Social Democrats

“ On this point the economic position of modern Social Democrats differs widely from the transfigured joint stockism of the present co-operative movement or from the object of the earlier Socialists, for whose purposes complete community was always more important than complete inclusiveness. ”

“ Liberals and Social Democrats may perhaps work together for a considerable time, because the latter, though publicly committed to socialistic schemes which the Liberals must regard with the strongest antipathy, are willing to accept a Constitutional regime during the period of transition. ”

“ It aims, through all kinds of palliatives and little concessions, to estrange the working people from Social Democracy and to cripple the party.
"The Social Democracy have never disdained to ask for such governmental regulations, or, if proposed by the opposition, to approve of those measures which could better the conditions of labor under the present industrial system. But Social Democrats view such regulations as only little payments on account, which in nowise confuse the Social Democracy in its striving for a new organization of society." ”

“ The radical left dreads the threats of the Social Democrats more than the fatuous blunders of the Kaiser. The very logic of events condemns revisionism and dedicates the workingman to majestic isolation. But this isolation engenders a revolutionary spirit. Allied with the liberals the Social Democracy would eschew all action outside the law. ”

“ It is silly of you to say that the Social-Democrats's task is to give the economic struggle itself a political character, for that is only the beginning, it is not the main task that Social-Democrats must fulfil. All over the world, including Russia, the police themselves often give the economic struggle a political character, and the workers are beginning to understand whom the government supports. ”

“ I have often heard it said—and I think it probable because in governmental circles it is supposed that the Social Democrats could be crazy enough to take such a course—I have often heard it said that exalted persons have long nursed the idea of preparing the same fate for all the leaders of the Social Democracy as was meted out in 1870 to the members of our party executive. ”

“ The Social Democrats filled their office with the greatest political self-control, and I heard from a really well-informed source that in these critical days no kind of difficulties had been made by any Party—difficulties whose consequences no one could have foreseen, because not only must they have brought with them the paralysis of the Administration, but the splitting of the energies of the labouring masses. ”

“ It is a means by which the government keeps a far tighter hold on the intellectual part of its population than if they were threatened with torture and the stake. The Social Democrats, who, of course, have declared themselves against the existing system of government and in favour of a republic, can receive no distinctions from the government because they dared to lift their voices and their pens in criticism of the existing order. ”

“ A pastor may be a "Christian Socialist," a professor may nourish his "Socialism of the chair," and a judge or a government engineer may be inclined toward far-reaching social experiment. But with Social Democracy they must have absolutely nothing to do. [15]
The government's attitude is based on the theory that the Social Democrats are enemies of the monarchy, and are designing to overthrow it and declare a republic the moment they get into power. ”

“ In order to understand this activity, it is necessary to review the present attitude of the government toward democracy and Socialism. The repeal of the anti-Socialist law could not suddenly alter the spirit of opposition. It merely changed the outward aspect of the opposition.
The government indicates in many ways its distrust of Social Democrats. No member of the party has ever been invited by the government to a place of public honor and responsibility. Indeed, to be a Social Democrat effectively closes the door against promotion in civil life. ”

“ The increase in population has been in the cities, and it is from the cities that the Social Democrats draw their main strength. The unfairness and inequality of the present electoral arrangement, therefore, falls with greatest force upon the Social Democrats, and reacts to the greatest advantage of the agrarians and clericals. ”

“ When these again failed to conciliate the Social Democrats, he took measures to legislate against them. He declared, as we have seen, on one occasion: “For me, every Social Democrat is synonymous with enemy of the nation and of the Fatherland.” (May 14, 1889.) The fact that the party has continued to increase has always been a thorn in his side, and his attitude has been more or less contradictory with regard to the working classes ”

“ The Social Democrats.—Nominally revolutionary, the German Social Democracy comprises in fact a very orderly organization whose economic-political tenets are at many points so rational that they command wide support among people who do not bear the party name. Throughout a generation the party has grown steadily more practical in its demands and more opportunist in its tactics. ”

“ They are in favor of ministerial responsibility, are free traders of the Manchester type, opposed to state intervention and state insurance, but favor factory inspection, sanitation, and other social legislation. They are in favor of freedom in religion, trade, and education, and espouse ballot reform. They have a well-organized party, but do not [293] seem effective in winning elections. They share, to some degree, with the Social Democrats the prejudice of the religious folk against free-thinking and religious latitudinarianism. It is the middle-class party of protest against bureaucracy. ”

“ From the social democratic camp advances in the same direction have been made by the revisionists (in the "Sozialistische Monatshefte" and elsewhere) . The revisionists point to the numerous members of the so-called new middle class, and contend that these could make cooperation between the social democrats and the liberals a practical possibility. ”

“ What holds together political parties, especially when like the Social Democrats they have great historic tasks to accomplish, are their final goals; not their momentary demands, not their views as to the attitude to be assumed on all the separate questions that come before the party. ”

“ The Social-Democrats ranged from members of the Council organisation, who believed that the Councils should have economic functions, and who were last summer coming over to the Independents, down to men like Legien, who would abolish the Councils as a revolt against the Trade Unions, or Noske, who would abolish them as rebels against authority. ”

“ If statistics of the Social Democrats could be obtained, it would be necessary to distinguish between the three categories of which the group is composed: (1) The educated active members, who form the directing, controlling element; (2) the fully indoctrinated recruits from the working classes; and (3) workmen who desire merely to better their material condition, but who take part in political demonstrations in the hope of bringing pressure to bear on their employers, and inducing the Government to intervene on their behalf. ”

“ Every party must show by its action that it values the man more than the dollar. To this extent we are all democrats and wish the Government to act for the people as well as to be controlled by the people.
When we differ, it is in deciding on the means to carry out our common purpose; and here we differ very widely. Some would use the power of the State to correct and improve our system of industry, and these constitute a party of reform. ”

“ I will go farther, and will say that all those Democrats who can be distinguished from Whigs do intend social reforms which they hope will somewhat alter the relations of the classes towards each other; and there is, generally speaking, amongst Democrats a leaning towards a kind of limited State-Socialism, and it is through that that they hope to bring about a peaceful revolution, which, if it does not introduce a condition of equality, will at least make the workers better off and contented with their lot. ”

“ Even the meager social interest which Jefferson concealed under cover of his demand for equal rights could not be promoted without some effective organ of social responsibility; and the Democrats of to-day are obliged, as we have seen, to invoke the action of the central government to destroy those economic discriminations which its former inaction had encouraged. But even so the traditional democracy still retains its dislike of centralized and socialized responsibility. It consents to use the machinery of the government only for a negative or destructive object. ”

“ They are State socialists not because they have more confidence in the State than other socialists, but because they have less. They consider it utterly futile to expect a democratic community ever to be able to create a political executive that should be powerful enough to carry through the entire socialistic programme. Like the Social Conservatives of all countries, like our own Young England party, for example, or the Tory Democrats of the present generation, they combine a warm zeal for popular amelioration with a profound distrust of popular government ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One can only ask what created this frame of mind? Even a Social Democrat must have the ground prepared before his doctrines can germinate and flourish; it must be fertilised with dissatisfaction and watered with despair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the democrat—by reason of his representing the middle class, that is to say, a Transition Class, in which the interests of two other classes are mutually dulled—, imagines himself above all class contrast. The democrats grant that opposed to them stands a privileged class, but they, together with the whole remaining mass of the nation, constitute the "PEOPLE." What they represent is the "people's rights"; their interests are the "people's interests." ”

“ If we permitted the gamblers in foodstuffs to pay our bills the Socialist party would be of no benefit to you.
The Socialist party relies first, last and all the time on the working class for political and financial support.
The Socialist party stands for the abolition of the system of private ownership of the collectively used tools of wealth-production. We want the collective ownership and democratic management of all large scale industries. The Socialist party stands for the workers getting the full social value of their labor. ”

“ Whatever the individual practices and tendencies of the respective members, whenever after discussion the collective opinion is expressed on any social topic the vote is invariably substantially unanimous for that policy which those present believe will make for the general good. It is not true that the rich desire to oppress the poor. ”

“ THEEE is advance towards radical democracy in every nation. In the United States the two political parties have made some progress in recent years in answer to the demands of the people; but this slow and halting movement, falling behind that of Great Britain, should be hastened, either by the formation of a new political party or of a radical section within one of the existing parties. The socialist party might serve as a center of union, if questions concerning the production of wealth and the limitation of individualism can be subordinated to social welfare. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has created a vast political party of irreconcilables in the country, men who have been led to feel that they have neither part nor promise in the national life, and who therefore elect to stand outside it. "Our Social Democratic party," writes von Bülow, "lacks a national basis. ”

“ However one may question the party socialists’ claim that an economic and social millennium is exclusively dependent upon their dominance, few acquainted with those active in the movement will deny the sincerity of purpose, the almost religious exaltation that animate great numbers of the party. The first socialist member from the East, and the second in the [266] United States, has been elected to Congress from our district; a man universally esteemed for his probity, with a record of many years’ unselfish devotion to the workingmen’s cause. ”