Socialism and the Social Movement in the 19th Century Part 3

and who drag after them throughout their lives, with pathetic patience, a burden of social prejudices received from their fathers."

Thus one of Latin race strives after a far-off object, and does not shrink from forceful means of reaching it. This heaven-storming temperament has been given to him by nature for his mission in history. Further, in order to understand the character of the social movement in France, think of the preponderance in this land of the capital city, Paris! If Paris is not exactly France, as is often a.s.serted, yet it is strong enough to dictate on occasion the laws of the people. Paris, this nerve ganglion! This rumbling volcano!

Further, I have always the impression that the French people stand even to-day under the influence, perhaps we may say the ban, of their "glorious" revolution. The influence of such an event--the most tremendous drama of history--cannot in one hundred years disappear from a people. So I think that this nervosity, if I may so express it, which clings to all public life in France, may be, in large part, a heritage from those terrible years of general overthrow, an inheritance that has been most carefully fostered in less glorious revolutions since then--ah, how many! And out of that time springs something else: an overmastering faith in force, in the availability of the political riot. The history of France has developed itself since the July days of 1789 rather from without to within, than from within to without; the change of regime has played a mighty role, has often worked decisively upon the progress of social life. It is not strange that always they rest their hope upon it, and seek to use further, as a means of development, the political revolution which has often wrought so mightily. This belief in revolution stands, however, in close connection, I think, with the specifically French, optimistic, ideal-socialistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, of which I have heretofore spoken. In France is the cla.s.sic ground of that belief in the _ordre naturel_, which can come over the world "as a thief in the night," because it is already here and needs only to be uncovered.

If, now, we would see all of the innumerable influences that work together in order to produce the peculiar type of French agitation, we must notice that in this land a strange growth of modern times has struck deep root--anarchism. For centuries past preparations had been made for its easy entrance. For what is anarchism fundamentally other than a new form of pure revolutionism in method, of middle-cla.s.s ideals as object? Are not Ravachol and Caserio the true sons of those conspirators who inspired the France of 1830 and 1840? Is there any more legitimate father of anarchy than Blanqui? Anarchy, we may say, is born of the marriage of the social philosophy of the eighteenth century with the revolutionism of the nineteenth; it is a b.l.o.o.d.y renaissance of social utopism.

Here mention must be made of a matter which I have carefully avoided thus far, because it is an hypothesis which I must lay before you with a question-mark. Has the fact that the land is divided among so many small owners had any effect upon the peculiar development of the modern anarchistic movement? I mean, there must be a connection between both these phenomena. Indeed, it is a question as to how far anarchism has ever obtained in the ma.s.ses. But, so far as I can see, wherever the anarchistic propaganda seems to spread it is always in agrarian districts; I recall the work of Bakunin in Italy and Spain, and, as well, the nestling of anarchism now again in France. And wherever the country people have been aroused to independent agitation, this movement has always shown at least a trace of anarchism. For examples, Italy and Spain and Ireland.

It is an interesting problem:--Is, and if so, why is, anarchy the theoretical expression of agrarian revolution? The investigation of this would lead away from my present purpose, which is to speak of the proletarian-socialistic agitation. But I would at least present it.

If you ask me, finally, what lasting effect the peculiarity of the French agitation has had upon the great international movement of the proletariat, I answer--perhaps the least of all the nations, since it bears unmistakable marks of unripeness. But I believe that it will be the model for all other races, because of the idealism, the _elan_, the energy, which distinguish it from the movements of other nations.

I wonder if the proletariat in Paris may not again be filled with an inspiration for some ideal, while we middle-cla.s.s citizens of other nations are in danger of decadence!

You all know what wonderful progress the proletarian movement has made in Germany. For as we look back to the inconsiderable beginnings about the year 1840--they were rather agitation by hand-workers than true proletarian disturbances--suddenly, in the year 1863, as if shot out of a pistol, appears an independent political working-men's party, not again to disappear, but to grow to mighty proportions.

Whence comes this strange apparition of such a social agitation in Germany? How can we explain the suddenness of its entrance, and especially the fundamental traits of its character--its legal-parliamentary tendency, and its self-reliance from the beginning even until now?

At first we may incline to the thought that the causes for the peculiarities of agitation in Germany should be sought in the personality of its founder, Ferdinand La.s.salle. Without doubt we owe much to the individuality of this extraordinary man. We know what kind of a fire it was that burnt consumingly within him--a demoniacal ambition, a t.i.tanic eagerness for fame. And as this ambition, after many years of scientific renown, finally led him into the sphere of politics, wherein all ambitious men who cannot be generals and artists in our time must necessarily go, it was only natural that the masterful La.s.salle should become leader, chief, prince. Where Bismarck stood, another could stand only in the shadow; but the opposition would not have La.s.salle--apparently about 1855-1865 he desired to ally himself with them, but they feared this man to whom they would not yield themselves. There remained only one thing, to become the leader of a new and distinct party, the working-men's party. This was La.s.salle's party in the strictest sense, his hammer, his sword, with which he would win for himself a position in political life.

But these personal elements must be aided by circ.u.mstances, the specific conditions of political and social life in Germany, in order to crown La.s.salle's efforts with success and to establish thoroughly the movement during the short year of his leaders.h.i.+p.

I will not here dwell much upon the German national characteristics.

Concerning the peculiarities of the English and the French types of the social movement this was necessary; but the German type owes little to racial character. We dwell rather upon the external, incidental circ.u.mstances in order to explain the peculiarities of the social movement in Germany; and it is not hard to trace the chain of causes.

In Germany a real revolutionary movement, like that in France, was not at this time possible--even if we a.s.sume that German character would thus incline. The opportunity came too late. Revolutionism in the French sense bears, as I have already said, the mark of unripeness. Revolutionism may influence a nation long, but it cannot be made the ruling motive of a social movement at so late a point of time as that at which the German agitation began because the stage of unripeness has pa.s.sed. Take for example Italy, whose people certainly by nature tend towards revolutionism; yet they must conform to the experiences of older lands even if the inner nature always urges to outbreak.

On the other hand, Germany, as its social agitation began, was yet so immature economically--like England at the end of the last century--that the subordination of economic to political agitation is easily understood.

But would it not have been perhaps more natural if the proletariat, when it desired to enter into a legal-parliamentary course of action, had sought alliance with the existing party of opposition--as has happened in other lands? We must lay stress on the fact that it was hindered in this through the incapacity of the middle-cla.s.s party of that time in radical politics; for this reason it could not at the time absorb the proletariat.

It is a part of the inheritance which German liberalism has received from the year 1848 that one of its chief characteristics is the fear of the red spectre--revolution. Indeed the proletariat has itself helped towards this by its behaviour. We all know how the middle-cla.s.s agitation of the year 1848 in Germany failed, and sought the protection of the Prussian bayonet from the "gens mal intentionnes"--the well-known undercurrent of democracy present in every civil revolution.

Civic pride and defiance fell at that moment, as always, when the spectre of social revolution appeared on the horizon--witness the law against the socialists. Thus was the bridge between the proletarian agitation and civic opposition even at that early time broken, soon to be entirely destroyed.

As in the strictly political sphere this fear and hesitation did not permit the liberal party to come to decided radicalism, which probably would have contented the proletariat for a long time, so in the economic sphere earlier German liberalism was characterised by what we to-day would call an incomprehensible doctrinairism, an inane obsession derived from the dreary Manchester school of thought. The exertions of Schulze-Delitzsch, who was indeed in his sphere a serviceable man, could not nearly make good the shortcomings of the liberal party in all questions of social politics. The liberal political economists of that time had no understanding of the demands and movements of the proletariat. Such pitiful writings on the so-called "working-man's question" as those by Prince-Smith are not produced by writers of reputation in other lands, so far as I know.

Possibly this or that great man _de l'Inst.i.tut_ has rivalled them.

The inability of the liberal party to draw the gus.h.i.+ng water of proletarian agitation to its own mill finds striking example in the answer which, in the year 1862, a deputation of working-men from Leipsic received from the leaders of the "National Union." The working men had applied for the privilege of taking part in political life.

They wanted some recognition for their leaders. And what was given as answer? That the working men were by birth already honorary members of the union!

And now Bismarck, in spite of the fact that the liberal party was refusing the franchise to the proletariat, forced upon the country in the year 1867 a universal, direct, and secret ballot, a bequest of La.s.salle's. We are tempted to a.s.sume diabolical revenge against the liberals as a motive for this. For the moulding of the social movement in Germany this had two consequences of fundamental importance. First, it weakened yet more the middle cla.s.s, which, now between the aristocracy and the proletariat, was sinking into an ever-increasing insignificance and, through fear of the growing working-men's party, lost more and more of its self-confidence. Hence a further estrangement between the liberal party and the proletarian movement ensued.

Secondly, this franchise that had fallen into the lap of the working man inclined the leaders of the proletariat to purely parliamentary agitation, and for a long time hindered them from a right understanding of the non-political aims of the proletariat.

We may look upon all this with sorrow or with joy--and everyone who sympathises with the fate of his people will feel in one way or the other; now we must accept it as a fact, the existence of which cannot be changed, even if for the future we alter the particular objects of political effort. But the purpose of science is only to explain how things have unfolded themselves; and only that is the idea which has ruled throughout this my work. Hut of course there are always people unable to separate science and politics.

One remark in conclusion! This La.s.salle movement, and with it also the German type of social agitation, bears the stamp not only of historic-national interest, as I have attempted to show to you, but also much of purely personal characteristics; as is proved by the mysticism, the cult of a person and the creation of a sect, to which the movement has deteriorated. Has it never occurred to you how remarkable it is that this movement, perhaps more than any other, has developed, in spite of its German and personal characteristics, into a world-wide and enduring "school," if I may so express it? Of this there can be no doubt.

One ground for this may be found in the personality of its creator, in the pa.s.sionate force of his oratory, in the power of his agitation.

Treitschke thinks that Germany has possessed three great agitators, List, Blum, and La.s.salle. Surely La.s.salle is the greatest leader of the proletariat thus far; the only agitator of real greatness which the proletariat has thus far had. For this reason his personality continues in force even until now.

"In Breslau a churchyard--a dead man in grave: There slumbers the one who to us the sword gave."

But here again we are not satisfied with the purely personal element; we must rather seek after the real grounds for the explanation of the fact.

To me it seems that the triumph of the German type in the international movement, as it was begun through La.s.salle, lies essentially in the circ.u.mstance that La.s.salle's agitation, and then the later German movement, is filled by the spirit of that man who was called to formulate the theories which should bring to a sharp point all the general objects of proletarian effort. You know that I mean Karl Marx.

The name of this man expresses all the centripetal force which the modern social movement contains. From him comes all that which tends to remove national peculiarities and to make an international movement. "Marxism" is the tendency to make the social movement international, to unify it. But of this we must not here speak; only of its peculiar features. The one great social movement runs first into separate streams of national effort; later these unite again.

There is throughout a tendency to return to unity. But the movement develops itself in national lines and is determined by contingencies which make history. The general law of these incidental circ.u.mstances I have tried to show to you to-day.

And now at last let us pa.s.s to the theorist of the social movement, Karl Marx.

CHAPTER V

KARL MARX

"?t?a ?? ?e?"

THUC., i., 22.

Karl Marx was born in Treves in the year 1818, the son of a Jewish lawyer, who was later baptised into the Christian faith. Intelligence and general culture were at home in the house of his parents. The favourite authors of the family were Rousseau and Shakespeare, the latter of whom was the favourite poet of Karl Marx throughout life. An element of cosmopolitanism was conspicuous in the household life of the Marx family. Their closest intercourse was with the family von Westphalen, the parents of the later Prussian minister--the half-Scottish, highly cultured Baron Edgar. To this man the young Karl owed his first introduction to literature, and later to his wife Jenny.

Karl studied philosophy and history in Bonn, purposing to become a Prussian professor. By the year 1842 he came to the point of formal admission as lecturer. But difficulties soon presented themselves; the young Marx, then allied with Bruno Bauer, was carried away by the reactionary tendency which at that time swept again over the Prussian universities, especially over heretical Bonn. As customarily happens in such cases of aborted career, the young Marx became a journalist.

Soon he emigrated, because in 1844 the Prussian police drove him out of the land; he fled to Paris, was thrown out again by Guizot on demand, we suppose, of Prussia; in 1845 he went to Brussels, returning to Germany during the year 1848; finally after the year 1849 he found rest in London from the pressure of the police. Here he lived until his death in the year 1883.

His personality, the characteristics of which were strikingly developed through the external circ.u.mstances of his life, was marked by extraordinary intellectual activity. He was a pitiless and positive critic in his very nature. He had an abnormally sharp vision for psychological and historical continuity, especially where these are based upon the less n.o.ble impulses of mankind. A word of Pierre Leroux's seems to me as if coined for Marx: "il etait ... fort penetrant sur le mauvais cote de la nature humaine." So it was by nature easy for him to believe in Hegel's teaching that "evil" has accomplished all the development of mankind. His conception of the world is expressed in Wallenstein's magnificent words:

"To the bad spirit belongs the earth, not to the good; the good things that the G.o.ds send to us from above are to be held only in communal possession. Their light gives us joy, yet makes no man rich; in their kingdom there is no private possession."

What qualified Karl Marx to reach the first rank among the social philosophers of the nineteenth century, and to obtain next to Hegel and Darwin the greatest influence upon modern ideas, was the fact that he united a knowledge of the highest form of the historic philosophy of his time--Hegel--with a knowledge of the highest form of social life--that of Western Europe, of France, and especially of England. It was because he knew how to concentrate, as by a lens, all the rays of light which had been shed by other thinkers, and because he was able through his cosmopolitan experience to withdraw attention from the incidental features of national development, and to concentrate it upon what is typical in modern social life.

Marx, in common with his friend Friedrich Engels, in a large number of monographs, the best known of which is _Capital_, has laid the ground-lines of an amazing system of social philosophy; but this is not the place for a study of its particular features. What interests us much more at this time is the Marxian theory of social agitation, because this is especially what has enabled him to influence decisively the progress of social development. In no single book of his is this theory comprehensively presented. Yet we find all the essential elements of it in the celebrated "Communistic Manifesto" of Marx and Engels in the year 1847, which was presented as a programme to the "League of the Righteous" in Brussels; they accepted it and thus changed themselves into a "League of Communists." The "Communistic Manifesto" contained the principles of a philosophy of history, upon which the programme of a party is based. Its leading thoughts are these:

All history is the story of a struggle between cla.s.ses; the history of the present is the story of the struggle between the middle cla.s.s and the proletariat. The making of cla.s.ses results from certain economic conditions of production and distribution, through which also social control is determined. "Immanent" forces (the expression does not occur in the "Communistic Manifesto," but becomes later a technical term) constantly revolutionise the conditions of production, and thus of all economic matters. In our time this organic change is accomplished with especial quickness, because the tremendous forces of production created by the middle cla.s.s grow too fast. Thus on the one side the conditions of existence under the present capitalistic economy quickly deteriorate; upon the other side the conditions of existence tend to a social organisation without cla.s.ses upon a basis of common production and communal owners.h.i.+p of the means of production (this formula, also, is not found in the "Communistic Manifesto," in which merely the abolition of private property is presented; but our phrase first occurs two years later, in the history of cla.s.s struggle in France). This deterioration appears in the crises in which society feels itself "suddenly thrown back into a condition of momentary barbarism," and in the emergence of pauperism in which it plainly appears now

"that the middle cla.s.s is unfit longer to remain the ruling cla.s.s of society and to enforce the life condition of itself as the ruling law; it is unfit to rule because it is incapable of securing subsistence to its slave within the terms of his slavery, because it is compelled to let him sink into a position in which it must support him instead of being supported by him."

But the conditions of the new social order (this thought also is merely suggested in the "Communistic Manifesto" and only later, especially by Engels, is it developed) are created by an enormous increase of the forces of production and by the "communisation of the processes of production" which goes hand in hand with this increase--that is, the interweaving and combination of the individual acts of production, and transition to co-operative methods, etc.

The most important consequence now for our question is this: the economic revolution finds its spontaneous expression in opposition and struggle of cla.s.ses, the "modern social movement"--that is, the movement of the proletariat is nothing but the organisation of those elements of society which are called to break the rule of the middle cla.s.s and "to conquer the new social forces of production." This they can accomplish only by "abolis.h.i.+ng their own private appropriation as it has thus far existed and with it the whole idea of private property"; that is, in place of private possession and private production to establish communism.

The "communists"--that is, the political party for which the "Communistic Manifesto" serves as a confession of faith--are only a part of the warring proletariat; they form that part which is conscious of the process of development. This party

"distinguishes itself from the other proletarian elements only in that on the one side it emphasises and enforces in the different national campaigns of the proletariat the interests of the proletariat as a whole, and on the other hand in that in the different stages of development through which the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie pa.s.ses, invariably it represents the interests of the general proletarian movement."

"The theories of the communists rest in no way upon ideas or principles which have been discovered by this or that reformer.