Wilhelm Liebknecht

“ I am for the unity of the party,—for the national and international unity of the party. But it must be a unity of socialism and socialists. The unity with opponents,—with people who have other aims and other interests, is no socialist unity. We must strive for unity at any price and with all sacrifices. But while we are uniting and organizing, we must rid ourselves of all foreign and antagonistic elements. ”

“ He who works the hardest generally has the least; he who does not work at all and can have others working either directly or indirectly for him has much. Poverty is the share of labor, riches the portion of the idle. The workers who have created the so-called national wealth are shut out from it. It is the monopoly of the non-workers. In this way the inequality becomes the most revolting injustice. And this injustice is a scar on our famed civilization, that every one who has a spark of the sense of justice must strive to clear away. ”

“ And if we, the opponents of this unjust world of violence, suddenly reach out the hand of brotherhood to it, conclude alliances with its representatives, invite our comrades to go hand in hand with the enemy whose misdeeds have driven the masses into our camp, what confusion must result in their minds! How can the masses longer believe on us? If the men of the clerical party, of the progressive party, and the other boodle parties are our comrades, wherefore then the struggle against capitalist society, whose representatives and champions all of these are? ”

“ The fury of war is unchained, thousands are plunged into death and hundreds of thousands into misery. Should this be so? The social democracy insists that no war be carried on except in vindication of the freedom and rights of the people. They wish, therefore, the POWER to declare war—for here we cannot speak of a right—to belong to the people and their deputies.
The strongest part of the nation, the men in the bloom of life, are torn away from their occupation for years, withdrawn from useful productive labor, placed in the standing army and drilled to blind obedience. ”

“ We socialists are one nation to ourselves,—one and the same international nation in all the lands of the earth. And the capitalists with their agents, instruments and dupes are likewise an international nation, so that we can truthfully say, there are to-day only two great nations in all lands that battle with each other in the great class struggle, which is the new revolution,—a class struggle on one side of which stands the proletariat, representing socialism, and on the other the bourgeoisie, representing capitalism. ”

“ Having taken for granted that all political freedom, equal universal suffrage, freedom of the press, right to unite and convene, etc., should be guaranteed to all persons, allow the system of capitalistic production and of wage labor to remain—what would be the consequence? Inequality; the misery of the masses and the disproportionate wealth of the few would continue. The laboring majority of the people would be economically dependent upon the propertied minority, and this economic dependence would make all political freedom purely illusory and rob it of its practical worth. ”

“ Fear is proverbially a poor adviser for human action; for a party it is destruction. Fear of the labor movement and socialism has caused the political downfall of the German bourgeoisie; and the days of the Social Democracy are numbered as soon as the cry of fear finds a response in us. We should not challenge, but we should not sound the alarm and be misled by fear into taking steps that do not accord with the principles, the nature and the honor of our party. One does not disarm an enemy through timidity and gentleness ”

“ As the present production, exploitation and robbery must be abolished, so likewise must the present traffic, which is only fraud.
In the order of equality the worker will perform all the labor necessary for the whole body of citizens. In place of the employer and his humble subservient or rebellious wage slaves there will be free comrades. Labor will be the torture of no one, but the duty of all. An existence worthy of a human being will be provided for every one who performs his duty to society. Hunger will become henceforth not the curse of labor but the punishment of the idle. ”

“ If we are not different from the others, then we are not the right ones—the Savior is yet to come; and the Social Democracy was a false Messiah, no better than the other false ones!
Just in this fact lies our strength, that we are not like the others, and that we are not simply different from the others, but that we are their deadly enemy, who have sworn to storm and demolish the Bastile of Capitalism, whose defenders all those others are. Therefore we are only strong when we are alone. ”

“ All wealth is the fruit of labor, teaches political economy—labor shall reap the fruit of labor, demands justice, demands socialism. The present inequality springs from this: That labor does not work for itself; that it must sell itself to the idle for wages and by them be exploited. In a word, it springs out of the system of wage labor. The present injustice is only to be abolished in this way, that labor cease to work for the idle and that instead it work for itself.
Individual labor is unproductive. Work, as we have seen, must according to its nature be communistic. ”

“ The enemy who comes to us with open visor we face with a smile; to set our foot upon his neck is mere play for us. The stupidly brutal acts of violence of police politicians, the outrages of anti-socialist laws, the anti-revolution laws, penitentiary bills—these only arouse feelings of pitying contempt; the enemy, however, that reaches out the hand to us for a political alliance, and intrudes himself upon us as a friend and brother,—him and him alone have we to fear. ”

“ Disorder rules; socialism demands order.
War and class struggle prevail; socialism insists on peace and harmony of interests, doing away with class struggle through the abolition of classes.
Property is to-day a lie for the majority of men, a robbery for the minority. Socialism would make property the possession of every one. It would convert it into a truth, secure to the worker within society the full proceeds of his labor and destroy the capitalistic system of plunder from its foundation. ”

“ The political power which the social democracy aims at and which it will win, no matter what its enemies may do, has not for its object the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, but the suppression of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Just as the class struggle which the proletariat carries on is only a counter struggle in self-defense to resist the class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat ”

“ The great majority of the population receive only a shamefully perverted and insufficient education and are systematically hindered in the development of their talents, since an educated people, a truly well-bred, cultured people, would not bear patiently the present tyrannous political and social condition. For education, true education—not the systematic perversion and doggish breaking-in that to-day is pleased to boast the name of education—is the mother of freedom, justice and equality, and therefore not consistent with the existence of the present class state. ”

“ The representatives of the Social Democracy, in such popular bodies are like the basalt blocks, which, pushed up from the interior of the earth, have broken through the sandstone and slate strata:—they arise from the heart of the people, are a part of the people, and have in themselves the right and the power of popular sovereignty, which overtops and dominates all political and social matters. ”

“ Since the rise of modern industrial society with the opposition of classes and class struggle, the banner of democracy has been made use of many times to veil the eyes of the people to the chasm that yawns between the divided classes of society. Yes, we have lived to see the enemy of the working people fight them under the flag of democracy. Even in the mouth of those democrats who honestly wish the rule of the people the word democracy has an essentially narrowed sense, covering only the political and governmental sphere. ”

“ And this avalanche-like increase has come, and is coming as a consequence of our opposition to and struggle with all other parties.
All who are weary and heavy laden; all who suffer under injustice; all who suffer from the outrages of the existing bourgeois society; all who have in them the feeling of the worth of humanity, look to us, turn hopefully to us, as the only party that can bring rescue and deliverance. ”

“ On the basis of the wage system towers the giant structure of present social and political institutions for the subjugation and exploitation of the laboring people—the Castle of Uri of the proletariat, the gloomy bastile of the class state, which has taken prisoner the bulk of the people, killed thought, broken and destroyed character and directed its cannon threateningly upon every one who did not bow himself in the dust before the ruling injustice. ”

“ And I maintained that no man—Marx in spite of his comprehensive and deep intellect, as little as any other—can bring science to final perfection; and this position is for every one who understands the nature of science a foregone conclusion. No socialist, therefore, has the right to condemn attacks on the theoretical ideas of the Marxian teachings or to excommunicate any one from the party because of such attacks. But it is wholly different when such attacks imply a complete overturning of our whole conception of society, as, for example, is the case with Bernstein. ”

“ The class opposition with the class struggle is now an existing fact. The state is, so long as this class opposition and class struggle exists, necessarily a class state, and the government of this state, with like necessity is a class government. The socialist who allows himself to become a member of such a government will soon lose his class-consciousness, if he has not already laid it down at the door of the cabinet, like a Mohammedan does his shoes at the entrance of the mosque, unless he has the courage to seize the first opportunity offered for a conflict and a break. ”

“ What sort of picture does present society offer?
War and right of force rule between the people, between classes and between individual men. Through capitalistic production there is war between bourgeoisie and worker; through competition bourgeoise is in strife with bourgeoise, the laborer with the laborer. Socialism would set permanently a limit to this war of all against all. ”

“ Every one who suffers under these injustices looks to us for deliverance. Every one of us has had these victims of society after failing to get justice from the courts, from the government, from the Emperor himself, and from all the other parties, come to us as the last and only ones that can help them. They do not know our scientific program; they do not know what capital and capitalism mean; but they have the belief, the feeling, that we are a party that can help when all other parties fail. ”

“ Socialism provides that the standing army, this means of subjugation and conquest, be disbanded, and that it he replaced, so long as the possibility of war exists, by an army of the people. Each citizen, from his youth, shall be exercised in the use of arms and become qualified for military action. If every citizen is a soldier then every soldier is a citizen, and no tyrant will ever he in a position to offer violence to the people.
At present education is the privilege of a few, and for this few it is not a training for humanity but a preparation to exercise class rule. ”