Social Democratic Federation

“ At a recent conference of the Social-Democratic Federation the chairman declared, in his opening address: "There can be but one Independent Labour Party, and there ought to be a united Socialist party. ”

“ An executive committee of nine is chosen from this council, and this committee has practical control of the party. The annual convention is the supreme authority. It elects the general council and decides, in democratic fashion, all important questions of policy and activity. Every constituent organization, such as the co-operative societies, etc., contributes from its funds to the support of the party. The party is therefore a federation of many societies with various activities, not a vast group of individual voters, as the German Social Democracy. ”

“ The local popular representative bodies aim to increase and protect socialist property, to improve constantly working and living conditions and promote the social and cultural life of the people and their collectives, raise the level of civil and legal consciousness and preserve law and order, consolidate socialist legality and safeguard the rights of the citizens. ”

“ Enterprises, Towns and Local Communities in the Socialist Society ARTICLE 41
⁠The socialist enterprises, towns, local communities and associations of local communities are, within the framework of central state planning and management, self-responsible communities in which citizens work and shape their social relations. They safeguard the basic rights of citizens, the effective linking of individual and social interests, and a multifold social-political and cultural-intellectual life. They are protected by the Constitution. ”

“ As the centuries pass a larger and still larger proportion of human affairs passes away from individual management and comes under social and community control. As this process goes on, more and more does the individual, whether man or woman, need the power to control socially the conditions that affect his or her individual welfare. In our day political power rightly used, gives a socialized control of social conditions, and for the individual it is embodied in and is expressed by the vote. ”

“ And what is the present organization of the Social Democratic Party? It is the most perfect party machine in the world. It is organized with the most scrupulous regard for details and oiled with the exuberance of a class spirit that is emerging from its narrowness and is finding room for its expanding powers in the practical affairs of national and municipal life. The only approach to it is the faultless, silently moving, highly polished mechanism devised by the English gentry to control the political destinies of the British Empire. ”

“ The social democrats eliminate the independents and remain in sole control.—In the struggle that ensued among socialists, the Social Democrats brought to their side the support first of individual states, then that of a general Congress of Workers and Soldiers Councils. ”

“ To define the really democratic organization as one which makes expressly and intentionally for individual distinction and social improvement is nothing more than a translation of the statement that such an organization should make expressly and intentionally for the welfare of the whole people. The whole people will always consist of individuals, constituting small classes, who demand special opportunities, and the mass of the population who demand for their improvement more generalized opportunities. ”

“ The social democracy demands, therefore, as for the state so for the municipality, universal, equal, free and direct suffrage, complete privilege and equalization, as for the citizen of the state so for the inhabitant of the city—a free community in a free state. ”

“ We will improve the system of primary level self-governance and strengthen community governance. We will see that trade unions, Communist Youth League organizations, women's federations and other people's organizations are all playing their due roles. We will promote the healthy development of social organizations, specialized social work, and volunteer services. ”

“ Localized in political districts to adapt itself to the election laws and stretching feelers in all cities and rural communities, the Social Democracy built up the unique structure of the political organization of the German proletariat with its many-branched bureaucratic hierarchy, its one million dues-paying members, its four million voters, ninety-one daily papers and sixty-five Party printing presses. ”

“ Only in recent times, however, has the industrial and political progress of civilisation rendered the achievement of Socialism on a large community or national scale possible by means of political organisation.
Already by the time of the formation of the Democratic Federation there was a widespread unrest in thoughtful minds with the existing conditions of society, and heralding voices of the coming Socialist movement were heard in every land. ”

“ The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany demands, in order to pave the way for the solution of the social question, the establishment by State help of socialistic productive associations under the democratic control of the workpeople. ”

“ Great questions affecting the welfare of the community, and for the solution of which the ablest heads are requisite, are coming into discussion, and are to be settled for the benefit, we trust, of all concerned. Reform in capital and labor, temperance, woman's social and political condition, popular education, powers of corporations, international communication,—these and the new issues which their settlement will effect, must interest and occupy the active forces of the country to plant the republic, upon stable foundations. ”

“ Consequently, we have the distinctive term Social Democrat, indicating the man or woman who desires through Democracy to gather the whole people into the State, so that the State may be trusted with the rent of the country, and finally with the land, the capital, and the organisation of the national industry—with all the sources of production, in short, which are now abandoned to the cupidity of irresponsible private individuals. ”

“ Instead of the isolated individual, citizen standing outside the socio-economic relations which determine him as a member of his class, the basis and essence of the political system of socialist self-management democracy are now the working people who, organized politically and on self-management foundations in their work communities and communities of life, and in other socio-political organizations, are mutually linked through their delegations and delegates and exercise power and management of general social affairs. ”

“ Revolution has, even here, been replaced by a slow and orderly development.
The rapidity with which the medieval empire will be democratized will depend upon the formation of a genuine liberal party that will enlist those citizens who are inclined toward modernism but cannot be enticed into the Social Democratic or Radical parties. When such a party is formed, and an alliance made with the Social Democrats, then the transformations will be rapid. [46] Among the most significant accessions to the Social Democracy are many professional men: lawyers, physicians, engineers, etc. ”

“ It is that of mere stewardship and the regulation indispensable to society.
The Social Forces Ready for Our Methods.
Now that our theory of social reform is fully substantiated by fact, our methods shown to be in harmony with popular sentiment, our idea of democratic government clearly defined, and our final aim political justice, there remains some consideration of early possible practical steps in line with these principles and of the probable trend of events afterward. ”

“ Every state has the capacity through legislation and administration to fix in society certain social relationships and habits which have been proved by experiment to be good for the community and which are approved by the greater part of the public. This fact determines the modern Socialist method. When the state is democratically governed and laws are made and applied under the guidance of common experience, the part played by legislation and administration becomes more and more important. ”

“ However, every sincere reform campaign is valuable because of its immediate and far-reaching educational effect, even when the candidates fail of election. It is gratifying to those [261] who are socially interested to watch the evolution of political platforms. Every party now inserts human welfare planks and pledges devotion to measures that in the days of our initiation were regarded as dreams and ridiculed as beyond the realm of practicality. Settlements have increasing authority because of the persistency of their interest in social welfare measures. ”

“ III. RESTORING COMMUNITY The success of democracy in America depends substantially on the strength of our community institutions: families and neighborhoods, public schools, religious institutions, charitable organizations, civic groups and other voluntary organizations. In these social networks, the values and character of our citizens are formed, as we learn the habits and skills of self-government, and acquire an understanding of our common rights and responsibilities as citizens. ”

“ With a political system which proceeds ultimately out of a society with a feudalistic basis, the normal attitude of political parties is long maintained. The party of structure, the Conservative party, holds by the ancient feudalistic ideals which are really, in the large sense, socialistic, though a socialism based on a foundation of established inequality, and so altogether unlike the democratic socialism promulgated [383] to-day. The party of function, the Liberal party, insists on the break-up of this structural socialism to meet the new needs of progressive civilization. ”

“ The working class and all working people shall through state power by means of generally-binding rules secure socialist social relations, the development of society and the management of social affairs on a self-management basis, protect the freedoms of man and the citizen, socialist self-management relations and the self-management rights of the working people, and shall settle social conflicts and protect the constitutionally-established order. ”

“ Appealing largely to small, independent businessmen and shopkeepers, the as-yet-to-be-organized Progressive Party was garnering a large "protest vote," recent public opinion surveys showing almost a quarter of the respondents supporting it. The phenomenon reflects the persisting doubts concerning the unlimited expansion of social welfare, the responsiveness of existing institutions to valid popular needs and desires, and where the balance lies between the needs of all society and the freedom and rights of the individual. ”

“ The Social Democrat in Germany is almost an outcast. Although one third of the members of the Reichstag belong to this party, its members are never called to hold office in the government; and the attitude of the whole of the governing class, of all the professors, school-teachers, priests of both Protestant and Roman Catholic religions of the prosperous middle classes, is that of violent opposition to the doctrines of Social Democracy. The world must entertain no illusion that the Social Democratic leaders speak for Germany. ”

“ We have in the Reichstag two kinds of duties; first, the propaganda of our ideas and program; second, practical work, i.e., to enhance, not alone the interests of the working class, but the entire complex, so-called cultural interests. The problems that the Social Democratic party as a 'cultural party' has to solve, which are assigned to it as the representative of cultural progress in every realm of human activity, must increase in the same proportion that the bourgeois parties allow themselves to be captured by the government and neglect these problems. ”

“ It is for reformers in every town to direct all their force on the Town Councils, to turn aside to no scheme, and to start no new society, but to urge, in season and out of season, that the care of the people is the care of the community, and not of any philanthropic section—is, indeed, the care of Society, and not of societies. ‘The People, not Politics,’ should be their cry; and they should see that the power is in the hands of men, irrespective of party or of class, who care for the people. ”

“ We want their political institutions founded upon the widest social justice and equality for all.
We believe that we work will be facilitated and hastened, if we stand together as far as the diversity of national problems permits. ”

“ It would generally take care that the funds be put to their legitimate use. But its control would not pass beyond those reasonable limits: the associations would be free; they would be the voluntary act of the working men themselves. Above all, the State, thus supporting and controlling the associations, would be a democratic State, elected by universal suffrage, the organ of the workers, who form an overwhelming majority of every community. ”

“ It attracts to it with an irresistible appeal the rural elements that pour into the urban agglomerations, elements which the economic movement snatches forever from the routine of conservatism. The constitution of a Social Democracy which grows bolder from day to day, absorbs more and more of the population, and makes greater and greater inroads, has something of the inexorability of fate. ”

“ the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition; the authoritarian one and the libertarian one.
And again, on the eve of the great Social Revolution these two traditions stand face to face.
Between these two currents, always full of life, always battling in humanity,—the current of the people and the current of the minorities which thirst for political and religious domination,—our choice is made.
We again take up the current which led men, in the twelfth century, to organise themselves on the basis of a free understanding, of free initiative of the individual, of free federation of those interested. ”