Volksraad

“ The Volksraad shall consist of at least twelve members, who must possess the following qualifications:-They must have attained the age of thirty years, and be born in the Republic, or have for fifteen consecutive years been burghers entitled to vote, be members of a Protestant Church, reside, and possess immovable property, in the Republic. No persons of notoriously bad character, or who have had a dishonouring sentence pronounced against them, and no uncertified or unrehabilitated insolvents shall be eligible. ”

“ The first Volksraad consists of twenty-seven members elected from and by the burghers, or voters, who were born in the country. A naturalized burgher is ineligible to the upper House. The twenty-seven members of the Second Raad are naturalized burghers, and are voted for only by men who have received the franchise. The second House has control of the management of the Government works, telephones, mails, and mines, and has but little voice in the real government of the country. ”

“ The Reichstag, chosen by universal suffrage, is the popular assembly, the real mouthpiece of public opinion. Its powers are limited to voting upon the budget and upon laws for the Empire, which must be taken as meaning laws of national interest.6 This democratic Parliament, however, controls, so far as it can, the administration of public affairs. Its best weapon of defence against the arbitrary power of the Crown is the opposition it can raise to any Government proposals for expenditure or taxation. ”

“ ARTICLE 17 Every State must have a republican constitution. The representatives of the People must be elected by the universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage of all German citizens, both men and women, according to the principles of proportional representation. The State Cabinet shall require the confidence of the representatives of the People. ”

“ In the constitution of the new empire two legislative bodies were provided for, the Bundesrath or Federal Council, whose members are annually appointed by the respective state governments, and the Reichstag or Representative body, whose members are elected by universal suffrage for a period of three years, an annual session being required. Germany, therefore, in its present organization, is practically a federal union of states, each with its own powers of internal government, and with a common legislature approximating to our Senate and House of Representatives. ”

“ Instead of opposing reforms undertaken on the basis of existing institutions, as it once was accustomed to do, in the hope of bringing about the establishment of a socialistic state by one grand coup, it labors for such reforms as are adjudged attainable and contents itself with recurring only occasionally and incidentally to its ultimate ideal. The supreme governing authority of the party is a congress composed of six delegates from each electoral district of the Empire, the socialist members of the Reichstag, and the members of the party's executive committee. ”

“ The Government consisted of Commissioners—a sort of inner Cabinet, an Executive Council—a sort of Ministry, and an Assembly of Councils—the Legislature. The first was Bolshevist, in general standpoint, the second Independent Socialist and Moderate Communist, the third predominantly Moderate Socialist. The Commissioners, especially the Russians, did not enjoy the confidence of the Assembly, still less of the garrison. I believe that they would soon have been replaced by a Socialist régime, but for the military action of Prussia and Würtemberg. ”

“ In the autumn of 1890 at the Labor Party's annual convention it was suggested that, inasmuch as the parliament of the Few had not heeded the wishes of the nation, a parliament of the People should be called, to be composed of as many members as the existing parliament, but chosen by universal suffrage. ”

“ The socialistic working men's party of Germany demands as the basis of the State :—
Universal, equal, and direct right of electing and voting, with secret and obligatory voting, of all citizens from twenty years of age, for all elections and deliberations in the State and local bodies. The day of election or voting must be a Sunday or holiday. Direct legislation by the people. Questions of war and peace to be decided by the people. Universal military duty. A people's army in place of the standing armies. ”

“ The Democratic population from all parts of the country sent deputations to place itself at the disposal of the Parliament, and to urge it on to a decisive action. The people, knowing what the intentions of the Würtemberg Government were, implored the National Assembly to force that Government into an open and active participation with their insurgent neighbors. ”

“ First, we clip the wings of the princes till they can do no more than hop about their own home-yards; then we control the proceedings of the Reichsverweser by a parliament elected on the principles of universal suffrage; and finally, we can eject the puppet if necessary, and resolve ourselves into a pure democracy. ”

“ The idea of constitutional government lies quite beyond the range of the German peasant's conceptions. His only notion of representation is that of a representation of ranks—of classes; his only notion of a deputy is of one who takes care, not of the national welfare, but of the interests of his own order. Herein lay the great mistake of the democratic party, in common with the bureaucratic governments, that they entirely omitted the peculiar character of the peasant from their political calculations. ”

“ It provided for the election of a National President, to serve until his successor could be elected at a general election, and for the appointment of a Minister-President and various ministers of state. The constitution created a so-called Committee of State, to be named by the various state governments and to occupy the position of a Second Chamber, and empowered the assembly to enact "such national laws as are urgently necessary," particularly revenue and appropriation measures. ”

“ The People's Chamber shall be the supreme organ of the formation of the will of the State. It shall have the task of legislating, controlling the government and administration, adopting the state budget, electing the Prime Minister, confirming the government program, and ratifying international treaties. It shall perform all the functions and exercise all the powers of the Federation, unless they are expressly reserved by this Constitution to other organs. (2) The opposition is a necessary component of parliamentary democracy. ”

“ The possibility of new revolutionary action on a large scale had therefore grown very much less. Under these circumstances the national parliament could indeed issue its ordinances and have them proclaimed through the national executive, but the governments of the several German states felt that they need not pay much more attention to them than they pleased. And yet, the parliament had still its principal task before it: to complete the constitution of the German empire, to introduce it practically, and thereby to satisfy the great national want of the German people. ”

“ In the Parliament of Germany how many men are there sitting who were once what you would call fugitives from justice, exiles on account of their revolutionary acts, now admitted to the great council of the nation in the fullness of their rights and privileges—and, mark you, without having been asked to abjure the opinions they formerly held, for at the present moment most of them still belong to the Liberal opposition. ”

“ The German workmen were ready to admit to equality anyone with any industrial productive status, who was not in the service of declared enemies of the Councils—such as the captains of industry or the Coalition Government. And so important is this suffrage question as a gauge of the liberality of the Council movement in Germany and of its distinction from Bolshevism, that I append as a footnote the regulation of the Berlin Executive Council, published previous to the Convention of the second Congress of Councils. ”

“ Councils, and even Soldiers' Councils being choked off, and only the Workmen's Councils surviving. This is why the practical process in Germany is, as said before, leading to the same conclusions as those come to by the a priori reasoning of our own Guild Socialists when they divide the citizen into consumer and producer, and, in his latter capacity, give him representation through a Council system. I found, in fact, that my most useful function in Germany at one time was putting German Labour leaders in possession of the conclusions of our Guild Socialists. ”

“ For the immediate formation of the cabinets in the Empire and in Prussia, the questions of individual appointments will be decided by the political parties in agreement with the organizations of workers, salaried employés and civil servants taking part in the general strike, and a decisive influence will be accorded to these organizations in the new policies of economic and social legislation, all with the view of safeguarding the rights of popular representation. ”

“ After the popular victories of Vienna and Berlin, it was a matter of course that there should be a Representative Assembly for all Germany. This body was consequently elected, and met at Frankfort, by the side of the old Federative Diet. The German National Assembly was expected, by the people, to settle every matter in dispute, and to act as the highest legislative authority for the whole of the German Confederation. ”

“ The elections for the National Assembly stirred to their innermost fibres the German people, dreaming of the restoration of their former greatness. May 18th about 320 delegates assembled in the Imperial Hall, in the Römer (the Rathhaus) , at Frankfort. ... Never has a political assembly contained a greater number of intellectual and scholarly men--men of character and capable of self-sacrifice; but it certainly was not the forte of these numerous professors and jurists to conduct practical politics. The moderate party was decidedly in the majority. ”

“ At first the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had demanded that there be a Government composed of all the Socialist parties in and out of the Soviets, to be responsible to a People's Council, composed of an equal number of delegates from the Workers' and Soldiers' organisation, and that of the Peasants, and completed by representatives of the City Dumas and the Zemstvos ”

“ How indispensable a parliamentary organ which actually represents the unity of the people is to every state in a confederation is best shown by the energy with which the Prussian government again and again demanded a German parliament at the very time when it fairly despaired about coming to an understanding with its own body of representatives. In the middle between the head of the empire and such a diet as we have described is the place occupied by the Federal Council (Bundesrath) : not until we have made this clear to ourselves can we fully understand the nature of this latter institution. ”

“ For the success of these institutions, we must suppose a sufficiently firm political education and intelligence, a public that knows its wishes and how to make them prevail, a Parliament and a Cabinet skilled in recognizing the wishes of the nation and ready to submit to them. Because of the mistrust of parliamentarism, it has been decided that the President shall be elected directly by the people. He is endowed with power by the nation and placed near to the Reichstag in order to control it. ”

“ More than that, it has come into collision with Socialism and the German Revolution in its efforts to maintain a régime such as we would recognise. The nationalist forces, that it relies on to maintain parliamentary party government and the supremacy of the propertied class to the exclusion both of Council Government and of a possible supremacy of the proletariat, were, in the first place, the more liberal bureaucracy and the officers, and in the second place the "Frei-Corps." ”

“ But the provinces were represented, not the people, and the measure only emboldened the latter to clamor for a direct representation. Thereupon, the king closed the Assembly, after a short session, and the attempt was probably productive of more harm than good. In most of the other German States, the situation was very similar: everywhere there were elements of opposition, all the more violent and dangerous, because they had been kept down with a strong hand for so many years. ”

“ But any association will serve; and so, in the German Revolution, besides the Workmen's Councils there were Soldiers' Councils, Communal Councils, and even Unemployed Councils. If this new system were to develop, so to say, in a vacuum, without opposition, it would theoretically provide a democratic representation for every human relationship. As it is, such representation is reduced, as in Germany, by political pressure, to association that is rooted in the most vital relationship ”

“ As decidedly as the separate parties have ever refused, and still refuse, to be Government parties—and I personally can thoroughly understand it—so little will a Government in Germany ever be able to be a party Government. With the difficulties which arise from this fact every German statesman has had to fight, and in this relation of things, which is historic and based upon the peculiarity of our party life and of our State institutions, the last crisis has altered nothing whatever. ”

“ Protected against the Cabinet, against insurrections, and against individuals who have designs on their independence, the deputies of the Reichstag can and must organize themselves in such a way as to assure for their labours maximum efficiency. It is imperative that the majority shall be able to impose its will without thereby sacrificing the rights of the minority. To this effect Article 26 provides, “The National Assembly chooses its President, Vice-President, and its Secretaries. It regulates its own procedure.” ”