THE REVISION OF GERMAN SOCIALISM. F OREIGN observers of English affairs
follow with curiosity the design of British Socialists to create a Parliamentary Party in order to rescue the working-class in- terest from the opportunist velleitios of the present Labour Party. That such plans should be harboured confirms an old German prejudice that England is always half a century behind the Continent. Just now Continental Socialism is on the defensive : it is threatened in Germany as much by moderating Revisionism as it is in France by extremist Syndicalism. A. crisis has been caused in German Socialism partly through the impeachment by Socialist thinkers themselves of the fundamental Marxian doctrines and partly through the proved fruitlessness of social democracy for practical political ends. German par- liamentary experience gives no support to the faith, expressed at Manchester on May 26th by Mr. H. M. Hyndman, that " twenty resolute Socialists in that as- sembly (the House of Commons) could have upset the whole of the proceedings." The outcome of the Reichstag debate on the Emperor's words about Alsace-Lorraine rather indicates that Socialist " resolution," that is, Socialist tactical intransigence, is the factor most fatal to Socialist success. The recent growth of German Social Democracy is not at all due to parliamentary " resolution," hut to the protean facility with which, under pressure from its own devotees, the Marxian cult shapes itself to things flatly opposed to its origin. It is this new catholicity, embracing equally Frau Rosa Luxemburg and Herr Bernstein, which makes Social Democracy the refuge of many who are not programmatic Socialists and attracts four million voters to support the party's Reichstag candidates, though registered believers in the Erfurt Programme number only 720,000.
The contrast between the external strength of German Social Democracy and its internal weakness becomes every year more marked. The party has 110 Reichstag repre- sentatives ; and though weak, owing to the three-class franchise, in the Prussian Landtag it is strong in most State Parliaments. It has 27 per cent. of the Saxon, 16 per cent. of the Wiirttemberg, 12 per cent. of the Bavarian Landtag membership ; and it controls as much as 37 per cent, of the membership of the minor State Parliaments. It has 8,000 municipal assembly members, 78 daily news- papers, and propaganda so comprehensive thateven schoolboys are recruited. But the amount of Socialism cannot compare with the number of Social Democrats, In the last twenty years, while the Socialist party has waxed strong, orthodox Socialist doctrine and tactics have waned. . German experience has agreed with French that pure Social- ism can be held by a small number of uncompromising doctrinaires, but that when large numbers, including practical men, are attracted, it develops doctrinal heresy and tactical opportunism, and thus tends to shed its essential features.
Facts and ideas are killing the Marxism which is the foundation of German Social Democracy. The party, which justly boasts of its discipline, has tried to exclude both by persecuting innovators with ideas and by simply ignoring facts. The Erfurt Programme, dating from 1891, still proclaims Marxism to be something absolute and irrefragable. The orthodox or " Radical " Social Democrats believe that as Marx, unlike Owen, St. Simon, and Fourier, framed a " scientific " system of Socialism, that system is crystallized for all time. Thus the Erfurt Programme up- holds the Marxian Verelenclungstheorie that with increasing capitalism working-class misery deepens ; that wages fall and hours lengthen; that unemployment and industrial crises grow worse ; and that through its own insufficiency capitalism must finally disappear in a catastrophic crash. No human agency is allowed to affect this system of economic determinism. The Social Democratic Party has based on the Marxian system its own tactical principles : class warfare; no united action with bourgeois progressists; and a distrustful attitude towards labour legislation, co- (iteration, trade unionism, and everything else which might improve the condition of labour, and thus postpone the social revolution.
It is the ablest German Socialists who now themselves admit that this doctrine and these tactical principles are false. Eighteen years ago the South German Socialist Georg v. Vollmar challenged the first Marxian proposition, that capitalistic concentration must absorb all means of production. In particular Vollmar denied that land was being concentrated. When the present-day Social Demo- crats watch Danish dairy-farming, Irish land purchase, and the Russian division among peasants of proprietorial estates, plain inductive reasoning teaches them that the Marxian principle is wrong. Inductive reasoning has also destroyed the impoverishment theory, for no German work- man, however zealous for Marx and the Erfurt Programme, really believes that he works harder for less pay than did his father. In this impeachment of the Marxian dogmas lies the origin of Revisionism, a movement which, though it, too, calls itself Socialistic, seems bent on destroying everything that distinguishes Socialism from ordinary ultra-progressive politics.
Not one leading proposition of the Erfurt Programme has escaped repudiation by Socialist pens. Calwer, Schippel, Bernhard, and many other able Social Democrats have attacked Socialist economics. The Revisionist Quessel ex- poses the delusion that society is becoming sharply divided into capitalists and proletarians. The Revisionist chief Bernstein rejects the dogma of the ultimate public ownership of all means of production. As Marxian Socialism was originally purely economic this overthrowal of its economic bases leaves nothing intact. But the political, moral, and other excrescences which Social Democracy has grown on to Marxism are also impugned by Socialists themselves. Radical as well as Revisionist Socialists have modified their negative attitude towards labour legislation. The party's rhetorical denunciation of the bourgeoisie is derided by the Dutch-German Socialist Pannekoek as " idle vapour.' Socialist internationalism is threatened. The Socialist Calwer stands for an army and a navy. The Socialist Schulz approves of Germany's Federal Constitution, though from the orthodox Socialist standpoint he should prefer a centralized State. Herr Babel, a fierce foe of most Revisionist tenets, last year gave qualified approval to colonial enterprise. There are even Socialist monarchists. Herr Kautaky, who, like Herr Babel, considers himself uncompromisingly orthodox, some time ago gave his approval to an anonymous Socialist work which proclaimed that the alternative, Monarchy or Republic, was unim- portant. Naturally Revisionists attack the dogma of the fitness of mankind for the Socialist state. And even religion is grafted on to the new Socialism by a writer in the Revisionist organ, Sozialistisehe Monatshefte, who pro- claims that without religion Socialism cannot hope for success. The Revisionist Paul Gtihre agrees. The orthodox or " Radical " Socialists, led by Herr Babel, have in vain proscribed Revisionism. The heresy was condemned by the Dresden Congress of 1903 ; the voting for bourgeois budgets by the Bavarian, Wurttem- berg, and Badenese Landtag Socialists has been repeatedly condemned ; and the Magdeburg Congress of 1910 even threatened future offenders with excommunication. Never- theless the Revisionists, who were at first derided as "loaders without soldiers," are winning. Even the once uncompromising Babel has moved. The Jena (1911) Congress saw him opposing the extremism of Frau Rosa Luxemburg, condemning the general strike, and favouring (true, under exacting conditions) electoral compacts with the Reichstag Liberal parties. The Erfurt Programme has, of course, not been revised ; tactical Revisionism is still heresy ; no Socialist may vote for a good budget even in order to avoid a bad one ; and no Socialist may " recognize" a monarch. But these pedantries impose on no one : they are brave demonstrations—flags which remain nailed to the mast after the ship itself has been surrendered. This German experience gives reason to predict failure for any attempt to organize an orthodox Socialist move- ment in England. It is hardly likely that English working men, with their dislike for abstractions and extremes, will adopt at this late stage methods which the ablest German Socialists after forty years of disillusion condemn as wrong
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