Socialism As It Is

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The same position taken by Kautsky in Germany is taken by Otto Bauer,
who seems destined to succeed Victor Adler (upon the latter's death or
retirement) as the most representative and influential spokesman of the
Austrian Party. Reviewing the political situation after the Vienna food
riots of 1911, Dr. Bauer writes:--

"The illusion that, once having won equal suffrage, we might
peacefully and gradually raise up the working class, proceeding
from one 'positive result' to another, has been completely
destroyed. In Austria, also, the road leads to the increase of
class oppositions, to the heaping up of wealth on the one side, and
of misery, revolt, and embitterment on the other, to the division
of society into two hostile camps, arming and preparing themselves
for war."[195]

Even though underlying economic forces should be found to be improving
Labor's condition at a snail's pace, instead of actually heaping up more
misery, no changes would be required in any of the other statements, or
in the conclusion of this paragraph, which, with this exception,
undoubtedly expresses the views of the overwhelming majority of
Socialists the world over.

"Democracy cannot do away with the class antagonisms of capitalist
society," says Kautsky, referring to the "State Socialist" reforms of
semidemocratic governments like those of Australia and Great Britain.
"Neither can we avoid the final outcome of these antagonisms--the
overthrow of present society. One thing it can do. It cannot abolish the
revolution, but it can avert many premature, hopeless revolutionary
attempts and render superfluous many revolutionary uprisings. It creates
clearness regarding the relative strength of the different parties and
classes."

The late Paul Lafargue stated the same principle at a recent congress of
the French Socialist Party, contending that, as long as capitalists
still control the national administration, representatives are sent by
the Socialists to the Chamber of Deputies, _not in the hope of
diminishing the power of the capitalist State to oppress, but to combat
this power, "to procure for the Party a new and more magnificent field
of battle_."

FOOTNOTES:

[178] Marx and Engels, the "Communist Manifesto."

[179] Anton Menger, "L'Etat Socialiste" (Paris, 1904), p. 359.

[180] August Bebel, "Woman, Past, Present, and Future" (San Francisco,
1897), p. 128.

[181] Frederick Engels, "Anti-Duhring" (3d ed., Stuttgart, 1894), p. 92.

[182] Frederick Engels, "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific," pp. 71-72.

[183] Karl Kautsky's "Erfurter Programm," p. 129.

[184] John Martin, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1908.

[185] Professor John Bates Clark, in the _Congregationalist and
Christian World_ (Boston), May 15, 1909.

[186] Otto Bauer, "Die Nationalitaeten-frage und die Sozial-demokratie,"
p. 487.

[187] _Social-Democratic Herald_, July 31, 1909.

[188] _Social-Democratic Herald_, Vol. XII, No. 5.

[189] Professor Werner Sombert, "Socialism and the Socialist Movement,"
p. 59.

[190] Jaures, "Studies in Socialism."

[191] Kautsky, "The Road to Power," p. 101.

[192] Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," p. 66.

[193] Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 66-67.

[194] Kautsky, _International Socialist Review_, 1910.

[195] _Die Neue Zeit_, Sept. 11, 1911.

CHAPTER VII

THE REVOLUTIONARY TREND

With the exception of a few years (1899 to 1903) the revolutionary and
anti-"reformist" (not anti-reform) position of the international
movement has become stronger every year. It is a relatively short time,
not more than twenty years, since the reformists first began to make
themselves heard in the Socialist movement, and their influence
increased until the German Congress at Dresden in 1903, the
International Congress of 1904 at Amsterdam, and the definite separation
of the Socialists of France from Millerand at this time and from Briand
shortly afterwards (Chapter II). Since then their influence has rapidly
receded.

The spirit of the international movement, on the whole, is more and more
that of the great German Socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht, who advised the
party to be "always on the offensive and never on the defensive,"[196]
or of La Salle when he declared, "True political power will have to be
fought for, and cannot be bought."[197]

The revolutionary policy of the leading Socialist parties has not become
less pronounced with their growth and maturity as opponents hoped it
would. On the contrary, all the most important Socialist assemblies of
the last ten years, from the International Congress at Paris in 1900,
have reiterated or strengthened the old position. The Congress of Paris
in 1900 adopted a resolution introduced by Kautsky which declared that
the "Social Democracy has taken to itself the task of organizing the
working people into an army ready for the social war, and it must,
therefore, above all else, make sure that the working classes become
conscious of their interests and of their power." The great task of the
Socialists at the present time is the preparation of the social war of
the future, and not any effort to improve the capitalists' society. The
working classes are to be made conscious of _their own strength_--which
will surely not be brought about by any reforms which, however much they
may benefit the workers, favor equally or to a still greater degree the
capitalistic and governing classes.

The resolution continued: "The proletariat in a modern democratic State
cannot obtain political power accidentally. It can do so only when the
long and difficult work of the political and economic organization of
the proletariat is at an end, when its physical and moral regeneration
have been accomplished, and when more and more seats have been won in
municipal and other _legislative_ bodies.... But where the government is
centralized, political power cannot be obtained step by step." (The
italics are mine.)[198]

According to the proposer and mover of this resolution and its
supporters, nearly all, if not all, modern governments are at the bottom
centralized in one form or another. So the resolution amounts to saying
that political power cannot be obtained step by step. The election of
Socialist minorities in the legislatures can only be used to urge
capitalism on its work of bringing up the physical condition and
industrial productivity of the masses, and not for the purpose of
organizing and educating them with the object of seizing the reins of
power, of overthrowing capitalism, and revolutionizing the present form
of government.

The resolution adopted at the following International Congress at
Amsterdam (in 1904) was necessitated by certain ambiguities in the
former one. Yet Kautsky's explanation of his own meaning makes it quite
clear that even the Paris resolution was revolutionary in its intent,
and the Amsterdam Congresses, moreover, readopted its main proposition
that "the Social Democracy could not accept any participation in
government in capitalist society."

At this latter congress Jaures's proposed reformist tactics were
definitely and finally rejected so that they have not even been
discussed at the later international gatherings. This was a critical
moment in the international movement; for it was about this time that
the tendency to opportunism was at its strongest, and this was the year
in which it was decided against Jaures that all Millerands of the
future, impatient to seize immediate power in the name of Socialism, no
matter how sincerely they might hope in this way to benefit the
movement, should be looked upon as traitors to the cause. The _terms
upon which such power was secured or held_ were considered necessarily
to be such as to compromise the principles of the movement. Socialists
in high government positions, it was pointed out, by the very fact of
their acceptance of such responsibilities, become servants of a
capitalistic administration--and of the economic regime it supports.

Jaures began his argument with the proposition that the difference
between Socialism and mere reform consisted in the fact that the former
alone worked for "a total realization of all reforms" and "the complete
transformation of capitalistic property into social property"--which is
merely the statement of Socialism as an ultimate ideal, now indorsed
even by many anti-Socialists. He next quoted Liebknecht to the effect
that there were only 200,000 individuals in Germany, and Guesde,
Jaures's chief Socialist opponent in France, to the effect that the
number was the same in the latter country, who, on account of their
economic interests, were directly and completely opposed to Socialism;
and this being the case, he held that the task of the body of working
people already organized by the Socialists against capitalism, was
gradually to draw all but this 200,000 into the Socialist ranks. He
concluded that it was the duty of the Socialists to "ward off reaction,
to obtain reforms and to develop labor legislation" by the help of this
larger mass, which, when added to their own numbers, constituted 97 or
98 per cent of the population.

It goes without saying, replied the revolutionaries, that all Socialists
will lend their assistance to any elements of the population who are
fighting against reaction and in favor of labor legislation and reform,
but it does not follow that they should consider this the chief part of
their work, nor that they should even feel it necessary to claim that
the Socialists were _leading_ the non-Socialists in these matters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bebel, however, said he would have voted for the bill if he had been
present, though he made it clear both at this and at the succeeding
congress that he had no intention of affording the least support to a
capitalistic administration (see below).

It appears that Bebel's position on this matter is really the more
radical. Ledebour and Singer seemed to feel that the further
democratization of the government depends on Socialist pressure. The
more revolutionary view is that capitalism in Germany, with the
irresponsible Kaiser, the unequal Reichstag election districts, the
anti-democratic suffrage law and constitution in Prussia, is
impregnable--but that the progressive capitalists may themselves force
the reactionaries to take certain steps toward democracy in order to
check absolutism, bureaucracy, church influence, agrarian legislation,
and certain excesses of militarism. (See the previous chapter.) The
position of the "radicals" was that capitalism was so profoundly
reactionary that even the shifting of the burdens of taxation for
military purposes to capitalist shoulders should not check it. Bebel's
view was more revolutionary. For even conceding to capitalism the
possibility of checking armaments and ending wars, and of establishing
semidemocratic governments on the French or English models, he finds the
remainder of the indictment against it quite sufficient to justify the
most revolutionary policy.

However, the main question was not really involved at this Congress. A
government might be supported on this tax question and the support be
withdrawn later when it came to a critical vote on the budget as a
whole, or on some other favorable occasion.

It was only at the Congress at Magdeburg, in 1910, that the latter
question was finally disposed of. The Magdeburg Congress not only
reaffirmed the revolutionary policy previously decided upon by the
German and International Congresses already mentioned, but it also
showed that the revolutionary majority, stronger and more determined
than ever, was ready and able to carry out its intention of forcing the
reformist minority to follow the revolutionary course. This congress,
besides more accurately defining the view of the revolutionary majority,
made clearer than ever the profound differences of opinion in the
Socialist camp. The subject under discussion was: Can a Socialist party
support a relatively progressive capitalist government by voting for the
budget when no fatal danger threatens the party's existence, such as
some _coup d'etat_? Seventeen of the twenty Socialist members of the
Legislature of Baden, without any such excuse, had supported a more or
less progressive government and kept it in power, the very action that
had been so often forbidden.

The importance of this act of revolt lay in the fact that the government
the Socialists had supported, however progressive it might be, was
frankly anti-Socialist. On several occasions the Prime Minister, Herr
von Bodman, has made declarations of the most hostile character, as, for
instance, that no employee of the government could be a Social-Democrat,
and that the local officials should make reports of the personnel of the
army recruits "so that those of Social-Democratic leanings could be
properly attended to." After one of these declarations, even the
Socialist members of the legislature who had previously planned to vote
for the government, were repelled, and decided that was impossible to
carry out their intentions. The Prime Minister thereupon made a
conciliatory speech for the purpose of once more obtaining this vote.
But even this speech was by no means free from the most marked hostility
to Socialism. "To portray the Social-Democracy as a mere disease is not
correct," said he; "it is to be cast aside in so far as it fights the
monarchy and the political order. But, on the other hand, it is a
tremendous movement for the uplift of the fourth estate, and therefore
it deserves recognition."

It will be seen that the Prime Minister withdrew nothing of his previous
accusations. But the Baden Social-Democrats finally decided that, if
they did not support him, some important reforms would be lost,
especially a proposed improvement of the suffrage for town and township
officials. This was not a very radical advance, for even the
_Frankfurter Zeitung_, a strongly anti-Socialist organ, wrote that "from
the standpoint of consistent Liberalism the bill left so many
aspirations and so many just demands unfulfilled that even the parties
of the left, not to speak of the Social-Democrats, would be justified in
declining to pass the measure."

Indeed the South German reformists do not really pretend that it is any
one particular reform that justifies laying aside or temporarily
subordinating the fight against capitalist government. At the Nuremburg
Congress in 1908 the ground given for an act of this kind was that if
Socialists did not vote for that budget particularly, a large number of
the officials and workingmen employed by the government would fail to
receive the raise of wages or salary that it offered. Herr Frank,
spokesman of the Baden Party, now defended the capitalist government of
Baden and the Socialist action in supporting it, on the general ground
that _advantages could thus be secured for the working classes_. Of
course, this brings up immediately the question: if moderate material
advantages are all the working people are striving for, why cannot some
other party which has more _power_ than the Socialists give still more
of these advantages? Indeed, the fact that all these reforms were
supported by capitalist parties and were allowed to pass by a frankly
capitalistic government (progressive, no doubt, but anti-Socialist),
gives this government and these parties a superior claim to the credit
of having brought the reforms about.