing to the convention, wished but to force their own opinion on Vollmar.

¹ Neue Zeit, xi. pp. 210 sqq.

3. The feud between orthodox Marxists and Vollmar’s “moderates” entered upon a new stage when E. Bernstein began his incisive criticism on the foundations of Marxism. In the case of Vollmar it had remained doubtful whether it was a fight about principles or merely about tactics, but with Bernstein and his partisans no doubt was possible on that head. Here there was question of fundamental differences in principle, about the “to be or not to be” of Marxism. As long as the scientific foundations of socialism were criticised by avowed opponents, criticism could be set aside by some stock phrases about complete ignorance of socialism, malevolent misrepresentations, etc. This policy, of course, would not do against Bernstein, a trusty and prominent comrade.

Up to the repeal of the German Socialist Law in 1890 Bernstein was editor of the Sozialdemokrat of Zurich, the then principal organ of German socialists; after that he lived for a number of years in London in constant intercourse with Fr. Engels.

In a series of stirring articles he subjected the “scientific” part of the party platform to a searching criticism, trying especially to demonstrate that the conception of the materialistic theory of history contained in the party platform needed a thorough revision. Even Marx and Engels, he maintained, had not been always consistent in their views. Above all, Bernstein found fault with the so-called “theory of collapse.” Marx and Engels started from the assumption that the development of capitalist society would soon bring about such a concentration of industries, such an accumulation of capital in the hands of a few, such an increase in numbers and in misery of the penniless proletariat, that a great social cataclysm, the universal collapse of society, would become inevitable. Among socialist leaders, Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky, etc., this assumption was held sacred as an infallible dogma. Consequently they took it to be their most urgent duty to foster and promote the capitalist evolution and thus to hasten the approach of the catastrophe. Engels himself and Bebel after him had already predicted the collapse of society— the great “Kladderadatsch”—as going to take place before the close of the nineteenth century. It stands to reason that such assumptions are not favorable to great activity in social reforms—rather the contrary. This explains the ill-concealed aversion of the socialist leaders for trades-unions, their predilection for arousing the discontent of workingmen and for fanning the flames of class hatred, their endless and excessive complaints about the constant pauperization of laboring men, their ever-growing exploitation, and so on.

In the articles mentioned above Bernstein opposed these views very energetically, and as the result of his discussion he published a book entitled “Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie.”¹ The gist of this book lies in the following statements. The introductory theoretical sentences of the Erfurt platform may be of immense value in the hands of demagogues, but they are contradicted by facts. Neither the small tradespeople nor the peasantry are on the point of disappearing, nor can it be maintained that in civilized countries there is an increase of misery, servitude, and decadence. Bernstein inveighs likewise against the orthodox Marxian principle that socialism is an objective historical necessity. If this were the case the exertions of the socialist party would be mere waste of strength. The life of modern nations is by far too complex to be comprehended within the compass of one principle.

¹ Stuttgart, 1899. The original articles were collected and published by Bernstein with the title Zur Geschichte und Theorie des Sozialismus (Berlin, 1901).

Bernstein’s strictures provoked fierce attacks on the part of the comrades, especially Kautsky, Bebel, Plechanow, Fr. Mehring, and others who assailed him in the Neue Zeit and the Vorwärts. Bernstein was not slow to answer, being supported by the Sozialistische Monatshefte and by not a few of the party members.

The faction of the “undaunted”—Bebel and his followers—appealed to the party convention on the plea that Bernstein was ruining socialism. The Stuttgart convention did not yet dare to decide for or against the “heretic,” but at Hanover, in 1899, the Bernstein affair was taken into serious consideration. However, it soon became apparent that the Bernstein partisans were more numerous than had at first been believed. Only a few delegates, headed by Liebknecht, clamored for a downright repudiation of Bernstein for the sake of Marxian orthodoxy. Others, as David, von Vollmar, von Elm, and Fendrich, stood up for Bernstein. Auer tried to mediate, and jeered at the irreconcilable comrades & la Stadthagen “who were forever marching ahead, bearing aloft the standard of social revolution with the ultimate object dangling from the flagpole.” Even Bebel, Bernstein's chief accuser, finally moved a resolution which the accused was ready to sign cum grano salis. It was as follows:

The past development of bourgeois society has given our party no occasion to relinquish or to change our fundamental views concerning it. In the future as in the past our party is in the field of class struggles, where the liberation of the working class must be its own achievement, and therefore we consider it the appointed task of the laboring class to gain political supremacy, and by its help to effect the common ownership of the means of production and the social organization of production and exchange, thereby to bring about the greatest possible happiness of all.

To reach this goal our party will use every means suitable to the purpose and compatible with our fundamental principles. Without being deceived as to the nature and the character of the bourgeois parties, which are but representatives and champions of the existing order of state and society, our party does not refuse to go hand in hand with them in single cases, wherever there is question of strengthening our party at the elections, or of extending the political rights and franchises of the people, or of really improving the social conditions of the working classes and advancing civilization, or of combating tendencies hostile to the laborer and the common people. However, our party in its entire activity retains complete autonomy and independence and considers every successful achievement as merely a step in the direction of the ultimate goal.

Our party is neutral as regards the establishment of co-operative societies. Wherever the necessary preliminary conditions are fulfilled the establishment of these societies is considered as calculated to improve the social position of their members. The establishment of these societies as well as every kind of organization among workingmen for the safeguarding and promoting of their interests is considered also as a proper means of educating the laboring classes in the management of their own affairs; but these co-operative societies are not credited with any decisive influence in the liberation of the laboring classes from the bondage of wage slavery.

In combating militarism in army and navy, and as to the colonial policy, our party maintains its former position. Likewise it keeps to its former international policy, aiming at a mutual understanding and universal brotherhood of the nations, in the first place of the laboring classes in civilized countries, in order to effect by a general federation the accomplishment of the tasks incumbent upon all.

Accordingly there is no reason for our party to change either its principles or fundamental demands, or to adopt different tactics or a different name, i.e., to transform the social democratic party into a democratic socialist reform party; and we decidedly repudiate every attempt at veiling or shifting our position with regard to the existing order of state and society and the bourgeois parties.¹

¹ Report of the Transactions of the Socialist Party Convention at Hanover, Oct. 9–14, 1899, p. 243.

To appreciate this resolution to its full value we must remember that Bernstein’s partisans also voted for it, after their leader had declared his acceptation. In any case it was a victory for the advocates of present improvements as against the dreamers about future prospects, because now for the first time the party approved the trades-union movement and the formation of co-operative societies.

However, the politicians, i.e., the executive party committee and the parliamentarians—Bebel, Liebknecht, etc.,—were not a little prejudiced against the trades-union movement. They were not wanting, indeed, in assurances of their platonic friendship for the unions, still they viewed the whole movement with a good deal of mistrust, and covertly expressed their apprehension lest it should drift social democracy into the wake of a bourgeois reform party. Already at the Cologne convention in 1893 the politicians and the union leaders—Legien, von Elm, etc.— had entered upon very spirited altercations, which have since been repeated from time to time. The apprehensions of the “politicians” were not altogether unfounded. For, the unions naturally direct their attention to what is at present practically obtainable and thus contribute in no slight degree to the improvement of their members’ economic condition. Once the workingman has got a snug berth and finds that his own interests are connected in a hundred ways with the permanence of society, his revolutionary fervor, the leading motive of the genuine socialist, begins to cool. He is no longer conscious of belonging to the great order of “proletarians of all countries;” his zeal for contributing in hard cash to the international cause is perceptibly diminishing; he has other interests nearer and dearer to his heart. No doubt, therefore, that the development of the trades-unions is, to say the least, not favorable to the revolutionary tendencies of extremist social democracy. And it was at Hanover that the trades-union movement and in general the formation of co-operative societies was first acknowledged by the party as justifiable measures.

In reviewing the Hanover debates concerning the party platform in the November number of the Sozialistische Monatshefte, 1899, David remarks that three different reasons induced the Bernstein faction to vote for Bebel’s resolution.

1. By its clause on election compromises and co-operative societies it embodied a good slice of Bernsteinism, so that for the sake of the practical concessions the theoretical gewgaws could be taken into the bargain. 2. Bebel had amended his motion so as to make it read, there is no reason to change the principles and fundamental demands, where at first it read the platform of the party. Thereby was acknowledged the undesirableness of being tied to certain statements of the Erfurt platform. The discussion also brought it home to the delegates that the theory of concentration is to be modified in so far as agriculture is to be exempted from it. The theory of pauperization made such a poor showing that no one is any longer inclined to admit it, the theory of crises is in a critical state, and finally the theory of collapse is highly compromised. On the whole, the first four paragraphs of the Erfurt programme are a “medley of truth and fiction, of facts and hypotheses, of problems and prophecies.” 3. Bernstein’s partisans were justified in voting for Bebel’s motion by the fact that it indicates the only and final goal of socialism, “the greatest possible happiness of all.” To this goal everything else is to be subordinated, even the social organization of production, nay, even the socialist principle itself. “Society is considered to be of more account than its exterior form—this is meant by Bebel’s goal.”

In this conception of socialism the fundamental ideas of Marxism have undoubtedly been abandoned.

Bernstein continued his attacks on Marxism and propounded his diverging opinions even in a lecture before a “bourgeois” gathering. This brought on another heated discussion at the Lubeck convention, September, 1901. The clashing opinions were couched in two resolutions moved by Bebel and Heine respectively. In their preambles both resolutions acknowledged the necessity of self-criticism for the intellectual progress of the party. Heine’s resolution then went on to say that there was no occasion for the party to recede from the principles of the resolution adopted at Hanover in 1899, and that thereby the motions against Bernstein were to be considered as settled; but Bebel’s resolution declared that by his one-sided criticism, neglecting to criticise bourgeois society also, Bernstein had assumed an equivocal position and had aroused the displeasure of his comrades. In the expectation that Bernstein would be amenable to reason and act accordingly, the convention should pass over the motions against him and take up the order of the day. Heine’s motion was dropped by 166 votes against 71, that of Bebel was carried by a majority of 203 against 31, four delegates having abstained from the ballot. Upon Bebel’s assurance that the resolution did not imply a vote of distrust against Bernstein, the latter filed the following declaration:

Comrades: As I have already declared in my open letter to the Stuttgart convention, the votes of delegates cannot in any way make me waver in my convictions. Yet on the other hand I have never been indifferent to the vote of the majority of my comrades. It is my conviction that the resolution adopted by you is objectively wronging me, that it is based on false premises, as I have already explained to you. But since comrade Bebel declared that it implied no vote of distrust, I also declare that I accept the vote of the majority as such, and that I shall treat it with that respect and consideration which is due to the decision of the convention.

This meaningless declaration was received with “thunderous applause.” The Vorwärts remarked triumphantly: “The conclusion of the Bernstein discussions implies the adjustment of differences and the assurance of future harmonious co-operation of the whole party; it indicates the firm purpose of burying the tomahawk of personal quarrels.” But in view of Bernstein’s declaration that he remained unshaken in his convictions there can hardly be question of an adjustment of differences. Bernstein may have modified his tactics for the time being, in principle the gaping chasm remains, and sooner or later will assert itself with a vengeance. Even Bebel had announced at Lubeck that a revision of the Erfurt platform could not be postponed very long.

However, at the Dresden convention of 1903 nothing was as yet decided. Personal encounters took up most of the time; when, after a heated discussion, a resolution was adopted condemning the policy of the so-called revisionists, it amounted to very little, since it stigmatized those revisionists who renounce the ultimate goal and content themselves with obtaining reforms in the existing order of society.

4. In conclusion we may mention another source of antagonism within the party which is liable to cause many a squabble among the comrades. We mean the antagonism between college men and proletarians.

Already in the beginning of 1901 Kautsky had pointed out this antagonism in his comments on the discussions of the socialist conference of Saxony. He noticed in those discussions “the symptoms of a wide-spread feeling against the academic element in our ranks” which had become manifest also on other occasions. Toward the close of the same year the Neue Zeit had an article on the same subject from the pen of a “proletarian.” He says among other things that animosity against the college men has actually spread far and wide, and it is not confined to some of the college men, but is directed against “the whole academic tribe,” and with many of the comrades it seems to be more or less of a principle. It has certainly caused hard feeling that young men just fresh from the university, whose tendencies cannot be controlled, are preferred to old and tried laboring comrades. “We are a party of workingmen, and it does not look well that among our members in the Reichstag, in the editorial rooms of our press, and in the other offices of the party there should be so many ‘doctors.’ This sentiment has been expressed again and again. It is also quite certain that the expression in our platform, ‘the emancipation of the laboring classes must be the work of the laboring classes themselves,’ is often misunderstood and interpreted in the sense that no one can be a full-blood socialist unless he is a workingman.”’

Also the manner in which many college men are carrying on their superficial talk and supercilious airs have often roused the ire of the workingmen. But without college men there would be no socialist science or literature. Socialism cannot do without them, although their scientific productions find few readers among workingmen. The proletarian quoted above laments: “We know that during the last few years, though circumstances were comparatively favorable, not one of the works published by Dietz, Stuttgart, has been a profitable investment. Besides we must remember that not everything which is bought is also read, but often lies for years without being cut open. It is a general complaint that the ‘free’ singing, gymnastic, and bicycle societies, nay, even ‘free’ smoking clubs take up the entire leisure time of workingmen.”

Before entering upon a more detailed account of the present status of socialism in the United States it may not be out of place to take a glance at its historical development. In this inquiry we shall abstract from the utopian ideas and attempts of Owen, Cabet, Brisbane, and others of that ilk, and confine our attention to the manifestations of the international “scientific” socialism of which there has been question in the preceding pages, i.e., to the socialism based on Marxian principles.

Already before the Civil War Marxian ideas were disseminated principally by German immigrants in New York and the adjoining States. Thus, e.g., the General Labor Union founded in April, 1853, by Joseph Weydemeyer, a disciple of Marx, consisted exclusively of Germans. It advocated land reform and the organized union of all the different trades throughout the country “to obtain by legal means sufficient guarantees for the humane existence of laborers.” In September of the same year, 1853, a number of English-speaking workingmen joined their German comrades to form the Amalgamated American Society of Workingmen. They demanded the abolition of all laws hostile to laboring men, compulsory attendance at school and gratuitous instruction, gratuitous administration of justice, immediate naturalization of immigrants, public ownership of public utilities and institutions, etc.¹

¹ Jubilee number of New-Yorker Volkszeitung, Feb. 21, 1903, pp. 9, 10. The N. Y. Volkszeitung is the principal German organ of the Socialist Party, and its jubilee edition contains several essays of an historical and retrospective character from the pens of socialist leaders, Jonas, Schlueter, Schewitch, Morgan, and others.

But, without having exercised any far-reaching influence, the Amalgamated Society died soon after of inanition. ‘The German labor unions, which for the greater part were infected with socialist principles, kept on agitating, but by 1860 even they had lost much of their former importance, which decreased still more during the war of secession.¹ In 1867 a number of Lassalleans called into existence a political party, the so-called SOCIAL Party, but its complete failure at the elections in 1868 caused its speedy disruption.²

¹ Ibid., p. 10.

² Cf. Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States (1903, Funk & Wagnalls Co.), p. 195; Hillquit is a prominent member of the Socialist Party.

At the same time the constant influx of immigrants belonging to the International Workingmen’s Association, founded principally by Marx in 1864,³ gradually changed the character of the German labor unions, and in the autumn of 1869 there was founded in New York the German Section of the International Workingmen’s Association, which was based entirely on Marxian principles, and zealously propagated Marxian ideas. Other sections of the International composed of different nationalities soon followed. Some of them, together with different socialistic trades-unions in and about New York and Philadelphia, constituted the SOCIAL Democratic WoRKINGMEN’S PARTY OF NORTH AMERICA, July 4, 1874.⁴ Its principal press organs were the German Sozial Demokrat and, since 1875, the Socialist.

³ Cf. above, p. 18.

⁴ Cf. Hillquit, History of Socialism, pp. 204, 207.

In Chicago several sections of the International had been organized in the early seventies. The socialist elements of the middle West gradually developed into the Labor Party of Illinois, having its executive committee in Chicago.⁵ At a convention in Philadelphia, July 19-22, 1876, the American Federation of the International Workingmen’s Association, the Labor Party of Illinois, and the above-mentioned Social Democratic Workingmen’s Party were amalgamated into the Workingmen’s Party of the United States.¹ At the Newark convention of 1877 this name was changed to SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY OF NORTH AMERICA.²

⁵ N. Y. Volkszeitung, Jub. Ed., p. 25.

¹ Hillquit, p. 209.

² Ibid., p. 210.

This date is a landmark in the history of the present socialist parties. Up to this time the efforts of socialist organizations, especially in the political arena, had been scattered and intermittent. Henceforth Marxian socialism began to strive steadily for political power, and for the next twenty years the only political organization which advocated Marxian principles was the Socialist Labor Party. Already in the first year of its existence the elections showed remarkable results, e.g., 1800 votes in New York, 6238 in Buffalo, 9000 in Chicago; much of this success, however, was owing no doubt to the great labor troubles of that period. In 1879 the socialist votes of Chicago amounted to about 12,000. Their party organ, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, was now issued daily and a new one was published for a time in English. Their prosperity was checked, however, by the inroad of anarchist elements, who after the Greenback movement of 1880 captured the Arbeiter- Zeitung and also voiced their ultra-anarchistic ideas in a new English publication, the Alarm. Thus anarchists and socialists became associated and identified in the minds of the public. The Haymarket tragedy, May 4, 1886, retarded the socialist movement in Chicago for a number of years.

In the East the Socialist Labor Party was progressing slowly; its showing at the polls was not encouraging to the leaders. As the system of elections then in vogue required each party to print and distribute its own tickets, socialists were unable to cope with the powerful machinery of the old-line parties. Besides, the return of industrial prosperity cooled the socialist fervor of the laboring classes and greatly reduced the numerical strength of the Labor Party, which in 1883 dwindled to about 1500 members. Renewed activity, however, and in 1890 the introduction of the so-called Australian ballot system in New York State changed the face of affairs, and in the very same year the number of socialist votes in that state exceeded 13,000. The same thing happened sooner or later in other states. At the presidential elections in 1892 the Socialist Labor Party polled a total vote of 21,512, distributed over six states, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Pennsylvania. From that time on new territory was gradually brought into the circle of socialist politics and the socialist vote rose slowly but steadily, as is shown by the following figures:

¹ N. Y. Volkszeitung, Jub. Ed., p. 27.

In the presidential elections of 1896 the socialist candidates carried a total of 36,275 votes in twenty states of the Union. In 1897 this vote rose to 55,550, and in 1898 to 82,204, the highest ever polled by the Socialist Labor Party as such.²

² Hillquit, History of Socialism, p. 283.

After this cursory glance at the exterior origin and growth of the Socialist Labor Party we must direct our attention to its interior spirit and development, and to the causes which brought about the split into two political organizations. That the principles and aims of the Socialist Labor Party were from the first practically identical with those of its German prototype is evident from the manifesto issued by its National Convention at Baltimore, 1883:¹

¹ Richard T. Ely, Labor Movement, pp. 269, 270.

Labor being the creator of all wealth and civilization, it rightfully follows that those who labor and create all wealth should enjoy the full result of their toil. Therefore we declare:

That a just and equitable distribution of the fruits of labor is utterly impossible under the present system of society. This fact is abundantly illustrated by the deplorable condition of the working classes, which are in a state of destitution and degrading dependence in the midst of their own productions. While the hardest and most disagreeable work brings to the worker only the bare necessaries of life, others, who labor not, riot in labor's production. We furthermore declare:

That the present industrial system of competition, based on rent, profit-taking, and interest, causes and intensifies this inequality, concentrating into the hands of a few all means of production, distribution, and the results of labor, thus creating gigantic monopolies, dangerous to the people’s liberties; and we further declare:

That these monster monopolies and these consequent extremes of wealth and poverty supported by class legislation are subversive of all democracy, injurious to the national interests, and destructive of truth and morality. This state of affairs, continued and upheld by the ruling political parties, is against the welfare of the people.

To abolish this system, with a view to establish co-operative production, and to secure equitable distribution, we demand that the resources of life, namely, land, the means of production, public transportation, and exchange, become, as fast as practicable, the property of the whole state.

We have here the fundamental tenets of Marxian socialism as they are laid down in the Gotha programme (cf. p. 59). With regard to the doctrine of labor creating all wealth and Marx’s attitude toward it see the footnote on p. 59. Also the platform adopted in 1876 was, as Hillquit terms it,¹ “a scientific and somewhat abstract exposition of the cardinal points of Marxian socialism.”

¹ History of Socialism, p. 210.

The socialist movement in the United States, founded and promoted, as it was, principally by foreigners insufficiently acquainted with the institutions and language of our country, could not prosper unless it appealed to the bulk of American-born workingmen by becoming “Americanized.”

“The endeavor to ‘Americanize’ is the keynote to the activity of the Socialist Labor Party throughout its entire career.”² One of the principal means of attaining this purpose was recognized to consist in gaining a foothold in the existing trades-unions and making them instruments of socialist propaganda. This was accomplished to a great extent in New York City, where the Central Labor Union, founded in 1882, adopted a platform containing the principal socialist demands.³ The German trades-unions, organized 1885 under the name of United German Trades of the City of New York, rendered valuable services to the cause of socialism by promoting the circulation of the New- Yorker Volkszeitung, founded in 1878, which was then, as it is still, the principal champion of German- American socialists.

² Ibid., p. 214.

³ Ibid., p. 284.

The example of New York was followed by Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, Buffalo, and other cities, where central bodies of German trades-unions were affiliated to socialism.⁴ Not satisfied, however, with the influence acquired in local organizations, the Socialist Labor Party strove to take root in the great national confederations of trades-unions, the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.

⁴ Cf. Hillquit, ibid., p. 287.

Ever since 1881 numerous socialists had joined the Knights of Labor, and in 1893 they succeeded in electing delegates to the General Assembly of the Order. But heated controversies about the editorship of the official organ of the Order caused a split, and in 1895 most of the socialists retired from the ranks of the Knights. A similar attempt to capture the American Federation of Labor by introducing socialist planks into the platform was defeated at the convention of the Federation in December, 1894. Now the officials of the Socialist Labor Party, headed by Daniel De Leon, who had been prominent in the affairs of the Knights of Labor, found themselves at loggerheads with both the principal labor organizations of the country.

To offset this disadvantage Daniel De Leon created a rival organization—THE SOCIALIST TRADE AND LABOR ALLIANCE. It was the ostensible aim of this Alliance to gather into its fold the army of unorganized laborers and thus to form a political ally of the Socialist Labor Party. But in reality its nucleus was formed of those trades-unions which at the instigation of De Leon had formerly joined the Knights of Labor, and now at his request seceded from that Order. Other trades-unions in sympathy with socialism followed their lead, whilst in the way of organizing non-union laborers hardly anything was accomplished.

The trades-unions “pure and simple” were fiercely antagonized by the socialist party leaders, who at the same time inaugurated a genuine reign of terror within the party limits. Heated and personal polemics were carried on in the New-Yorker Volkszeitung and The People, De Leon’s official organ. In 1899 the faction opposed to the party administration broke out in open rebellion; at a convention held in Rochester they repudiated the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance and resolved to join the Social Democratic Party, which had been organized quite independently in 1897 at Chicago, mainly through the efforts of Eugene V. Debs of American Railway Union fame. After prolonged negotiations the union was finally cemented at the convention of Indianapolis, July 1901.¹ The new party rapidly gained in strength, rising from 9545 votes in 1898 to 96,918 in 1900, whilst the Socialist Labor Party never recovered from the shock and seems to be decidedly on the wane.

¹ Cf. Hillquit, History of Socialism, pp. 324–339.

As was mentioned above, there are at present two socialist parties in the United States, the old Socialist Labor Party headed by Daniel De Leon, and the new Social Democratic Party which at the Indianapolis convention of 1901 adopted the name SOCIALIST Party, retaining, however, the former appellation in some states, notably New York and Wisconsin, in order to conform with the requirements of the election laws in those states. Each of the two parties poses as being alone genuinely socialistic, and decries the other as a “fake” or “bogus” socialist party. Thus, e.g., in a four-page leaflet published by the Socialist Labor Party² the rival Socialist Party is branded as the production of capitalist politicians to fool the voters and to bring disunion into the socialist ranks. It is charged with co-operating with capitalists and the old-line parties and with running candidates on their tickets. The Socialist Party in retorting¹ stigmatizes its opponent as a party of “scabs,” whose only purpose of existence is to antagonize the efforts of organized workingmen for the improvement of their situation. These few samples may suffice to show the amiability of present relations between the two parties. Both are in perfect accord, however, with regard to their ulterior political objects, both are equally based on the historical and economical theories of Karl Marx, as will be seen by a comparison of their respective platforms.

² Labor Library, Feb. 1902.

¹ Cf. N. Y. Volkszeitung, Oct. 30, 1903.

The present official platform of the Socialist Labor Party was adopted at the New York convention, June 2-8, 1900; it is, however, practically identical with the one drafted by Lucien Sanial and accepted by the Chicago convention of 1889. The tendency to “Americanize” the socialist movement is plainly traceable in the twofold reference to the “founders of this republic.”

The Socialist Labor Party of the United States, in convention assembled, re-asserts the inalienable right of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

With the founders of the American republic we hold that the purpose of government is to secure every citizen in the enjoyment of this right; but in the light of our social conditions we hold, furthermore, that no such right can be exercised under a system of economic inequality, essentially destructive of life, of liberty, and of happiness.

With the founders of this republic we hold that the true theory of politics is that the machinery of government must be owned and controlled by the whole people; but in the light of our industrial development we hold, furthermore, that the true theory of economics is that the machinery of production must likewise belong to the people in common.

To the obvious fact that our despotic system of economics is the direct opposite of our democratic system of politics, can plainly be traced the existence of a privileged class, the corruption of government by that class, the alienation of public property, public franchises, and public functions to that class, and the abject dependence of the mightiest of nations upon that class.

Again, through the perversion of democracy to the ends of plutocracy, labor is robbed of the wealth which it alone produces, is denied the means of self-employment, and, by compulsory idleness in wage slavery, is even deprived of the necessaries of life.

Human power and natural forces are thus wasted, that the plutocracy may rule.

Ignorance and misery, with all their concomitant evils, are perpetuated, that the people may be kept in bondage.

Science and invention are diverted from their humane purpose to the enslavement of women and children.

Against such a system the Socialist Labor Party once more enters its protest. Once more it reiterates its fundamental declaration that private property in the natural sources of production and in the instruments of labor is the obvious cause of all economic servitude and political dependence.

The time is fast coming when, in the natural course of social evolution, this system, through the destructive action of its failures and crises on the one hand, and the constructive tendencies of its trusts and other capitalistic combinations on the other hand, shall have worked out its own downfall.

We, therefore, call upon the wage-workers of the United States, and upon all other honest citizens, to organize under the banner of the Socialist Labor Party into a class-conscious body, aware of its rights and determined to conquer them by taking possession of the public powers; so that, held together by an indomitable spirit of solidarity under the most trying conditions of the present class struggle, we may put a summary end to that barbarous struggle by the abolition of classes, the restoration of the land and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the Co-operative Commonwealth for the present state of planless production, industrial war, and social disorder; a commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilization.

The official platform of the Socialist (Social Democratic) Party was adopted at the Indianapolis convention, July 29-31, 1901, at which the union of the Rochester faction of the Socialist Labor Party and of Debs’ Social Democrats was finally effected. It indulges in a fuller exposition of Marxian principles and is also more explicit as to its immediate demands than the platform of the Socialist Labor Party.

NATIONAL PLATFORM OF THE SOCIALIST Party.

The Socialist Party, in national convention assembled, reaffirms its adherence to the principles of International Socialism, and declares its aim to be the organization of the working class, and those in sympathy with it, into a political party, with the object of conquering the powers of government and using them for the purpose of transforming the present system of private ownership of the means of production and distribution into collective ownership by the entire people.

Formerly the tools of production were simple and owned by the individual worker. To-day the machine, which is an improved and more developed tool of production, is owned by the capitalists and not by the workers. This ownership enables the capitalists to control the product and keep the workers dependent upon them.

Private ownership of the means of production and distribution is responsible for the ever-increasing uncertainty of livelihood and poverty and misery of the working class, and it divides society in two hostile classes—the capitalists and wage-workers. The once powerful middle class is rapidly disappearing in the mill of competition. The struggle is now between the capitalist class and the working class. The possession of the means of livelihood gives to the capitalists the control of the government, the press, the pulpit, and schools, and enables them to reduce the workingmen to a state of intellectual, physical, and social inferiority, political subservience, and virtual slavery.

The economic interests of the capitalist class dominate our entire social system; the lives of the working class are recklessly sacrificed for profit, wars are fomented between nations, indiscriminate slaughter is encouraged, and the destruction of whole races is sanctioned in order that the capitalists may extend their commercial dominion abroad and enhance their supremacy at home.

But the same economic causes which developed capitalism are leading to socialism, which will abolish both the capitalist class and the class of wage-workers. And the active force in bringing about this new and higher order of society is the working class. All other classes, despite their apparent or actual conflicts, are alike interested in the upholding of the system of private ownership of the instruments of wealth production. The Democratic, Republican, the bourgeois public-ownership parties, and all other parties which do not stand for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system of production, are alike political representatives of the capitalist class.

The workers can most effectively act as a class in their struggle against the collective powers of capitalism by constituting themselves into a political party, distinct from and opposed to all parties formed by the propertied classes.

While we declare that the development of economic conditions tends to the overthrow of the capitalist system, we recognize that the time and manner of the transition to socialism also depend upon the stage of development reached by the proletariat. We therefore consider it of the utmost importance for the Socialist Party to support all active efforts of the working class to better its condition and to elect socialists to political offices, in order to facilitate the attainment of this end.

As such means we advocate:

1. The public ownership of all means of transportation and communication and all other public utilities, as well as of all industries controlled by monopolies, trusts, and combines. No part of the revenue of such industries to be applied to the reduction of taxes on property of the capitalist class, but to be applied wholly to the increase of wages and shortening of the hours of labor of the employees, to the improvement of the service, and diminishing the rates to the consumers.

2. The progressive reduction of the hours of labor, and the increase of wages in order to decrease the share of the capitalist and increase the share of the worker in the product of labor.

3. State or national insurance of working people in case of accidents, lack of employment, sickness and want in old age; the funds for this purpose to be furnished by the Government, and to be administered under the control of the working class.

4. The inauguration of a system of public industries, public credit to be used for that purpose in order that the workers be secured the full product of their labor.

5. The education of all children up to the age of eighteen years, and state and municipal aid for books, clothing, and food.

6. Equal civil and political rights for men and women.

7. The initiative and referendum, proportional representation and the right of recall of representatives by their constituents.

But in advocating these measures as steps in the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth, we warn the working class against the so-called public-ownership movements as an attempt of the capitalist class to secure Governmental control of public utilities for the purpose of obtaining greater security in the exploitation of other industries and not for the amelioration of the conditions of the working class.

Quite in opposition to the Socialist Labor Party the Socialist Party claims the regular trades-unions as its legitimate field of agitation, and its ulterior purpose is to make them hotbeds of socialism and if possible to control the great labor organizations so as to use them as powerful allies in the political struggle. This tendency of the Socialist Party is clearly expressed in the following resolution on trades-unionism appended to the platform:

“We consider it the duty of socialists to join the unions of their respective trades. .. . We call the attention of tradesunionists to the fact that the class struggle so nobly waged by the trades-union forces to-day, whilst it may result in lessening the exploitation of labor, can never abolish that exploitation. . . . It is the duty of every trades-unionist . . . to join the Socialist Party and to assist in building up a strong political movement of the wage-working class. . . .”

The relative numerical strength of the two socialist parties in various sections of the United States is best seen by a glance at the election returns of 1902:

*In these states no socialist ticket was run in the state elections of 1902; the figures given are those of the presidential election of 1900.¹

¹ N. Y. Volkszeitung, Jub. Ed., Feb. 21, 1903, p. 11.

The Worker, a socialist paper published by the same company as the N. Y. Volkszeitung, in its issue of March 29, 1903, gives a slightly different total for the Socialist Party, namely, 227,024. At the present writing no reliable data concerning the elections of 1903 are as yet available. The N. Y. Volkszeitung of Dec. 16, 1903, credits the Socialist Party in the state of New York with 33,399 votes and the Socialist Labor Party with 10,677. This means a loss of 5209 for the Socialist Labor Party and a gain of 9999 for the Socialist Party. In other places, however, this party seems to have lost; thus in Massachusetts it failed to re-elect two of its three representatives in the state legislature. The number of registered and paying members of the Socialist Party is given at 21,277.¹

¹ N. Y. Volkszeitung, Jan. 10, 1904.

But in order to appreciate the full strength of the socialist movement we must cast a glance at the active propaganda carried on in the party press. The Socialist Labor Party publishes an English daily in New York, The People, and several weekly papers in foreign languages.²

² Hillquit, History of Socialism, p. 340.

The Socialist Party on the other hand is represented³ by four monthly magazines: The International Socialist Review, Chicago; Wilshire’s Magazine and The Comrade, New York; The Southern Socialist; and by some twenty-four English weeklies: The Worker, New York; Chicago Socialist, Chicago; The Social Democratic Herald, Milwaukee; Labor, St. Louis; Iowa Socialist, Dubuque; The Oklahoma Socialist, Guthrie; The Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kas.; The Coming Nation, Rich Hill, Mo.; The Idaho Socialist, Idaho Falls; The Utah Socialist, Salt Lake City; The New Times, Spokane, Wash.; The Socialist, Seattle, Wash.; The People’s Press, Albany, Ore.; The Advance, San Francisco; The California Socialist, San Francisco; The Los Angeles Socialist, Los Angeles; The People’s Paper, Santa Barbara, Cal.; The Alliance of the Rockies, Colorado; The Toiler, Terre Haute, Ind.; The Newport Socialist, Newport, Ky.; The Referendum, Minnesota; The Erie People, Erie, Pa.; The Ohio Socialist, and a few others.

³ Ibid., p. 345; N. Y. Volkszeitung, Jub. Ed., p. 32.

Of these The Appeal to Reason alone is reputed to have a circulation of more than 250,000 copies.

In the German language there are three dailies: New-Yorker Volkszeitung, Philadelphia Tageblatt, and Cincinnatier Arbeiter- Zeitung; seven weeklies: Vorwärts, New York; Wahrheit, Milwaukee; Arbeiterzeitung, St. Louis; Sheboygan Volksblatt, Sheboygan; San Francisco Tageblatt; Neues Leben, Chicago; Arbeiterzeitung, Buffalo.

There is also one weekly paper each in the following languages: French, L’Union des Travailleurs, Charleroi, Pa.; Polish, Robotnik, Chicago; Bohemian, Spravedlnost, Chicago; Italian, Lo Scalpellino, Barre, Vt.; Swedish, Arbetarn, New York; Hungarian, Nepszava, Cleveland, O.; and Jewish, Forward, New York.

Of trades-union journals which have decided socialistic leanings and more or less openly defend socialism we may mention one monthly, The Miner's Magazine, Denver; a number of weeklies, as, e.g., The Workers’ Gazette, Omaha, Neb.; The Union Picket, Dayton, O.; The Citizen, Cleveland, O.; and several others, especially those appearing in languages other than English.

In concluding this sketch we must revert once more to the connection between the Socialist Party and the trades-unions, and more especially the American Federation of Labor. True to its settled policy laid down in the resolution on trades-unionism quoted above, the Socialist Party has striven with might and main to obtain control of the great labor federations. And in fact, in June 1902, the Western Labor Union, with a total membership of about 150,000, the Western Federation of Miners, and the United Association of Hotel and Restaurant Employees, all assembled in convention at Denver, indorsed the Socialist Party in politics and adopted its platform. In November of the same year an attempt was made at the New Orleans convention of the American Federation of Labor to introduce a socialist resolution, which was rejected after a prolonged debate by a vote of 3744 to 3344.¹ The attempt was to be renewed at the Boston convention, Nov. 16-21, 1903. But the twenty-eight socialist resolutions submitted to the convention were defeated by a vote of 11,282 against 2185, and when in revenge a socialist candidate for president of the Federation was run against Gompers, who is far too conservative for socialist reformers, the result of the ballot was 12,254 votes for Gompers and only 1134 for “Comrade” Kreft.

¹ Hillquit, History of Socialism, pp. 343, 344.

From the foregoing account the observant reader will easily draw the conclusion that the Socialist Labor Party is becoming comparatively insignificant, whilst the Social Democratic or Socialist Party must be styled the true representative in the United States of International socialism. Whether its future development will keep pace with its increase during the last few years, whether it will persevere undaunted in its struggle for collectivist ownership, or whether it will gradually become a “revisionist” reform party, experience alone can show. This much is certain, that it deserves the most serious consideration on the part of both clergy and laity.

The preceding pages had been sent to the printer before the National Convention of the Socialist Party was held at Chicago, May 1-6 (1904). The transactions of that convention, especially the adoption of a new national platform, necessarily call for some additions to this chapter.

Contrary to the expectations of socialists themselves, the convention proved remarkably harmonious. It adopted a new constitution with a strong tendency towards centralization, together with a programme of municipal reforms, both of which, however, are still to be submitted to the referendum of the party members, and thus it were useless to enter upon them here.

What Hillquit terms the keynote in the activity of the former Socialist Labor Party, namely, the desire of “Americanizing” the collectivist movement in the United States, seems to have been realized at last. E. Untermann, one of the chief luminaries of the convention, with evident pleasure reports to the German weekly, Die Neue Zeit (No. 35, P- 275), that of the 183 delegates representing 36 states and territories 120 were native-born Americans. The introductory paragraph of the platform adopted by the convention represents socialism as the highest embodiment of American ideals, and Eugene V. Debs, the nominee for the presidency, in his speech of acceptance, emphatically declares: “The platform upon which we stand is the first American utterance upon the subject of international socialism. Hitherto we have repeated, we have reiterated, we have followed. For the first time in the history of the American movement we have realized the American expression of that movement. There is not a line, not a word in that platform which is not revolutionary, which is not clear, which does not state precisely and properly the position of the American movement.”

We shall not withhold from our readers this remarkable American utterance of the principles of international socialism. However, as Untermann remarks in the article quoted above, not too much importance is to be attached to the wording of the platform. Socialist theorists may find it unsatisfactory in more than one respect. To our mind the new platform is eminently a campaign document. It is bold and scathing in its condemnation of existing institutions, and gives in popular form the gist of the specious arguments which are most likely to make socialism acceptable to the unsophisticated. As an interesting specimen of socialist rhetoric it shall be reprinted here in full without further comment:

The Socialist Party, in convention assembled, makes its appeal to the American people as the defender and preserver of the idea of liberty and self-government, in which the nation was born; as the only political movement standing for the programme and principles by which the liberty of the individual may become a fact; as the only political organization that is democratic; and that has for its purpose the democratizing of the whole of society.

To this idea of liberty the Republican and Democratic parties are equally false. They alike struggle for power to maintain and profit by an industrial system which can be preserved only by the complete overthrow of such liberties as we already have, and by the still further enslavement and degradation of labor.

Our American institutions came into the world in the name of freedom. They have been seized upon by the capitalist class as the means of rooting out the idea of freedom from among the people. Our state and national legislatures have become the mere agencies of great propertied interests. These interests control the appointments and decisions of the judges of our courts. They have come into what is practically a private ownership of all the functions and forces of government. They are using these to betray and conquer foreign and weaker peoples, in order to establish new markets for the surplus goods which the people make, but are too poor to buy. They are gradually so invading and restricting the right of suffrage as to take away unawares the right of the worker to a vote or voice in public affairs. By enacting new and misinterpreting old laws, they are preparing to attack the liberty of the individual even to speak or think for himself, or for the common good.

By controlling all the sources of social revenue, the possessing class is able to silence what might be the voice of protest against the passing of liberty and the coming of tyranny. It completely controls the university and public school, the pulpit and the press, and the arts and literatures. By making these economically dependent upon itself, it has brought all the forms of public teaching into servile submission to its own interests.

Our political institutions are also being used as the destroyers of that individual property upon which all liberty and opportunity depend. ‘The promise of economic independence to each man was one of the faiths upon which our institutions were founded. But, under the guise of defending private property, capitalism is using our political institutions to make it impossible for the vast majority of human beings ever to become possessors of private property in the means of life.

Capitalism is the enemy and destroyer of essential private property. Its development is through the legalized confiscation of all that the labor of the working class produces, above its subsistence-wage. The private ownership of the means of employment grounds society in an economic slavery which renders intellectual and political tyranny inevitable.

Socialism comes so to organize industry and society that every individual shall be secure in that private property in the means of life upon which his liberty of being, thought, and action depend. It comes to rescue the people from the fast increasing and successful assault of capitalism upon the liberty of the individual.

As an American Socialist Party, we pledge our fidelity to the principles of international socialism, as embodied in the united thought and action of the socialists of all nations. In the industrial development already accomplished, the interests of the world’s workers are separated by no national boundaries. The condition of the most exploited and oppressed workers, in the most remote places of the earth, inevitably tends to drag down all the workers of the world to the same level. The tendency of the competitive wage system is to make labor’s lowest condition the measure or rule ot its universal condition. Industry and finance are no longer national but international, in both organization and results. The chief significance of national boundaries, and of the so-called patriotisms which the ruling class of each nation is seeking to revive, is the power which these give to capitalism to keep the workers of the world from uniting, and to throw them against each other in the struggles of contending capitalist interests for the control of the yet unexploited markets of the world, or the remaining sources of profit.

The socialist movement therefore is a world-movement. It knows of no conflicts of interest between the workers of one nation and the workers of another. It stands for the freedom of the workers of all nations; and, in so standing, it makes for the full freedom of all humanity.

The socialist movement owes its birth and growth to that economic development or world-process which is rapidly separating a working or producing class from a possessing or capitalist class. The class that produces nothing possesses labor’s fruits, and the opportunities and enjoyments these fruits afford, while the class that does the world’s real work has increasing economic uncertainty, and physical and intellectual misery, for its portion.

The fact that these two classes have not yet become fully conscious of their distinction from each other, the fact that the lines of division and interest may not yet be clearly drawn, does not change the fact of the class conflict.

This class struggle is due to the private ownership of the means of employment, or the tools of production. Wherever and whenever man owned his own land and tools, and by them produced only the things which he used, economic independence was possible. But production, or the making of goods, has long ceased to be individual. The labor of scores, or even thousands, enters into almost every article produced. Production is now social or collective. Practically everything is made or done by many men—sometimes separated by seas or continents—working together for the same end. But this co-operation in production is not for the direct use of the things made by the workers who make them, but for the profit of the owners of the tools and means of production; and to this is due the present division of society into two classes; and from it have sprung all the miseries, inharmonies, and contradictions of our civilization.

Between these two classes there can be no possible compromise or identity of interests, any more than there can be peace in the midst of war, or light in the midst of darkness. A society based upon this class division carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Such a society is founded in fundamental injustice. There can be no possible basis for social peace, for individual freedom, for mental and moral harmony, except in the conscious and complete triumph of the working class as the only class that has the right or power to be.

The socialist programme is not a theory imposed upon society for its acceptance or rejection. It is but the interpretation of what is, sooner or later, inevitable. Capitalism is already struggling to its destruction. It is no longer competent to organize or administer the work of the world, or even to preserve itself. The captains of industry are appalled at their own inability to control or direct the rapidly socializing forces of industry. The so-called trust is but a sign and form of the developing socialization of the world’s work. The universal increase of the uncertainty of employment, the universal capitalist determination to break down the unity of labor in the trades-unions, the widespread apprehensions of impending change, reveal that the institutions of capitalist society are passing under the power of inhering forces that will soon destroy them.

Into the midst of the strain and crisis of civilization, the socialist movement comes as the only conservative force. If the world is to be saved from chaos, from universal disorder and misery, it must be by the union of the workers of all nations in the socialist movement. The Socialist Party comes with the only proposition or programme for intelligently and deliberately organizing the nation for the common good of all its citizens. It is the first time that the mind of man has ever been directed toward the conscious organization of society.

Socialism means that all those things upon which the people in common depend shall by the people in common be owned and administered. It means that the tools of employment shall belong to their creators and users; that all production shall be for the direct use of the producers; that the making of goods for profit shall come to an end; that we shall all be workers together; and that all opportunities shall be open and equal to all men.

To the end that the workers may seize every possible advantage that may strengthen them to gain complete control of the powers of government, and thereby the sooner establish the co-operative commonwealth, the Socialist Party pledges itself to watch and work in both the economic and the political struggle for each successive immediate interest of the working class; for shortened days of labor and increases of wages; for the insurance of the workers against accident, sickness, and lack of employment; for pensions for aged and exhausted workers; for the public ownership of the means of transportation, communication and exchange; for the graduated taxation of incomes, inheritances, franchises and land values, the proceeds to be applied to the public employment and improvement of the conditions of the workers; for the complete education of children, and their freedom from the workshop; for the prevention of the use of the military against labor in the settlement of strikes; for the free administration of justice; for popular government, including initiative, referendum, proportional representation, equal suffrage for men and women and municipal home rule, and the recall of officers by their constituents; and for every gain or advantage for the workers that may be wrested from the capitalist system, and that may relieve the suffering and strengthen the hands of labor. We lay upon every man elected to any executive or legislative office the first duty of striving to procure whatever is for the workers’ most immediate interest, and for whatever will lessen the economic and political powers of the capitalist, and increase the like powers of the worker.

But in so doing, we are using these remedial measures as means to the one great end of the co-operative commonwealth. Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry, and thus come into their rightful inheritance.

To this end we pledge ourselves, as the party of the working class, to use all political power, as fast as it shall be entrusted to us by our fellow-workers, both for their immediate interests and for their ultimate and complete emancipation. To this end we appeal to all the workers of America, and to all who will lend their lives to the service of the workers in their struggle to gain their own, and to all who will nobly and disinterestedly give their days and energies unto the workers’ cause, to cast in their lot and faith with the Socialist Party. Our appeal for the trust and suffrages of our fellow-workers is at once an appeal for their common good and freedom, and for the freedom and blossoming of our common humanity. In pledging ourselves, and those we represent, to be faithful to the appeal which we make, we believe we are but preparing the soil of that economic freedom from which will spring the freedom of the whole man.

That the attitude of the Socialist Party in reference to the trades-unions remains unchanged is proved by the following resolution adopted after a prolonged discussion by a vote of 107 to 52:

The trades-union struggle requires the political activity of the working class. The workers must assist and permanently secure by their political power what they have wrung from their exploiters in the economic struggle. In accordance with the decisions of the. International Socialist Congresses in Brussels, Zurich, and London, this convention reaffirms the declarations that the trades and labor unions are a necessity in the struggle to aid in emancipating the working class, and we consider it the duty of all wage-workers to affiliate with this movement.

Political differences of opinion do not and should not justify the division of the forces of labor in the industrial movement. The interests of the working class make it imperative that the labor organizations equip their members for the great work of the abolition of wage slavery by educating them in socialist principles.

1. France—In Germany socialism radiated as it were from one common centre under the almost exclusive sovereignty of Marxism; in France, on the contrary, there were formed numerous socialist groups arising independently of each other. To this day many of them have not been affiliated to any comprehensive federation; others have been aggregated during the last few years into departmental or regional unions; still others have lately united to form the “Fédération des socialistes indépendants de France.” These latter number among their ranks several deserters from the radicalist bourgeoisie, e.g., Millerand, Jaurés, Viviani; but they lack a well-defined platform, the only unifying element being on the one hand a rather platonic affection for socialistic ideals and on the other their opposition to the extreme socialists.

There exist moreover three socialist organizations of some importance. In the first place the so-called “parti socialiste révolutionnaire’’ under the leadership of Vaillant and Sembat. (Being adherents of Blanqui they also go by the name of Blanquists.) They are firm believers in revolution and in forcibly taking possession of the political power instead of conquering it slowly by the ballot. The “parti ouvrier français” under the leadership of Jules Guesde is practically identical in spirit and principles with German social democracy, and is perhaps the best organized division of French socialists. Its partisans are frequently referred to as Marxists. Jules Guesde has outlined the platform of his party in the following statements:

1. Society at large takes possession of the means of production, factories and workshops become common property; capitalists disappear and involve in their own ruin the whole army of moneyed gentlemen, brokers, middlemen, intriguers, etc. 2. Competition and over-production will cease; no labor is wasted; statistics will indicate the exact amount of productions needful to the community. 3. At first the workingman will work three hours a day, the unlimited perfectibility of machinery will reduce the necessary working time to one hour daily (1). 4. Individual property will not be abolished, but limited to what is strictly personal. Those capitalists who quietly submit to their being dispossessed of the means of production shall be indemnified in money or labor-certificates, but in such a manner that the present system cannot possibly be perpetuated.”¹

¹ Cf. Antoine, Cours d’économie sociale, p. 204.

From the Marxists have branched off the so-called possibilists. They are moderate socialists endeavoring to attain their end in the regular course of legislation by introducing gradual reforms wherever they are at present possible; hence their name. The possibilists are split into two different organizations with diverging tendencies. They are the “Fédération des travailleurs socialistes de France,” under the leadership of Brousse, hence also called Broussists, and the “Parti ouvrier socialiste révolutionnaire,” or Allemanists. The latter in opposition to the former look upon parliamentary activity merely as an instrument of propagandism; they have no pretensions to gaining political power, but devote their energies to agitation in the field of economics.

At the elections in April, 1898, the different factions mentioned above polled at the first ballot:

Since the elections of May, 1898, there are in the Chamber 46 socialist deputies of various factions. They have entered upon a compact to form a parliamentary party with the following three principles as their base of union: “1. The fundamental principle of the socialist party is the attainment of political power by means of the organized proletariat. 2. We wish to prepare the transformation into social property of all the means of production, transportation, and credit, which capitalist feudalism has already snatched from the hands of the individual owners. 3. To the historical right which has created power and transfers power into other hands without modifying it—to this right we oppose the right of the nations based on fraternal peace among peoples freely shaping their own destinies. To capitalism with its international organization for controlling the world’s markets it is necessary to oppose the international harmony of workingmen.”

French socialism entered upon a new stage by the admission of Millerand into the ministerial cabinet of Waldeck-Rousseau. Both Blanquists and Guesdists remonstrated energetically against the step taken by Millerand and branded the participation in bourgeois government as incompatible with socialist principles. Millerand’s friends appealed to a general convention of French socialists. They met in Paris in December 1899. The right of sending delegates had been granted to all organizations existing prior to Jan. 1, 1899, and agreeing to the minimum programme drawn up by Millerand, namely, socialization of the means of production, conquest of the political power by means of the organized proletariat, and international harmony. In this convention the Blanquists and Guesdists with 818 votes against 634 Allemanists and Broussists decided that the occupancy of a seat in a bourgeois ministry is incompatible with socialist principles.

But to forefend a complete rupture a compromise resolution was adopted by 1140 against 245 votes. It was conceded that in extraordinary circumstances the entrance of a socialist into a bourgeois ministry might be taken into consideration, yet it should be the aim of the party to conquer only the elective public offices, “since they depend on the organized proletariat, which thereby lawfully and peacefully initiates the political expropriation of the capitalist classes to complete it by revolution.”¹

¹ Cf. Soziale Praxis, ix. p. 293.

Hereby the quarrel was not settled, but merely smoothed over. The convention unanimously resolved a uniform party organization to be known as the “Socialist Party of France.” A permanent executive board consisting of delegates from the different organizations is to nominate the party candidates for the elections, and the socialist press is to obey the resolutions of the party convention. It is easily perceived that this union is rather loosely cemented and does not do away with the opposition in fundamental principles. The socialist convention of Bordeaux, 1902, did not yet dare to expel Millerand from the party ranks.

The fifth international socialist convention of Paris, Sept. 1900, decided the institution of a permanent international committee and secretary, with the duty of collecting and arranging the decisions of former international conventions, of demanding accounts concerning the state of the political and economic movement in the several countries, and of drawing up a general report, of preparing the international conventions and their daily schedule, and finally of issuing manifestoes concerning the great questions of the day in as far as they affect the interests of the proletariat.¹

¹ Ibid., x. p. 6.

This international socialist bureau has been established at Brussels; the present secretary is Victor Serwy. Its first session took place Dec. 30, 1901, and according to its first report 22 countries are represented by delegates, namely, all European countries with the exception of Portugal, Roumania, and Turkey; besides there are Japan, the United States, the Argentine Republic, and Australia.

2. Austria.—Austrian social democracy is moulded after the pattern of German socialism. This is proved to evidence by its party platform adopted unanimously at the Vienna convention, Nov. 2-6, 1901. This platform is practically a counterpart of its German prototype. Its statement of principles and demands may find a place here.

The social democratic labor party of Austria strives to obtain for the people at large without distinction of nationality, race, or sex the liberation from the fetters of economic dependence, of political oppression, and of intellectual decadence. The cause of these intolerable conditions is to be sought not in single political institutions, but in that all-powerful fact which shapes and dominates the present state of society, the fact that the means of production are monopolized in the hands of a few proprietors. The possessors of labor capacity, the laboring classes, are thereby reduced to a most galling dependence on the owners of the means of production including the soil, namely, on the class of landowners and capitalists whose political and economic supremacy is embodied in the modern state.

Technical progress, the increasing concentration of production and property, the absorption of all economic power by capitalists and trusts, has the effect of despoiling a growing percentage of formerly independent tradesmen and farmers of their means of production, and of bringing them directly or indirectly in the bondage of the capitalists as wage-earners, employees, or debtors. The proletariat is increasing in numbers, and corresponding to this increase exploitation rises to a higher degree. Thereby the standard of living of the laboring classes contrasts more and more with the rapidly growing productive capacity of their labor and with the resultant accumulation of wealth.

But the more the ranks of the proletariat are swelled by the development of capitalism, the more also the former is forced and also enabled to take up the struggle against the latter. More and more the dislodgment of private production renders private property unnecessary and even harmful, whilst in the mean time the necessary intellectual and material prerequisites for new forms of co-operative production based on common ownership in the means of production are evolving. At the same time the proletariat becomes conscious of its duty to foster and to hasten this development. It recognizes the fact that the transfer of the means of production into common ownership by the people at large is the goal, whilst the conquest of political power is but a means in the struggle for the emancipation of the laboring classes. Only the proletariat, conscious of its existence as a class, and organized for the combat can be the promoter of this necessary development. To organize the proletariat, to inspire it with the consciousness of its condition and of its duty, to prepare it intellectually and physically for the struggle and to keep it thus prepared, this is the programme of the social democratic labor party of Austria. For the achievement of this purpose it will employ every means which is appropriate and in conformity with the people’s natural standard of right and wrong.

In every question of politics or economics the social democratic labor party of Austria will contend for the class interests of the proletariat and will strenuously oppose the palliating or glossing over of class differences, as well as the exploitation of laborers in favor of the bourgeois parties.

The social democratic labor party of Austria is international. It repudiates the privileges of nationality as well as those of birth and pedigree, of property and descent, and declares that the struggle against exploitation must be as international as exploitation itself. It condemns and combats every restriction of the liberty of speech and every kind of tutelage on the part of the state and the Church. It strives for legal protection of the working classes and struggles to obtain the greatest possible influence of the proletariat in all public affairs.

Proceeding from these principles the social democratic labor party of Austria demands for the present:

1. Universal, equal, direct suffrage by private ballot, in the empire, province, and commune, for all citizens over twenty years of age without distinction of sex. Elections proportional to the population. Elections to be held on a legal holiday. Triennial periods of legislatures. Compensation for representatives.

2. Direct legislation by the people through the right of initiative and referendum. Home-rule and administration by the people in the empire, province, and commune.

3. Abolition of laws restricting the freedom of speech; perfect liberty of the press by the repeal of the objective procedure¹ and of the restrictions on the peddling of printed matter. Abolition of all laws restricting the right of association and convention.

¹ A kind of press censorship by which a publication may be suppressed as dangerous without any specific indictment.

4. Abolition of all restrictions on the liberty of motion, especially of all vagrancy laws.

5. A law to be made and enforced providing for the severe punishment of officials meddling with the political rights of individuals or of societies.

6. Guaranteed independence of the judiciary. Gratuitous administration of justice and legal advice. Indemnification of those unjustly arrested or condemned. Election of the juries by universal and equal suffrage by private ballot. Subjection of all the citizens of the state to the ordinary laws and courts. Abolition of capital punishment.

7. Organization of the sanitary service by the state and the commune. Free medical attendance and medicines.

8. Religion to be declared a private concern. Separation of Church and state and the establishment of ecclesiastical and religious communities as private associations perfectly free to manage their own affairs. Obligatory civil marriage.

9. Obligatory, gratuitous, and secularized schools perfectly adapted to the needs and the development of the several nationalities. Means of instruction and board to be free for all pupils in the elementary schools and in the higher institutions for those pupils who are capable of further development.

10. All indirect taxes and imposts to be replaced by graded and progressive taxation on income, property, and inheritance.

11. Popular militia instead of standing armies. Education for universal military service. Arming of the entire people. Decisions regarding peace and war by the representatives of the people.

12. Abolition of all laws subordinating woman to man in public or private life.

13. Co-operative societies of workingmen to be freed of all the burdens and limitations which restrict their activity.

The platform then details the minimum demands in the matter of protection for laborers within the present order of society, namely, entire freedom of coalition, a maximum working day of eight hours, without restrictions or exceptions, an uninterrupted rest over Sunday of at least thirty-six hours, a thorough reform of workingmen’s insurance, etc.

From the wording of the platform it is apparent that the theory of the increasing, absolute pauperization of workingmen has been abandoned. Dr. V. Adler, the author of the new platform, openly acknowledges the failure of the pauperization theory. “Engels himself,” he remarks, “ writes in his published criticism on the Erfurt platform: ‘It is not correct to say that the misery of the proletariat is increasing. The growth of organization will perhaps restrain the growth of misery; one thing is certainly growing, the insecurity of the proletarians’ existence.’”¹ Another avowal of Adler is equally remarkable. “To the best of our power,” he says, “we oppose the politics of the middle classes and we oppose the bourgeoisie, and we ought to do so much more. Thereby we promote the conditions of development and the prerequisites of the new order of society.”²

¹ Cf. Transactions of the Vienna Convention of Nov. 2–6, 1901, p. 101.

² Ibid., p. 105.

Another prominent Austrian socialist, Pernerstorfer,³ rails at those who still ascribe to the theories of pauperization, of collapse and dictatorship, the significance which they had thirty years ago.

³ Ibid., p. 119.

Information concerning the present status of Austrian socialism is contained in the report of the general executive board. At the last elections for the Reichsrat the socialist party polled 799,462 votes. It is therefore numerically the strongest party in Austria, exclusive of Hungary; yet it numbers but ten representatives in the House.

In the matter of newspapers the whole party controls fortyeight political journals. Of these, eight are daily papers—three in German, two in Czech, two in Italian, and one in Polish—two “papers appear three times a week, five twice a week, twenty-six are weeklies, six are semi-monthlies, besides one monthly. There are, moreover, fifty socialist trades journals, twenty-six of which are in German, twenty in Czech, three in Polish, and one in Italian. There is furthermore the Arbeiterschutz, representing the sick-benefit associations, and three comic papers, two German and one Czech.

3. Belgium.—The strength of Belgian socialism, which is based entirely on Marxian principles, is apparent in the election returns. In the general elections for the legislature, May, 1898, the official reports registered 329,332 socialist votes; in 1900 they had gone up to 463,529, and in 1902 to 476,862 votes, so that they are at present represented by 34 deputies. However, it must be remembered that in Belgium the system of plural votes is in force, so that the number of voters cannot be ascertained exactly. The socialist party displays great activity. It controls a great number of political dailies and a still greater number of weeklies and trades journals.

4. England.—Up to the present time socialism has made scant progress in England, although a great number of German and French socialists enjoyed unlimited freedom of propagating their ideas. In 1895 Engels remarked: “I have finally come to the conviction that English workingmen entertain no thought of putting an end to capitalist production, their only endeavor being to make the most of their actual situation.” Bernstein, also well acquainted from personal observation with the conditions of British workingmen, is of the same opinion.¹ The English mind is too practical to take stock in utopian dreams. The powerful trades-unions contend for what is immediately attainable without pursuing nebulous phantoms. Hyndman, a prominent English socialist, is forced to acknowledge this fact. Socialism, he wrathfully declares, is in no better condition to-day than it was fifty years ago. English workingmen are moderate, gentle, long-suffering wage-slaves, who have no thought of actually injuring their employers or of touching the sacred rights of private property. This would mean revolution, and English workingmen are not revolutionaries.²

¹ Cf. Soziale Praxis, ix. p. 1288.

² Ibid., p. 1287.

The comparative insignificance of the socialist movement in England may be gathered from the fact that in the elections of 1900 but thirteen of the 670 members of Parliament were chosen as the representatives of labor, and even these were fusion candidates of the Liberals, Radicals, or Irish. But one member, Keir Hardie, owes his seat to the workingmen exclusively.

5. With regard to Switzerland we may repeat what we have written over twenty years ago.¹ Despite the hospitality accorded to foreign socialists, and despite the greatest freedom of expansion, indigenous socialism has never come to be of any importance. In 1879, the socialist ranks numbered up to 15,000; at present the whole party as such amounts at most to 6,000 members. The Grütliverein, an association closely allied to socialism, consisting exclusively of native Swiss, has a membership of 16,000. At the elections for the National Council, 1902, the socialists returned seven candidates. The total of socialistic votes is estimated at 63,000,² but many of them were polled by workingmen who are not socialists. The reasons for the slow development of Swiss socialism are enumerated by G. Adler as being “first, the obstacles in the way of propagandism owing to the want of industrial concentration; secondly, the steadiness of the country’s political and social development; finally, the sober and practical character of the nation, which shows great resemblance to the sound and healthy English type.”³

¹ Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, xxi. p. 67.

² Neue Zeit, 21st year, I. p. 250.

³ Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 2d ed., article Sozialdemokratie.

England and Switzerland afford, therefore, very instructive object lessons. They prove to evidence that wherever socialism is untrammelled by restrictions, and must needs take part in practical social reforms, its revolutionary edge is soon blunted.

6. Italy has long been the classic land of anarchists and conspirators. But it was only within the last few years that a strictly socialist party has been formed. The parliamentary elections show the following figures in the socialist ballot: 26,000 votes in 1892; 78,000 in 1895; 135,000 in 1897; and 170,000 in 1900. The fact, however, is to be taken into account that the election laws tend to debar the poorer classes from the polls.

For some time two diverging tendencies have been noticeable within the ranks of the Italian socialist party, and an open rupture seemed inevitable. The “revolutionaries” or semi-anarchists, with Ferri and Labriola at their head, rebelled against the general executive committee, lost as it was in the swamp of compromises with the bourgeois classes. The revolutionaries clamored for radical proceedings against the government and demanded above all that their deputies in parliament be subjected to the control of the party convention. The more moderate faction, the so-called reform party of Turati, Chiesa, and Bonomi, rejected these revolutionary demands, and insisted on participating energetically in social reform.

At the party convention of Imola, Sept. 1902, the quarrel was adjusted. A compromise resolution moved by Bonomi was carried by 456 against 279 votes. It was as follows:

The goal of socialism is the emancipation of humanity from the yoke of capitalist exploitation, an emancipation to be attained by means of collectivism. The road to this emancipation is the class struggle of the awakened proletariat against the economic and political organization of the class of monopolists and owners of production. Since all reforms intending the economic, political, and moral improvement of the proletariat contribute at the same time toward hastening the social revolution, the convention declares the existence of two different tendencies to be perfectly compatible. The convention decides that the policy of the party is reformatory because it is revolutionary, and revolutionary because it is reformatory—in other words that it is simply (semplicemente) socialistic.

Furthermore this resolution grants to the deputies in parliament the power of forming independent decisions, but requires them to keep in touch with the opinions and desires of the proletariat at large.¹

¹ Vorwärts, Sept. 10, 1902.

7. The “social democratic union” of Denmark celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary on Feb. 12, 1903. At the elections for the Folkething it obtained the following results:

At present, the party holds fifteen seats in the Folkething and nineteen in the town council of Kopenhagen. In the different parts of the country there are 200 organized sections, and 22 daily or weekly papers.² Danish social democracy is intimately connected and in touch with German Marxism.

² Ibid., 1903, No. 40.

8. In Sweden the socialist unions numbered in the beginning of 1900 about 40,000 members. In the Diet of Stockholm they are represented by but one deputy, since only the well-to-do have the right of suffrage. The trades-unions comprise up to 60,000 members. In 1899 they joined the social democratic party, which now controls three dailies with 20,500 subscribers.

In Norway the political unions of socialists have a total membership of 11,600. The trades organizations comprise 260 unions with a total of 20,730 members, many of whom, however, are not socialists.

9. In Spain organized laborers in great part still adhere to the anarchist principles of the Bakunin school. The social democratic party with a Marxian platform, founded at the close of the seventies by Iglesias and Mesa, developed very slowly. In Spain as well as in Germany there are two socialist organizations supplementing each other: one political, the other one trades-unionist. In March, 1902, the political organization consisted of 70 societies with a total of over 8,000 members. The trade organization, the so-called Union général de Trabajadores, was composed at the same period of 226 sections, numbering altogether 32,778 members. But by no means all of these union men are socialists. It is said that at the elections of 1898 about 20,000 socialist votes were cast.

Besides the Socialista, edited by Iglesias in Madrid, eight other papers are controlled by the party.

10. Holland.—At the general elections of 1901 the social democratic votes amounted to 38,279; in 1897 there had been 13,035. The socialist party is represented in the Chamber by seven deputies. The party platform is in strict accordance with that of German socialists.¹

¹ Cf. Neue Zeit, 20th year, vol. II. p. 16.

11. The Australian Socialist Union was formed in October 1890, chiefly at Sydney, New South Wales. Its official platform remarks, among other things: “The time of senseless production, of competition and private undertakings is past, the sources and means of production and distribution of wealth must be declared and treated as common property; i.e., land, mines, factories and machines, raw material, shipping, wharves and elevators, and all concurrent factors serving for the production and distribution of goods must become the property of the state.”¹

¹ Berliner Volksblatt, 1890, No. 301.