University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I
THE STABILITY OF LEADERSHIP

NO one who studies the history of the socialist movement in Germany can fail to be greatly struck by the stability of the group of persons leading the party.

In 1870-71, in the year of the foundation of the German Empire, we see two great personalities, those of Wilhelm Liebknecat and August Bebel, emerge from the little group of the faithful to the new socialist religion to acquire leadership of the infant movement by their energy and their intelligence. Thirty years later, at the dawn of the new century, we find them still occupying the position of the most prominent leaders of the German workers. This stability in the party leadership in Germany is very striking to the historian when he compares it with what has happened in the working-class parties elsewhere in Europe. The Italian socialist party, indeed, for the same reasons as in Germany, has exhibited a similar stability. Elsewhere, however, among the members of the Old International, a few individuals only of minor importance have retained their faith in socialism intact into the new century. In Germany, it may be said that the socialist leaders live in the party, grow old and die in its service.

We shall subsequently have occasion to refer to the smallness, in Germany, of the number of deserters from the socialist camp to join the other parties. In addition to these few who have completely abandoned socialism, there are some, who, after working on behalf of the party for a time, have left politics to devote their energies to other fields. There are certain men of letters, who rose in the party like rockets, to disappear with corresponding rapidity. After a brief and sometimes stormy activity, they have quitted the rude political stage to return to the peaceful atmosphere of the study; and often their retirement from active political life has been accompanied by a mental estrangement from the world of socialist thought, whose scientific content they had perhaps never assimilated. Among such may be mentioned: Dr. Paul Ernst, at one time editor of the “Volkstribüne”; Dr. Bruno Wille, who led the section of Die Jungen (the Young Men) to the assault upon the veterans of the party who were captained by Bebel and Liebknecht (1890); Dr. Otto Erich Hartleben, once dramatic critic of “Vorwärts,” but never a conspicuous member of the party; Dr. Ludwig Woltmann, delegate of the Rhenish manufacturing town of Barmen to the Congress of Hanover in 1899, where he was engaged in the defense of Bernstein, and who, after writing some socialist books which constitute notable contributions to sociology, subsequently devoted himself entirely to “political anthropology” with a strong nationalist flavour; Ernst Gystrow (Dr. Willy Hellpach); and several others, for the most part talented and highly cultured men who have made names for themselves in German belletristic literature or in German science, but who were not suited for enduring political activities. It has also happened more than once in the history of the social democracy that men dominated by a fixed idea, and inspired by the hope of concentrating upon the realization of this idea the whole activity of socialist propaganda, or of simply annexing socialism to the service of this obsession, have rushed into the party, only to leave it as suddenly with a chilled enthusiasm as soon as they perceived that they were attempting the impossible. At the Munich Congress of 1902, the pastor, Georg Welker of Wiesbaden, a member of the sect of Freireligiosen (Broad Church), inspired by all the ardor of a neophyte, wished to substitute for the accepted socialist principle that religion is to be considered as a private matter the tactically dangerous device Ecrasez l'infâme. Again, at the first Congress of Socialist Women, which was held contemporaneously with the Munich Socialist Congress, Dr. Karl von Oppel, who had recently returned from Cape Colony and was a new member of the socialist party, emphasized the need for the need for the study by socialists of foreign languages, and even foreign dialects, to enable them to come into more intimate contact with their brethren in other lands, and in his peroration insisted that the use of the use of the familiar “thou” should be made universal and compulsory in the intercourse of socialist comrades. Such phenomena are characteristic of the life of all parties, but are especially common among socialists, since socialism exercises a natural force of attraction for cranks of all kinds. Every vigourous political party which is subversive in its aims is predestined to become for a time an exercise ground for all sorts of innovators and quacksalvers, for persons who wish to cure the ills of travailing humanity by the use of their chosen specifics, employed exclusively in smaller or larger doses—the substitution of friction with oil for washing with soap and water, the wearing of all-wool underclothing, vegetarianism, Christian science, neomalthusianism, and other fantasies.

More serious than the loss of such casual socialists were the losses which the party sustained during the period of the early and fierce application of the antisocialist laws. At this time, in the period of reaction from 1840 to 1850, a large proportion of the leaders were forced to emigrate to America. [78] Still more serious were the losses sustained by the party during the Bismarckian regime. Bebel declares that at this time the number of those who were deprived of their means of livelihood and were forced to seek work and asylum on foreign soil ran into several hundreds. Of the nucleus of those who before the passing of the anti-socialist laws which unchained the tempest against the socialists, had worked actively in the party as propagandists, editors, and deputies, more than eighty left Germany, which most of them never revisited. “This involved a great draining of our energies.” [79] In the worst years the exodus was particularly strong. Thus in the year 1881, just before the elections had demonstrated the indomitable vitality of the German Socialist Party, Friedrich Wilhelm Fritzsche (ob. 1905) and Julius Vahlteich, the critic of Lassalle, both of them at one time leaders in the party of Lassalle and socialist deputies to the Reichstag, crossed the Atlantic never to return. [80] Notwithstanding the storm which raged for more than ten years against the socialist party, the number of those whose socialist activity survived this period of terror was very large. Obviously, then, in times of comparative calm the stability of the leaders must be considerably greater. The author has examined the lists of those present at the congresses held in 1893 by three of the international socialist parties, namely, the German social democrats, the Parti Ouvrier (Guesdistes) in France, and the Italian socialist party, in order to ascertain the names of those who in the year 1910 were still in the first rank of the fighters on behalf of socialism in their respective countries. The results of this inquiry, which cannot claim absolute scientific precision, but which have none the less considerable practical value, are as follows. Of the 200 delegates to the Congress of Cologne, 60 were still fighting in the breach in 1910; of the 93 delegates of the Congress of Paris, 12; and of the 311 delegates to the Congress of Reggio Emilia, 102. This shows a very high percentage of survivals, above all for the proletarian parties of Italy and Germany, but to a less extent for the Parti Ouvrier. The bourgeois parties of the left on the Continent will hardly find it possible to boast of a similiar continuity in the personnel of their leaders great and small. In the working-class parties we find that the personnel of the officials is even more stable than that of the leaders in general. The causes of this stability, as will be shown in the sequel, depend upon a complex of numerous phenomena.

Long tenure of office involves dangers for democracy. For this reason those organizations which are anxious to retain their democratic essence make it a rule that all the offices at their disposal shall be conferred for brief periods only. If we take into account the number of offices to be filled by universal suffrage and the frequency of elections, the American citizen is the one who enjoys the largest measure of democracy. In the United States, not only the legislative bodies, but all the higher administrative and judicial officials are elected by popular vote. It has been calculated that every American citizen must on an average exercise his function as a voter twenty-two times a year. [81] The members of the socialist parties in the various countries must to-day exercise similarly extensive electoral activities: nomination of candidates for parliament, county councils, and municipalities; nomination of delegates to local and national party congresses; election of committees; re-election of the same; and so on, da capo. In almost all the socialist parties and trade unions the officers are elected for a brief term, and must be reelected at least every two years. The longer the tenure of office, the greater becomes the influence of the leader over the masses and the greater therefore his independence. Consequently a frequent repetition of election is an elementary precaution on the part of democracy against the virus of oligarchy.

Since in the democratic parties the leaders owe their position to election by the mass, and are exposed to the chance of being dispossessed at no distant date, when forced to seek re-election, it would seem at first sight as if the democratic working of these parties were indeed secured. A persevering and logical application of democratic principles should in fact get rid of all personal considerations and of all attachment to tradition. Just as in the political life of constitutional states the ministry must consist of members of that party which possesses a parliamentary majority, so also in the socialist party the principal offices ought always to be filled by the partisans of those tendencies which have prevailed at the congresses. Thus the old party dignitaries ought always to yield before youthful forces, before those who have acquired that numerical preponderance which is represented by at least half of the membership plus one. It must, moreover, be a natural endeavour not to leave the same comrades too long in occupation of important offices, lest the holders of these should stick in their grooves, and should come to regard themselves as God-given leaders. But in those parties which are solidly organized, the actual state of affairs is far from corresponding to this theory. The sentiment of tradition, in cooperation with an instinctive need for stability, has as its result that the leadership represents always the past rather than the present. Leadership is indefinitely retained, not because it is the tangible expression of the relationships between the forces existing in the party at any given moment, but simply because it is already constituted. It is through gregarious idleness, or, if we may employ the euphemism, it is in virtue of the law of inertia, that the leaders are so often confirmed in their office as long as they like. These tendencies are particularly evident in the German social democracy, where the leaders are practically irremovable. The practice of choosing an entirely new set of leaders every two years ought long ago to have become general in the socialist party, as prototype of all democratic parties. Yet, as far as the German socialists are concerned, not merely does no such practice exist, but any attempt to introduce it provokes great discontent among the rank and file. It is true that one of the fundamental rules of the party, voted at the Mainz congress in 1900, lays down that at every annual congress the party must “renew,” by ballot and by absolute majority, the whole of the executive committee, consisting of seven persons (two presidents, two vice-presidents, two secretaries, and a treasurer). This would be the true application of the democratic principle, but so little is it commonly observed in practice, that at every congress there are distributed to the delegates who are about to elect their new leaders printed ballot papers bearing the names of all the members of the retiring committee. This proves, not merely that the reelection of these leaders is taken as a matter of course, but even that a certain pressure is exercised in order to secure their reelection. It is true that in theory every elector is free to erase the printed names and to write in others, and that this is all the easier since the vote is secret. None the less, the printed ballot paper remains an effective expedient. There is a French phrase, corriger la fortune; this method enables the leaders to corriger la democratie. [82] A change in the list of names, although this is simply the exercise of an electoral right established by the rules, is even regarded as a nuisance by most of the delegates, and is censured by them should it occur. This was characteristically shown at the Dresden congress in 1903. When the report spread through the congress that the revolutionary socialists of Berlin intended to remove from among the names on the ballot paper the name of Ignaz Auer, of whom they disapproved on account of his revisionist tendencies (an accusation which they subsequently repelled with indignation), the widespread anger aroused by the proposed sacrilege sufficed to overthrow the scheme.

It is in this manner that the leaders of an eminently democratic party, nominated by indirect suffrage, prolong throughout their lives the powers with which they have once been invested. The reelection demanded by the rules becomes a pure formality. The temporary commission becomes a permanent one, and the tenure of office an established right. The democratic leaders are more firmly established in their seats than were ever the leaders of an aristocratic body. Their term of office comes greatly to exceed the mean duration of ministerial life in monarchical states. It has been calculated that in the German Empire the average official life of a minister of state is four years and three months. In the leadership, that is to say in the ministry, of the socialist party we see the same persons occupying the same posts for forty years in succession. Naumann writes of the democratic parties: “Here changes in the leading offices occur less rapidly than in those of the secretaries of state of the ministers. The democratic method of election has its own peculiar loyalty. As far as individual details are concerned it is incalculable, and yet on general lines we can count upon its activity with more certainty than upon the policy of princes. Through all democracy there runs a current of slow-moving tradition, for the ideas of the masses change only step by step and by gentle gradations. While in the monarchical organism there is an abundance of ancient forms, we find no less in the democratic organism that the longer it exists the more does it become dominated by tenaciously established phrases, programs and customs. It is not until new ideas have been in progress up and down the country for a considerable time that these ideas can penetrate the constituted parties through the activity of particular groups that have adopted them, or as an outcome of a spontaneous change of opinion among the rank and file. This natural tenacity of parliaments which are the outcome of popular election is indisputable, be it advantageous or disadvantageous to the community.” [83] In democratically constituted bodies elsewhere than in Germany a simliar phenomenon is manifest. In proof of this, reference may be made to a paragraph in the rules drawn up on February 3, 1910, by the Italian General Confederation of Labor as to the proclamation of the general strike. The rule begins by declaring, in perfect conformity with democratic principles, that the declaration of a general strike must always be preceded by a referendum to the branches. To the terms of this referendum were to be appended the minutes of the session at which the Confederation of Labor had decided to submit the question. But the rule adds that if there should be disagreement between the executive council of the Federation and the results of the reference to the branches, if, for instance, the council had rejected the general strike while the referendum showed that the rank and file favored it, this difference must not be taken to imply a vote of censure on the leaders. [84] This shows that in the working-class organizations of Italy ministerial responsibility is not so strongly established as in the Italian state, where the ministry feels that it must resign if, when it has brought forward a bill, this bill is rejected by the majority of the Chamber. As far as concerns England, we learn from the Webbs that the stability of the officials in the labour organizations is superior to that of the employees in the civil service. In the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-Spinners we actually find that there is a rule to the effect that the officials shall remain in office indefinitely, as long as the members are satisfied with them. [85]

An explanation of this phenomenon is doubtless to be found m the force of tradition, whose influence assimilates, in this respect, the revolutionary masses to the conservatives. A contributory cause is one to which we have already referred, the noble human sentiment of gratitude. The failure to reeled a comrade who has assisted in the birth of the party, who has suffered with it many adversities, and has rendered it a thousand services, would be regarded as a cruelty and as an action to be condemned. Yet it is not so much the deserving comrade as one who is tried and expert whom the collectivity approves above all others, and whose collabouration must on no account be renounced. Certain individuals, simply for the reason that they have been invested with determinate functions, become irremovable, or at least difficult to replace. Every democratic organization rests, by its very nature, upon a division of labour. But wherever division of labour prevails, there is necessarily specialization, and the specialists become indispensable. This is especially true of such states as Germany, where the Prussian spirit rules, where, in order that the party may be safely steered through all the shoals and breakers that result from police and other official interference and from the threats of the penal laws, the party can be assured of a certain continuity only when a high degree of stability characterizes the leadership.

There is an additional motive in operation. In the working-class organization, whether founded for political or for economic ends, just as much as in the life of the state, it is indispensable that the official should remain in office for a considerable time, so that he may familiarize himself with the work he has to do, may gain practical experience, for he cannot become a useful official until he has been given time to work himself into his new office. Moreover, he will not devote himself zealously to his task, he will not feel himself thoroughly at one with the aim he is intended to pursue, if he is likely to be dismissed at any moment; he needs the sense of security provided by the thought that nothing but circumstances of an unforeseen and altogether extraordinary character will deprive him of his position. Appointment to office for short terms is democratic, but is quite unpractical alike on technical and psychological grounds. Since it fails to arouse in the employee a proper sense of responsibility, it throws the door open to administrative anarchy. In the ministries of lands under a parliamentary regime, where the whole official apparatus has to suffer from its subordination to the continuous changes in majorities, it is well known that neglect and disorder reign supreme. Where the ministers are changed every few months, every one who attains to power thinks chiefly of making a profitable use of that power while it lasts. Moreover, the confusion of orders and regulations which results from the rapid succession of different persons to command renders control extraordinarily difficult, and when abuses are committed it is easy for those who are guilty to shift the responsibility on to other shoulders. “Rotation in office,” as the Americans call it, no doubt corresponds to the pure principle of democracy. Up to a certain point it is adapted to check the formation of a bureaucratic spirit of caste. But this advantage is more than compensated by the exploitive methods of ephemeral leaders, with all their disastrous consequences. On the other hand, one of the great advantages of monarchy is that the hereditary prince, having an eye to the interests of his children and his successors, possesses an objective and permanent interest in his position, and almost always abstains from a policy which would hopelessly impair the vital energies of his country, just as the landed proprietor usually rejects methods of cultivation which, while providing large immediate returns, would sterilize the soil to the detriment of his heirs.

Thus, no less in time of peace than in time of war, the relationships between different organizations demand a certain degree of personal and tactical continuity, for without such continuity the political authority of the organization would be impaired. This is just as true of political parties as it is true of states. In international European politics, England has always been regarded as an untrustworthy ally, for her history shows that no other country has ever been able to confide in agreements concluded with England. The reason is to be found in this, that the foreign policy of the United Kingdom is largely dependent upon the party in power, and party changes occur with considerable rapidity. Similarly, the party that changes its leaders too often runs the risk of finding itself unable to contract useful alliances at an opportune moment. The two gravest defects of genuine democracy, its lack of stability (perpetuum mobile democraticum) and its difficulty of mobilization, are dependent on the recognized right of the sovereign masses to take part in the management of their own affairs.

In order to bind the leader to the will of the mass and to reduce him to the level of a simple executive organ of the mass, certain primitive democracies have at all times sought to apply, in addition to the means previously enumerated, measures of moral coercion. In Spain, the patriotic revolutionary Junta of 1808 insisted that thirty proletarians should accompany the general who was to negotiate with the French, and these compelled him, in opposition to his own convictions, to reject all Napoleon's proposals. In modern democratic parties, there still prevails the practice, more or less general according to the degree of development these parties have attained, that the rank and file send to the congresses delegates who are fettered by definite instructions, the aim of this being to prevent the delegate from giving upon any decisive question a vote adverse to the opinion of the majority of those whom he represents. This precaution may be efficacious in certain cases, where the questions concerned are simple and clear. But the delegate, since he has no freedom of choice, is reduced to the part of puppet, and cannot allow himself to be influenced by the arguments he hears at the congress or by new matters of fact which are brought to light in the course of the debate. But the result is, that not only is all discussion rendered superfluous in advance, but also that the vote itself is often falsified, since it does not correspond to the real opinions of the delegates. Of late fixed instructions have less often been given to the delegate, for it has become manifest that this practice impairs the cohesion so urgently necessary to every party, and provokes perturbations and uncertainties in its leadership.

In proportion as the chiefs become detached from the mass they show themselves more and more inclined, when gaps in their own ranks have to be filled, to effect this, not by way of popular election, but by cooptation, and also to increase their own effectives wherever possible, by creating new posts upon their own initiative. There arises in the leaders a tendency to isolate themselves, to form a sort of cartel, and to surround themselves, as it were, with a wall, within which they will admit those only who are of their own way of thinking. Instead of allowing their successors to be appointed by the choice of the rank and file, the leaders do all in their power to choose these successors for themselves, and to fill up gaps in their own ranks directly or indirectly by the exercise of their own volition.

This is what we see going on to-day in all the working-class organizations which are upon a solid foundation. In a report presented to the seventh congress of Italian labour organizations, held at Modena in 1908, we find it stated that the leaders must recognize capable men, must choose them, and must in general exercise the functions of a government. [86] In England these desiderata have already received a practical application, for in certain cases the new employees of the organization are directly chosen by the old officials. [87] The same thing happens in Germany, where about onefifth of the trade-union employees are appointed by the central power. Moreover, since the trade-union congresses are composed almost exclusively of employees, the only means of which the individual organized workers can avail themselves for the expression of their personal opinions is to be found in contributions to the labour press. [88] In the French labour movement, which claims to be the most revolutionary of all, the secretary of the Confédération Generale du Travail possesses the right of nomination when there is a question of electing new representatives to the executive committee of the federation. He exercises this right by sending to those Bourses du Travail which are not represented on the executive, a list of the comrades whom he considers suitable for this position, recommending the election of these. [89]

In the German socialist Party, the individual Landesvorstände, or provincial committees, and the central executive claim the right of veto over the selection of candidates. But this right of veto gives them a privilege of an essentially oligarchical character, elevating the committees to the rank of a true government, and depriving the individual branches of one of the fundamental rights of all democracy, the right of individual liberty of action. In Holland, again, the socialist candidatures for parliament must be approved by the party executive, and this executive is as irremovable as that of the German party. It rarely happens that an old member of the executive whose term of office has expired fails to obtain reelection should he desire it. It is in Holland also that we see such conspicuous pluralism among the party officials.

In the nomination of candidates for election we find, in addition, another grave oligarchical phenomenon, nepotism. The choice of the candidates almost always depends upon a little clique, consisting of the local leaders and their assistants, which suggests suitable names to the rank and file. In many cases the constituency comes to be regarded as a family property. In Italy, although democratic principles are greatly honored, we not infrequently find that when a representatives dies, or can no longer continue in office, the suffrages of the constituency are transferred without question to his son or to his younger brother, so that the position is kept in the family.

Those who love paradox may be inclined to regard this process as the first symptom marking the passage of democracy from a system of plebiscitary Bonapartism to one of hereditary monarchy.