National Socialist German Workers' Party

“ The German Socialist party does not confine itself to stating general principles. Now that it has gained foothold on political soil, and sends representatives to Parliament, it endeavours to make known the means by which it hopes to realize the reforms it has in view. This is what it claims:—'The German Socialist party demands, in order to pave the way for the solution of the social question, the creation of socialistic productive associations aided by the State, under the democratic control of the working people. ”

“ In Europe the Socialist Parties of the various countries have suffered many heavy blows since the beginning of the world war. But they have stood up under them far better than the American Socialist Party. This is because, being deeply rooted in their respective trade unions, there is some structure and fiber to them. Consider the Social Democratic Party of Germany, for example. That organization openly betrayed the workers all through the war and the revolutionary period. ”

“ To unite the workers of the nation and their allies and sympathizers of all other classes to this end, is the mission of the Socialist Party. In this battle for freedom the Socialist Party does not strive to substitute working class rule for capitalist class rule, but by working class victory, to free all humanity from class rule and to realize the international brotherhood of man. ”

“ It is in honor bound to lead the way to the rescue of international Socialism, to proceed with the unsparing criticism of its own shortcomings.
No other party, no other class in capitalist society can dare to expose its own errors, its own weaknesses, before the whole world in the clear mirror of reason, for the mirror would reflect the historical fate that is hidden behind it. The working-class can always look truth in the face even when this means bitterest self-accusation ”

“ After one year's activity as plenipotentiary for the direction of labor, I can report that 3,638,056 new foreign workers were given to the German war economy from 1 April of last year to 31 March this year.
As a whole, these forces have produced satisfactory performances. Their feeding and housing is secured, their treatment so indisputably regulated that, in this respect too, our National Socialist Reich presents a shining example to the methods of the capitalist and bolshevist world. However, it is naturally inevitable that mistakes and blunders occur here and there. ”

“ He was the sworn enemy of the Socialist party—he attempted to destroy it, root and branch; yet through the nationalization of railways and the obligatory insurance of workmen he infused more Socialism into German legislation than any other statesman before him.
Truly, a man who could thus sacrifice his own wishes and instincts to the common good; who could so completely sink his own personality in the cause of the nation ”

“ National Socialism has given the German people that leadership which as Party not only mobilizes the nation but also organizes it, so that on the basis of the natural principle of selection, the continuance of a stable political leadership is safeguarded forever. . . . National Socialism possesses Germany entirely and completely since the day when, 5 years ago, I left the house in Wilhelmsplatz as Reich Chancellor. There is no institution in this state which is not National Socialist. ”

“ Moreover, State Socialism, political democracy, and social reform, since they tend to give the working people a slightly greater share in the prosperity of each nation, intensify the workers’ nationalism and aggravate the conflict of immediate economic interests. This is why all the labor union parties of the world are tending in [36] the same direction as that in which the German Party has been so clearly headed since the war—a tendency very clearly formulated by Vorwaerts when it recently asked whether the German Party was not becoming a “nationalistic social reform labor party.” ”

“ There can be no doubt of the practical association of aim and interest of the various Labour parties throughout modern civilized communities with the Socialist movement. The Social democrats of Germany are the Labour Party of that country, and wherever the old conception of Socialism prevails, those “class war” ideas of the Marxist that have been superseded in English Socialism for nearly a quarter of a century, there essentially the Socialist movement will take the form of a revolutionary attack upon the owning and governing sections of the community. ”

“ The socialistic working men's party of Germany, though acting first of all within the national limits, is conscious of the international character of the labour movement, and resolved to fulfil all the duties which this imposes on the workmen, in order to realise the universal brotherhood of men. ”

“ The Socialist party enters this campaign under conditions that could scarcely be more favorable to the cause it represents. For the first time every state in the union is now organized and represented in the national party, and every state will have a full ticket in the field: and for the first time the Socialists of the United States have a party which takes its rightful place in the great revolutionary working class movement of the world. ”

“ No longer can the workers be pitted against each other in capitalist parties by designing politicians to their mutual undoing. They have made the discovery that they have brains as well as hands, that they can think as well as work, and that they do not need politicians to advise them how to vote, nor masters to rob them of the fruits of their labor.
Slowly but surely there is being established the economic and political unity and solidarity of the workers of the world. The Socialist party is the political expression of that unity and solidarity. ”

“ During the last seven or eight years the coöperative movement and the movement for the formation of workmen’s syndicates have grown rapidly in Germany, and have made great headway among the Socialists themselves. It is the same active working class that composes the Socialist party, the Syndicates, and the Workmen’s Coöperative Societies, and these organizations will be of the greatest help to the Socialists in their future conflicts.
Although the Social Democrats form the party of the working men, they do not select working men as their representatives in the Reichstag. ”

“ The Socialist party is the only party which honestly represents the working class in this campaign and the only party that has a moral right to appeal to the allegiance and support of the workers and producers of the nation. ”

“ But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin. ”

“ They openly repudiate the class struggle, the basis of Socialism, but nevertheless seek admission to the International Socialist Congress, where they acquiesce in what they call “a merely glorified animalism dangerously akin to bestiality” in order to pass muster in the presence of the assembled delegates of the international proletariat. The Independent Labour Party is evidently not a party of the workers. ”

“ The competition for the votes of the wage-workers is the distinguishing feature of the present campaign. Thousands of workers are now doing their own thinking. They have discovered that workers are as much out of place in a capitalist party as capitalists are in a workers' party. They have also found that politics express class interests and that the interests of those who make the wealth and those who take it are not identical. That is where the Socialist party comes in and where the workers come in the Socialist party. ”

“ The National Socialist doctrine, by the pre-eminence which it gives to the idea of the State, by the contempt in which it holds individuals and personal rights, contains a conception of work which agrees with the principles of its general philosophy.
For it, work is not one of the forms of the manifestation of individual personalities; it is a duty imposed by the community on its members.
“The relationship of labor, according to National Socialist ideas,” a German writer has said, “is not a simple judicial relationship between the worker and his employer ”

“ Many political organisations professed to exist only for the purpose of assisting the working class. The Conservative Party, Liberal Party, Labour party, Communist Party and a host of others drew up programmes of social reforms which they all guaranteed would, if the workers would only trust them and vote for them; solve all the ills which afflicted the working class. The Socialist Party of Great Britain had no reforms on its programme and was opposed to all parties who asked the workers to support a reformist policy. ”

“ In a word, they are miles behind us in every way, and this is what Socialism, interpreted by the Socialist party in the Reichstag, has done for them. I hope the workers of this country will profit by the example of Germany in this respect, as they have profited by the example of Germany in this respect, as they have profited by the example of Germany during the last elections so far as Tariff Reform is concerned. I would remind you that in Socialist Germany trade unions were proscribed for 22 years later than in England ”

“ Second, the socialists of Germany have organized a liberal party of unrivaled strength; they have educated the working classes to a very high standard of political intelligence and to a strong sense of their independence and of their social mission, as the living and progressive force in every social respect; they have promoted the organization of trade unions; and have by their incessant agitation compelled the other parties and the government to take up social and labor legislation. ”

“ On the 30th of July, 1914, the central organ of the German Social-Democracy cried out:
"The socialist proletariat rejects all responsibility for the events that are being precipitated by a ruling class that is blinded, and on the verge of madness. We know that for us new life will spring from the ruins. ”

“ The means by which the party proposes to bring about the transformation is the industrial and political organization of the working classes. In respect to its aim, its ideals, and its means, the French Socialist party, while ready to support the immediate reforms demanded by laboring people, is to a greater degree than the German Social Democracy a party of class struggle and revolution. ”

“ What it is desired to make plain is that Socialism appeals strongly to the dreamer, the closet-philosopher who concerns himself with abstract ethical questions without regard to their practicality or practicability [pg 56] as applied to the economic life of an imperfect society. And there are more men of this type in Germany than in any other country.
Loosely and inefficiently organized labor unions had existed in Germany before the birth of the Socialist movement, but they existed independently of each other and played but a limited rôle. ”

“ The entire German people have sung the high psalm about the working man with a strength and enthusiasm which never before existed and thus has honored itself and the creative spirit. The wheels stopped, the anvil did not more resound, the miner came out of his mine: everywhere a holiday.
What trade unions of all shades, red and black, Christian and "free", have not even come close to accomplishing, what has been only a shadow even in the best years of Marxism, a puny miserable copy compared to the gigantic thing of yesterday, NATIONAL SOCIALISM achieves in its first effort. ”

“ The German civil servant must furthermore be a National Socialist to the marrow of his bones and must be a member of the party or of one of its formations. The state will primarily see to it that the Young Guard of the movement is directed toward a civil-service career and also that the civil servant takes an active part in the party so that the political idea and service of the state become closely welded. ”

“ National Socialism is no invented system of rules for the political game, but the world-view of the German people, which experiences itself as a national and social community, and concedes neither to the state nor the class nor the individual any privileges which endanger the security of the community's right to live. ”

“ In conclusion I want to say it is not a question as to whether Socialism may or may not be left to conjecture or speculation; it is not a question as to our waiting until it has had a trial, because there is at present in Europe one country where absolutely everything Mr. Fitzgerald has advised the working class to do has been done, and with results that, in my opinion, are disastrous. I refer to Germany. No one will deny that in that country the theoretic Socialist are the only party in the State representing the working man. As a matter of fact there is no Liberal party in Germany. ”

“ The rise and rapid growth of the Social Democratic movement is perhaps the most striking fact in the recent history of Germany. The same may be said, of course, of the growth of Socialism everywhere during the same period. But in Germany it has for a generation past, or even more, occupied an exceptional position, alike as regards the rapidity of its increase, its direct influence on the masses, and its party organization. Modern Socialism, as a party doctrine, is, moreover, a product of the best period of nineteenth-century German thought and literature. ”