V. T HE G ERMAN P ARTY A ND R EVISIONISM ; T HE A USTRIAN S OCIALISTS

But why was it that the English methods and tactics did not prevail in Germany? Why that Marxist success which accentuated antagonisms and split the nation into two hostile camps? This would be easy to understand if there had been no extra-socialist groups to work for social reconstruction or if the ruling stratum had turned a deaf ear to their proposals. It becomes a riddle as soon as we realize that German public authority was not less but more alive to the social exigencies of the time than was English political society and that the work of the Fabians was being done not less but more effectively by a very similar group.

Germany did not lag behind but, until the passing of the security legislation primarily associated with the name of Lloyd George, led in matters of “social policy.” Also, it was the government’s initiative that placed those measures for social betterment on the statute book, and not pressure from below asserting itself by exasperating struggles. Bismarck initiated social insurance legislation. The men who developed it and added other lines of social improvement were conservative civil servants (von Berlepsch, Count Posadowsky) carrying out the directions of William II. The institutions created were truly admirable achievements and they were so considered all over the world. Simultaneously, trade-union activity was unfettered and a significant change occurred in the attitude of public authority toward strikes. The monarchist garb in which all this appeared no doubt constitutes a difference as against the English procedure. But this difference made for more and not less success. The monarchy, after having for a time given in to economic liberalism (“Manchesterism” as its critics called it), simply returned to its old traditions by doing—mutatis mutandis—for the workmen what it had previously done for the peasants. The civil service, much more developed and much more powerful than in England, provided excellent administrative machinery as well as the ideas and the drafting skill for legislation. And this civil service was at least as amenable to proposals of social reform as was the English one. Largely consisting of impecunious Junkers—many of whom had no other means of subsistence than their truly Spartan salaries—entirely devoted to its duty, well educated and informed, highly critical of the capitalist bourgeoisie, it took to the task as a fish takes to water. Ideas and proposals normally came to the bureaucracy from its teachers at the universities, the “socialists of the chair.” Whatever we may think of the scientific achievements of the professors who organized themselves into A Historical Sketch of Socialist Parties342 the Verein für Sozialpolitik19 and whose work often lacked scientific refinement, they were aglow with a genuine ardor for social reform and entirely successful in spreading it. They resolutely faced bourgeois displeasure not only in framing individual measures of practical reform but also in propagating the spirit of reform. Like the Fabians, they were primarily interested in the work at hand and they deprecated class war and revolution. But, also like the Fabians, they knew where they were going—they knew and did not mind that socialism loomed at the end of their way. Of course, the state socialism they envisaged was national and conservative. But it was neither a fake nor utopian. The world at large never understood this social pattern and the nature of the constitutional monarchy it produced. At any rate, it has forgotten whatever it may have once known. But as soon as we get a glimpse of the truth, we find it still more difficult to understand how in that unplutocratic environment it was possible for the greatest of all socialist parties to grow up on a purely Marxist program and on a Marxist phraseology of unsurpassed virulence, pretending to fight ruthless exploitation and a state that was the slave of slave drivers. Surely this cannot be explained by the “logic of the objective social situation.” Well, I suppose we must recognize once more that in the short run—and forty years is short run in such matters—methods and mistakes, individual and group-wise manque de savoir faire, may count for much more than that logic. Everything else I could point to is obviously inadequate. There was, of course, the struggle for the extension of the franchise in the legislatures of the individual states. But much of what was most important to the industrial masses was within the competence of the imperial parliament (Reichstag) and for it Bismarck had introduced universal manhood suffrage from the first. More important was protection for agriculture—dear bread. No doubt this did much to poison the atmosphere, especially because its principal beneficiaries were the big and medium-sized estates in eastern Prussia and not the peasants. However, as to the real pressure exerted by it, the fact is conclusive that around 1900 emigration practically ceased. No— explanation cannot lie on that route. But that manque de savoir faire plus German manners! We may make things clearer by the obvious analogy with Germany’s behavior in matters of international relations. Before 1914, Germany’s colonial and other foreign 19 I really wish I could induce the reader to peruse the short history of that unique organization that was so characteristic of what imperial Germany really was, though it has not been and probably never will be translated. Its author was for decades secretary of the Verein, and his story is only the more impressive for being so unpretentious. (Franz Boese, Geschichte des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, Berlin, 1939.) From 1875 to 1914 343 ambitions were—so it seems right to say at this distance of time—distinctly modest, especially if we compare them with the neat and effective moves by which England and France at that time increased their empires. Nothing that Germany actually did or indicated any intention of doing will bear comparison with, say, Tel-El-Kebir or with the Boer War or with the conquest of Tunisia or of French Indo-China. All the less modest and all the more aggressive, however, was the talking that Germans indulged in, and unbearably offensive was the swashbuckling manner in which even reasonable claims were presented. Worse than this, no line was ever adhered to; headlong forward rushes in ever-changing directions alternated with blustering retreats, undignified propitiations with uncalled-for rebuffs, until all the factors that make the world’s opinion were thoroughly disgusted as well as disquieted. 20 Things were no different in domestic affairs. The fatal mistake was really Bismarck’s. It consisted in the attempt, explicable only on the hypothesis that he completely misconceived the nature of the problem, at suppressing socialist activities by coercion culminating in a special enactment (Sozialistengesetz) which he carried in 1878 and which remained in force until 1890 (when William II insisted on its repeal), that is to say, long enough to educate the party and to subject it for the rest of the prewar period to the leadership of men who had known prison and exile and had acquired much of the prisoner’s and exile’s mentality. Through an unfortunate combination of circumstances, it so happened that this vitiated the whole course of subsequent events. For the one thing those exile-shaped men could not stand was militarism and the ideology of military glory. And the one thing which the monarchy—otherwise in sympathy with a large part of what reasonable socialists considered as immediately practical aims— could not stand was sneers at the army and at the glories of 1870. More than anything else, this was for both what defined the enemy as distinguished from the mere opponent. Add Marxian phraseology—however obviously academic—at the party conventions on the one hand and the aforesaid blustering on the other, and you have the picture. No amount of fruitful social legislation and no amount of law-abiding behavior availed against that reciprocal non possumus, that cardboard barrier across which the two hosts 20 I want to make it quite clear that the above is not intended to attribute this policy, either wholly or primarily, to William II. He was no insignificant ruler. Moreover, he was fully entitled to the comment made upon him by Prince Bülow in the most unusual defense ever made for a monarch in a parliament: “Say what you will, he is no philistine.” If he quarreled with the one man who could have taught him the technique of his craft, critics of his behavior to Bismarck should not forget that the quarrel was mainly about the persecution of socialists which the emperor wished to discontinue and about the inauguration of a great program of social legislation. If one disregards talk and simply tries to reconstruct intentions by following the emperor’s acts from year to year, one cannot help arriving at the conclusion that he was often right in his views about the great questions of his time. A Historical Sketch of Socialist Parties344 reviled each other, made the most terrible faces at each other, devoured each other in principle—all without really meaning any serious harm. From this state of things a situation developed that no doubt had its dangers—great power without responsibility is always dangerous—but was not anything like as uncomfortable as it might seem. The federal and state governments—or the old civil servants promoted to cabinet rank who formed those governments—cared primarily for honest and efficient administration, for beneficial and on the whole progressive legislation, and for the army and navy estimates. None of these objects was seriously jeopardized by the adverse votes of the socialists, the passing of the army and navy estimates in particular being assured most of the time by the support of a large majority of the population. The Social Democratic party in turn, well organized and brilliantly led by August Bebel, was absorbed in consolidating and expanding its vote which in fact increased by leaps and bounds. This was not seriously interfered with by the governments, the bureaucracy scrupulously observing the letter of the law which gave all the freedom of action really necessary for partisan activity. 21 And both the managing bureaucracy and the party had reason to be grateful to each other, especially during Bülow’s tenure of power, for providing outlets for oratorical excess capacity of which both of them stood in need. Thus the party not only developed satisfactorily but also settled down. A party bureaucracy, a party press, a staff of elder statesmen developed, all adequately financed, as a rule secure in their positions and, on the whole, highly respectable in every—and also in the bourgeois—sense of the word. A nucleus of working-class members grew up for whom membership was no longer a question of choice but a matter of course. More and more people were “born into the party” and educated to unquestioning acceptance of its leadership and catechism which then, for some of them, meant as much and no more than religious catechisms mean to the average man or woman of today. All this was greatly facilitated by the inability of the non-socialist parties to compete effectively for the labor vote. There was an exception to this. The Centrist (Catholic) party, on the one hand, commanded all the talent required because it had the support of a priesthood of quite exceptionally high quality and, on the other hand, was prepared to make a bid for the labor vote by going as far in the direction of social reform as it felt itself able to do without 21 Administrative vexations were doubtless not absent, and socialists of course made the most of everything that could by any stretch be styled as vexatious. But this sort of thing did not go to great lengths as in fact the history of socialist activity from 1890 to the First World War in itself suffices to prove. Moreover, vexations of this kind are really in the nature of a service to the “persecuted” From 1875 to 1914 345 affronting its right wing, and by taking its stand on the doctrines of the encyclicals Immortale Dei (1885) and Rerum Novarum (1891). 22 But all the other parties, though for different reasons and in different degrees, stood on a footing of mutual distrust, if not of hostility, with the industrial proletariat and never so much as attempted to sell themselves to any significant number of labor voters. These, unless they were active Catholics, accordingly had hardly any party to turn to other than the Social Democratic party. Unbelievable as such ineptitude seems in the light of English and American experience, it is yet a fact that the socialist army was allowed, amid all the clamor about the horrible dangers threatening from it, to march into politically unguarded territory. We are now in a position to understand what, on the face of it, seems so incomprehensible, viz., why German socialists so tenaciously clung to the Marxian creed. For a powerful party that could afford a distinctive creed yet was completely excluded not only from political responsibility but from any immediate prospect of it, it was natural to conserve the purity of the Marxian faith once it had been embraced. That purely negative attitude toward non-socialist reform and all the doings of the bourgeois state—which as we have seen above was the tactical principle Marx recommended for all save exceptional cases—was really thrust upon it. The leaders were not irresponsible nor were they desperadoes. But they realized that in the given situation there was not much for the party to do except to criticize and to keep the banner flying. Any sacrifice of revolutionary principle would have been perfectly gratuitous. It would have only disorganized their following without giving to the proletariat much more than it got in any case, not on the initiative of the other parties but on that of the monarchist bureaucracy. Such small additional successes as might have been attained hardly warranted the party risk. Thus, serious, patriotic and law-abiding men continued to repeat the irresponsible slogans of revolution and treason—the sanguinary implications of which came so strangely from many a pacific and bespectacled countenance—blissfully conscious of the fact that there was little likelihood of their having to act upon them. Before long however the suspicion began to dawn upon a few of them that some day or other the revolutionary talk might meet the most deadly 22 Let us note in passing an interesting (almost American) phenomenon: here we have a political party that comprised within itself almost all shades of opinion on economic and social questions that it is possible to have, from the starkest conservatism to radical socialism, and yet was a most powerful political engine. Men of the most different types, origins and desires, extreme democrats and extreme authoritarians, cooperated with a smoothness that might have roused the envy of the Marxists, solely on the strength of their allegiance to the Catholic Church. A Historical Sketch of Socialist Parties346 weapon of political controversy—smiles. Perhaps it was an apprehension of this kind or simply the perception of the almost ludicrous discrepancy between Marxian phraseology and the social reality of those times that eventually prompted no less a personage than old Engels to pronounce ex cathedra—that is to say, in a preface he wrote to a new edition of Marx’s Class Struggles in France23 —that street fighting presented certain inconveniences after all and that the faithful need not necessarily feel committed to it (1895). This timely and modest adjustment roused the wrath of a small minority of thoroughgoing hotspurs, Mrs. Rosa Luxemburg in particular surpassing herself in fiery denunciations of the old man. But it was acquiesced in by the party—possibly with a sigh of relief—and further cautious steps in the same direction might perhaps have been tactfully made. When however Eduard Bernstein coolly proceeded to “revise” the whole structure of the party creed, there was a major row. After what I have said about the situation this should not be surprising. Even the most worldly party is aware of the dangers involved in altering any of its more important planks. In the case of a party whose program and whose very existence were based on a creed every detail of which had been worked out with theological fervor, root-and-branch reform was bound to mean a terrific shock. That creed was the object of quasi-religious reverence. It had been upheld for a quarter of a century. Under its flag the party had marched to success. It was all the party had to show. And now the beloved revolution—that was to them what the Second Coming of the Lord was to the early Christians—was to be unceremoniously called off. No class war any more. No thrilling war cries. Cooperation with bourgeois parties instead. All this from a member of the old guard, a former exile, and, as it happened, one of the most lovable members of the party! But Bernstein 24 went further still. He laid sacrilegious hands on the hallowed foundations of the doctrine. He attacked the Hegelian background. The labor theory of value and the exploitation theory came in for stricture. He doubted the inevitability of socialism and reduced it to tame “desirability.” He looked askance at the economic interpretation of history. Crises would not kill the capitalist, dragon; on the contrary, with time capitalism would gain in stability. Growing misery was nonsense of course. Bourgeois liberalism had produced lasting values which it was worth while 23 It has been shown by Ryazanov that the editor of this book took liberties with Engels’ text. But the above argument is not affected by even the highest possible estimate of the ravages of his pencil. See Ryazanov, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (translated by Kunitz, 1927). 24 The two books of his that are most relevant for our purpose are Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (1899), translation by E.C.Harvey, 1909, and Zur Ceschichte und Theorie des Sozialismus (1901). From 1875 to 1914 347 trying to conserve. He even said that the proletariat was not everything. Think of that! This of course was more than the party could stand. It would have been unbearable even if Bernstein had been incontestably right on every point, for creeds embodied in an organization cannot be reformed by means of holocausts. But he was not. He was an excellent man but he was not Marx’s intellectual peer. We have seen in Part I that he went too far in the matter of the economic interpretation of history which he can hardly have fully understood. He also went too far in his assertion that developments in the agrarian sector refute Marx’s theory of the concentration of economic control. And there were other points inviting effective reply so that the champion of orthodoxy, Karl Kautsky, 25 found it not too difficult to hold his ground—or some of it. Nor is it so clear that it would have been to the advantage of the party had Bernstein’s tactical recommendations prevailed. A wing would certainly have broken away. The prestige of the party would have suffered greatly. And, as has been stated before, no immediate gain would have accrued. There was hence a lot to be said for the “conservative” view. Under the circumstances, the course which Bebel took was neither so obviously unwise nor so obviously tyrannical as fellow travelers and other critics made out at the time. He denounced Revisionism vigorously, so vigorously as to keep his hold on his leftists. He had it anathematized at the conventions in Hanover (1899) and Dresden (1903). But he saw to it that the resolutions reaffirming class war and other articles of faith were so framed as to make it possible for “revisionists” to submit. They did, and no further measures were taken against them though there was, I believe, some cracking of the whip. Bernstein himself was allowed to enter the Reichstag with the support of the party. Von Vollmar remained in the fold. Trade-union leaders shrugged their shoulders and murmured about the chewing of doctrinal cud. They had been revisionists all along. But so long as the party did not interfere in their immediate concerns and so long as it did not call upon them to do anything they really disliked, they did not much care. They extended protection to some revisionists and also to some of their literary organs. They made it quite clear that, whatever the party’s philosophy, business was business. But that was all. The intellectual revisionists for whom doctrine was not a matter of 25 From that time on, Kautsky, the founder and editor of the Neue Zeit and author of several treatises on Marxist theory, held a position that can be described only in ecclesiastical terms, upholding the “revolutionary” doctrine against revisionism as he was later on to uphold orthodoxy against the bolshevik heretics. He was the most professorial of men and much less lovable than Bernstein. On the whole, however, both sections of the party must be congratulated on the moral as as on the intellectual level of their champions. A Historical Sketch of Socialist Parties348 indifference, and the non-socialist sympathizers some of whom would have liked to join a socialist party that did not stress class war and revolution, thought differently of course. It was they who talked about a party crisis and shook their heads about the future of the party. They had every reason to do so. For their future in and around the party was indeed jeopardized. In fact Bebel, himself no intellectual and no friend to parlor pinks, lost no time in warning them off the premises. The rank and file of the party however were but little disturbed about all this. They followed their leaders and repeated their slogans until, without any compunction about what Marx or, for that matter, Bebel would have said, they rushed to arms in order to defend their country. Some interesting light is shed on the development we have just been surveying by the parallel yet different development in Austria.26 As we should expect from the much slower pace of capitalist development, it took twenty years longer to become a political factor of importance. Rising slowly from small and not very creditable beginnings, it eventually established itself in 1888 (convention of Hainfeld) under Victor Adler, who had succeeded in the almost desperate task of welding together the socialists of all the nations who inhabited that country and who was to lead them, with consummate ability, for another thirty years. Now this party was also officially Marxist. The little circle of brilliant Jews that formed its intellectual nucleus, 27 the Neo-Marxists, even contributed substantially to the development of Marxian doctrine as we have seen in Part I—going on along orthodox lines, altering them no doubt in the process but fighting, bitterly and ably, anyone else who tried to do so, and always keeping to the revolutionary ideology in its most uncompromising form. The relations with the German party were close and cordial. At the same time, everyone knew that Adler would stand no nonsense. Having, for cultural and racial reasons, much more authority over his intellectual extremists than Bebel ever had over his, he was able to allow them all the Marxism they wanted in their cafés and to use them whenever he saw fit without letting them interfere with what really mattered to him, the organization and the party press, universal suffrage, progressive legislation and, yes, the proper working of the state. This combination of Marxist 26 By Austria I here mean the western half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy which since 1866 had a parliament and a government (lacking however the departments of foreign affairs and of war) of its own that were coordinated on a footing of equality with the parliament and government of the eastern half—Hungary or, to use official language, “the countries of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen.” The Hungarian Social Democratic party took its pattern from the Austrian, but never attained quantitative significance. 27 Trotsky, as yet under the name of Bronstein, occasionally showed up among them and seems to have experienced their influence. From 1875 to 1914 349 doctrine and reformist practice answered admirably. The Austrian governments soon discovered that here was a factor, no less important than the church or the army, that from its own interest was bound to support the central authority in its perennial struggle with filibustering nationalist oppositions, particularly the German and the Czech. These governments— mostly civil servants’ cabinets as in Germany although attempts were made incessantly by the crown to insert politicians, at least as ministers without portfolio—thereupon proceeded to extend favors to the party, which reciprocated in full. 28 And when a government (a civil servants’ cabinet headed by Baron Gautsch) took up the cause of universal suffrage, Adler, without encountering any opposition among his followers, was able to declare publicly that, for the time being, the socialists were a “governmental party” (Regierungspartei), although cabinet office was neither offered nor would have been acceptable to them. 29 VI. T HE S ECOND I NTERNATIONAL The internationalist plank in the program of the Marxist parties called for an international organization like the defunct First International. The other socialist and laborite groups were not internationalist in the sense of the Marxian creed. But, partly from the inheritance of bourgeois radicalism and partly from aversion to the upper-class governments of their respective nations, they had all of them acquired, though in varying degrees, internationalist and pacifist views and sympathies so that international cooperation occurred readily to them. The foundation of the Second International (1889) thus embodied a compromise that really attempted to reconcile the irreconcilable but worked until 1914. A few remarks will suffice on this subject. There was the international bureau. And there were the congresses with their full-dress debates on questions of tactics and of principle. Measured by tangible achievements, the importance of the Second International might well be equated to zero. And at zero it has indeed been evaluated both by revolutionary activists and by laborites. As a matter of fact, however, it was not meant for immediate action of any sort; action, whether revolutionary 28 A device which the socialists repeatedly used in order to help the government was this. When nationalist filibusters paralyzed parliament and all business was at a standstill, they would move “urgency” for the budget. The urgency motion when duly passed practically meant that the measure thus declared urgent went through if there was a majority for it (which was always available in the case of the budget) irrespective of those formal rules of parliamentary procedure which the filibuster made it impossible to observe. 29 The chief difficulty was, I suppose, in the strong stand that the German party had taken in the matter. Scruples of the Austrian socialists themselves were second in importance. Aversion of the Austrian bureaucracy or of the old Emperor, if any, was a bad third among the factors which prevented that consummation. A Historical Sketch of Socialist Parties350 or reformist, could at that time have been only national. It was to organize contacts between the affiliated parties and groups, to standardize views, to coordinate lines of advance, to restrain the irresponsible, and to urge on the laggard, to create, as far as possible, an international socialist opinion. All of this was, from the socialist standpoint, extremely desirable and important though in the nature of things positive results would have taken many decades to mature. Accordingly, the chief and the members of the bureau were anything but a directing board of international socialism. There was no policy for them to shape and no program to impose such as there had been in the case of the First International. The national parties and labor groups were left perfectly autonomous and free to join other international organizations that might suit their particular aims. Trade unions—also cooperatives and educational bodies—were welcomed and even courted but they did not play the leading role. The national parties were nevertheless kept on a common ground that was sufficiently broad for Stauning and Branting on the one hand and Lenin and Guesde on the other to move on. Some of the members of that international institute no doubt sneered at the chicken-hearted reserve of others and the latter objected to the hotheaded radicalism of the former. And sometimes things came perilously near a showdown. On the whole however they all took a course in socialist diplomacy at the hands of one another. Since this modus vivendi—with plenty of freedom for agreeing to differ—was the only possible one, this was in itself a great achievement.

Strange as it may sound, it was the Germans who were—with Russian and Guesdist support—primarily responsible for it. They were the one great Marxist party and they gave the common ground a coating of Marxism. But they realized quite clearly that the majority of the men who represented the socialist forces outside of Germany were not Marxists. For most of these men it was a case of signing the thirty-nine articles while reserving an unlimited freedom of interpretation. Naturally enough, the more ardent believers were shocked at this and talked about the faith being degraded to a matter of form that had no substance in it. The German leaders however put up with it. They even tolerated straight heresy which they would have attacked furiously at home. Bebel knew how far he could go and that his forbearance, immediately met as it was by English forbearance, would pay in the end as, without the war, it assuredly would have done. Thus he maneuvered to cement the proletarian front with a view to vitalizing it in time, and in doing so he showed an ability that, if Germany’s diplomacy had had it, might have prevented the First World War.

Some results did mature. The somewhat indefinite discussions of the first decade or so were eventually focused on foreign policy and something like a common view began eventually to emerge. It was a race against time. This race was lost. Every journalist who now refers to that epoch feels entitled to condemn the International for what he styles the failure of international socialism at the outbreak of the catastrophe. But this is a most superficial view to take. The extraordinary congress at Basle (1912) and its appeal to the workers of all nations to exert themselves for peace was surely all that it was possible to do under those circumstances. A call for a general strike issued to an international proletariat that exists nowhere except in the imagination of a few intellectuals would not have been more effective, it would have been less so. To achieve the possible is not failure but success, however inadequate the success may prove in the end. If failure there was, it occurred at the domestic fronts of the individual national parties.