University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II
ANALYSIS OF THE BOURGEOIS ELEMENTS IN THE SOCIALIST LEADERSHIP

SOCIALIST leaders, considered in respect of their social origin, may be divided into two classes, those who belong primarily to the proletariat, and those derived from the bourgeoisie, or rather from the intellectual stratum of the bourgeoisie. The lower middle class, that of the petty bourgeois, the minor agriculturists, independent artisans, and shopkeepers, have furnished no more than an insignificant contingent of socialist leaders. In the most favorable conditions, the representatives of this lower middle class follow the labour movement as sympathetic onlookers, and at times actually join its ranks. Hardly ever do they become numbered among its leaders.

Of these two classes of leaders, the ex-bourgeois, although at the outset they were naturally opposed to socialism, prove themselves on the average to be animated by a more fervent idealism than the leaders of proletarian origin. The difference is readily explained on psychological grounds. In most cases the proletarian does not need to attain to socialism by a gradual evolutionary process; he is, so to speak, born a socialist, born a member of the party—at least, this happens often enough, although it does not apply to all strata of the proletariat and to all places. In the countries where capitalist development is of long standing, there exists in certain working-class milieux and even in entire categories of workers a genuine socialist tradition. The son inherits the class spirit of the father, and he doubtless from the grandfather. With them, socialism is “in the blood.” To this it must be added that actual economic relationships (with the class struggle inseparable from these, in which every individual, however refractory he may be to socialist theory, is forced to participate) compel the proletarian to join the labour party. Socialism, far from being in opposition to his class sentiment, constitutes its plainest and most conspicuous expression. The proletarian, the wage-earner, the enrolled member of the party, is a socialist on the ground of direct personal interest. Adhesion to socialism may cause him grave material damage, such as the loss of his employment, and may even make it impossible for him to gain his bread. Yet his socialist views are the spontaneous outcome of his class egoism, and he endures the hardships to which they may lead all the more cheerfully because he is suffering for the common cause. He is comforted by the more or less explicit recognition or gratitude of his comrades. The action of the socialist proletarian is a class action, and in many cases it may notably favor the immediate interests of the individual.

Very different is the case of socialists of bourgeois origin. Hardly any of these are born in a socialist milieu. On the contrary, in their families the tradition is definitely hostile to the workers, or at least full of disdain for the aspirations of modern socialism. Among the bourgeois, just as much as among the proletarians, the son inherits the spirit of the father, but in this case it is the class spirit of the bourgeoisie. The young bourgeois has “in the blood” not socialism, but the capitalist mentality in one of its numerous varieties, and he inherits in addition an intellectualism which makes him proud of his supposed superiority. We have further, on the one hand, to take into account the economic conditions in which the bourgeois child is born and grows to maturity, and on the other the education which he receives at school, all of which predisposes him to feel nothing but aversion for the struggles of a working class pursuing socialist aspirations. In his economic environment he learns to tremble for his wealth, to tremble when he thinks of the shock his class will one day have to sustain when attacked by the organized masses of the quatrième état. Thus his class egoism becomes more acute, and is even transformed into an implacable hatred. His education, based upon official science, contributes to confirm and to strengthen his sentiments as a member of the master class. The influence which the school and the domestic environment exercise upon the youthful scion of the bourgeoisie is of such potency that even when his parents are themselves socialist sympathizers, and on moral and intellectual grounds devoted to the cause of the workers, it most commonly happens that his bourgeois instincts gain the upper hand over the socialist traditions of his family. We learn from actual experience that it is very rare for the children of socialists, when they have received the education of intellectuals, to follow in their parents' footsteps. The cases of the children of Marx, Longuet, Liebknecht, and Molkenbuhr, remain altogether exceptional. It cannot be doubted that the rarity of such instances is due to the methods of education which usually prevail in a socialist family, methods which have nothing in common with socialism. Even when it is otherwise, when the immediate family environment is not opposed to the development of the socialist consciousness, the young man of bourgeois origin is strongly influenced by the milieu in which he is brought up. Even after he has joined the Socialist Party, he will retain a certain solidarity with the class from which he has sprung; for example, in his relations with the servants in his household he will remain always an employer, an “exploiter,” in the sociological if not in the coarser sense of the latter term. For the bourgeois, adhesion to socialism signifies an estrangement from his own class, in most cases extensive social and ideal injury, and often actual material loss. In the case of the petty bourgeois, the evolution towards socialism may occur peacefully, for by his intellectual and social conditions the petty bourgeois is closely approximated to the proletarian, and above all to the better paid manual worker, from whom he is in many cases separated by purely imaginary barriers composed of all kinds of class prejudices. But the wealthier the family to which the bourgeois belongs, the more strongly it is attached to its family traditions, the higher the social position that it occupies, the more difficult is it for him, and the more painful, to break with his surroundings, and to adhere to the labour movement.

For the son of a wealthy capitalist, of an official in the higher ranks, or for a member of the old-established landed aristocracy, to join the socialists is to provoke a catastrophe. He is free to give himself up to vague and harmless humanitarian dreams, and even in private conversation to speak of himself as a “socialist.” But as soon as he displays the intention of becoming an active member of the Socialist Party, of undertaking public work on its behalf, of enrolling himself as an actual member of the “rebel” army, the deserter from the bourgeoisie is regarded by his own class as either a knave or a fool. His social prestige falls below zero, and so great is the hostility displayed towards him that he is obliged to break off all relations with his family. The most intimate ties are abruptly severed. His relatives turn their backs upon him. He has burned his boats and broken with the past.

What are the motives which may lead the intellectual to desert the bourgeoisie and to adhere to the party of the workers? Among those who do this we may distinguish two fundamental types.

There is first of all the man of science. The ends which he pursues are of an objective character, but to the vulgar these seem at first sight devoid of practical utility, and even fantastical and extravagant. The stimulus which drives him is idealistic in this sense, that he is capable of sacrificing all other goods to science and its gains. In thus acting, he obeys the powerful impulse of his egoism, though it is an egoism ennobled. Scientific coherency is an inborn need of his nature. Psychology teaches us that in human beings every free exercise of faculty produces a sentiment of pleasure. Consequently the sacrifices which the socialist man of science makes for the party serve to increase the sum of his personal satisfaction. Notwithstanding all the material injuries he will suffer as a bourgeois in joining the Socialist Party, he will have gained a greater inward content and will have a more tranquil conscience. In some cases, too, his sentiments will take the form of an ambition to render signal services to the cause. In his case, of course, this ambition is very different from the grosser ambition of those who look merely for an increase in personal well-being — for a career, wealth, and the like.

The second category consists of those who are inspired with an intense sentimental attachment to socialism, who burn, so to speak, with the sacred fire. Such a man usually becomes a socialist when he is quite young, before material considerations and precautions have erected a barrier in the way of obedience to the impulses of his sanguine and enthusiastic temperament. He is inspired with the ardor of the neophyte and the need for devoting himself to the service of his kind. The principal motives which animate him are a noble disdain for injustice and a love for the weak and the poor, a delight in self-sacrifice for the realization of great ideas, for these are motives which often give courage and love of battle to the most timid and inert characters. With all this, there is usually found in the socialist enthusiast of bourgeois origin a considerable dose of optimism, a tendency to overestimate the significance of the moral forces of the movement, and sometimes an excessive faith in his own selfabnegation, with a false mode of conceiving the rhythm of evolution, the nearness of the final victory, and the ease with which it will be attained. The socialist faith is also in many cases nourished by aesthetic sensibilities. Those endowed with poetical aptitudes and with a fervent imagination can more readily and intuitively grasp the extent and the depth of human suffering; moreover, the greater their own social distance from the imagined objects, the more are they able to give their fancies free rein. It is for this reason that among the ranks of those who are fighting for the emancipation of labour we find so many poets and imaginative writers, and so many persons of fiery, impassioned and impulsive dispositions. [186]

The question arises, which category is the more numerous, that of those who become socialists from reasoned conviction, or that of those who are guided by sentimental considerations. It is probable that among those who become socialists in youth the sentimentalists predominate, whereas among those who go over to socialism when they have attained maturity, the change is usually dictated by scientific conviction. But in most cases mixed motives are at work. Very numerous, in fact, are the bourgeois who have always given a moral approval to socialism, who have held that it is the only solution of the social problem which conforms to the demands of justice, but who do not make their effective adhesion to the doctrine until they acquire the conviction (which at times seizes them quite unexpectedly) that the aspirations of their heart are not merely just and beautiful, but also realizable in practice. Thus the socialist views of these persons are a synthesis of sentiment and science. In 1894, an inquiry was made as to the attitude towards socialism of the most distinguished Italian artists and men of learning. They were asked whether their sympathy with socialist aims, their indifference to socialism, or their hostility to the doctrine, was the outcome of a concrete investigation of socialist problems, or whether their feelings were of a purely sentimental character. The majority of those who replied declared that their attitude towards socialism was the outcome of a physical predisposition, reinforced by objective convictions. A similar answer might doubtless be given by the Marxists, notwithstanding their superb disdain for all ideology and sentimental compassion, and notwithstanding the materialism with which they love to dress their windows. In so far as they are not completely absorbed in party life, or rather so long as they have not been completely overpowered by the ties of party life, they display a strictness of principle which is essentially idealist. [187]

Not all those, indeed, who sympathize with socialism or have a rational conviction of the truth of socialist principles become effective members of the Socialist Party. Many feel a strange repugnance at the idea of intimate association with the unknown crowd, or they experience an aesthetic disgust at the thought of close contact with persons who are not always clean or sweet-smelling. Still more numerous are those held back by laziness or by an exaggerated fondness for a quiet life or, again, by the more or less justified fear that open adhesion to the party will react unfavorably upon their economic position. Sometimes the impulse to join the party is given by some external circumstance, insignificant in itself, but sufficient to give the last impetus to resolution: it may be a striking instance of social injustice which stirs a collective emotion; it may be some personal wrong inflicted upon the would-be socialist himself of upon one of those dear to him, when a sudden explosion of egoism finishes the slow work of altruistic tendencies. In other cases it is a necessity of fate, or the outcome of the illwill and stupidity of human beings, which forces the man who has been a secret socialist to cross the Rubicon, almost by inadvertence. For example, something may happen which discredits him in the eyes of the members of his own class, displaying to all the socialist ideas which he has hitherto jealously concealed. Many a person does not join the party of the workers until, after some imprudent manifestation of his own, an enemy has denounced him in the bourgeois press, thus placing him in a dilemma: he must either make a shameful retreat, at the cost of a humiliating retraction, or else must make public acknowledgment of the ideas which he has hitherto held secret. Such persons become members of the Socialist Party as young women sometimes become mothers, without having desired it. The Russian nihilist Netchajeff made the idea of unmasking these timid revolutionary-minded persons the basis of a scheme of revolutionary agitation. He contended that it was the revolutionist's duty to compromise all those who, while they shared most of his ideas, did not as yet share them all; in this way he would force them to break definitely with the enemy, and would gain them over completely to the “sacred cause.” [188]

It has often been asserted that the receptivity to socialist ideas varies in the different liberal professions. It is said that the speculative sciences (in the strictest sense of the term), such as philosophy, history, political economy, theology, and jurisprudence, are so profoundly imbued with the spirit of the past that those engaged in their study are refractory a priori to the reception of all subversive ideas. In the legal profession, in particular, it is contended there is inculcated a love of order, an attachment to the thing which is, a sacred respect for form, a slowness of procedure, and, if you will, a certain narrowness of view, which are all supposed to constitute natural correctives to the errors inherent in democracy. In a general sense, we are told, the deductive and abstract sciences are authoritative and aristocratic in spirit, and those who pursue these paths of study incline to reactionary and doctrinaire views. Those, on the other hand, engaged in the study of the experimental and inductive sciences are led to employ their faculties of observation, which conduct them gradually to wider and wider generalizations, and they must thus be easy to win over to the cause of progress. The doctor, above all, whose profession is a continual struggle against human misery, must carry in his mind the germs of the socialist conception.

An analysis of the professions of the intellectuals belonging to the various socialist parties does not confirm this theory. It is in Italy and France alone that we find a considerable number of medical men in the socialist ranks, and even here they are less numerous than the devotees of pure science, and conspicuously less numerous than the lawyers. In Germany, the relations between the socialist workers and those medical men who are least well-to-do (the doctors of the insurance-bureaux) are far from cordial. To sum up, it may be said in general terms that the doctor's attitude towards socialism is colder and more hostile than that of the abstract philosopher or the barrister. One reason for his may perhaps be that among doctors, more than among other intellectuals, there prevails, and has prevailed for the past forty years, a materialistically conceived and rigidly held Darwinism and Häckelism. A supplementary cause may be found in the cynicism, often pushed to an ego-centric extreme, by which many doctors are affected, as a natural reaction against the smell of the mortuary which attends their life-work and as an outcome of their experience of the wickedness, the stupidity, and, the frailty of the human material with which their practice brings them in contact.

In certain Protestant countries, in Holland, Switzerland, Great Britain, and America, we find a considerable number of the clergy among the socialists (but this is not the case in Germany, where the state is vigilant and powerful whilst the Lutheran Church is strict and intolerant). These ministers, we are told, make their adhesion to socialism on account of an elevated sense of duty towards their neighbor, but perhaps in addition there is operative the need which is no less strong in the preacher than in the popular orator, to be listened to, followed, and, admired by the crowd—it is of little importance whether by believers or unbelievers.

Here some reference may be made to the abundance of Jews among the leaders of the socialist and revolutionary parties. Specific racial qualities make the Jew a born leader of the masses, a born organizer and propagandist. First among these qualities comes that sectarian fanaticism which, like an infection, can be communicated to the masses with astonishing frequency; next we have an invincible self-confidence (which in Jewish racial history is most characteristically displayed in the lives of the prophets); there are remarkable oratorical and dialectical aptitudes, a still more remarkable ambition, an irresistible need to figure in the limelight, and last but not least an almost unlimited power of adaptation. There has not during the last seventyfive years been any new current agitating the popular political life in which Jews have failed to play an eminent part. Not a few such movements must be distinctively considered as their work. Jews organize the revolution; and Jews organize the resistance of the state and of society against the subversive forces. Socialism and conservatisim have been forged by Jewish hands and are impregnated with the Jewish spirit. In Germany, for example, we see on the one side Marx and Lassalle fanning the flames of revolution, and on the other, after 1848, Julius Stahl working as the brilliant theorist of the feudal reaction. In England, the Jew Disraeli reorganized the forces of the Conservative Party. We find Jews at the head of movements which marshal against one another the nationalities animated by a reciprocal hate. At Venice, it was Daniel Manin who raised the standard of liberty against the Austrians. During the Franco-German war, the work of national defense was organized by Gambetta. In England, Disraeli was the inventor of the watchword “the integrity of the British Empire,” while in Germany, the Jews Eduard Simson, Bamberger, and Larker, were the leading champions of the nationalist liberalism which played so important a part in the foundation of the empire. In Austria, Jews constitute the advance-guard of almost all the strongly nationalist parties. Among the German Bohemians, the Italian irredentists, the Polish nationalists, and in especial among the Magyars, the most fanatical are persons of Jewish race. The Jews, in fact, are capable of organizing every kind of movement; even among the leaders of antisemitism there are not wanting persons of Jewish descent.

The adaptability and the intellectual vivacity of the Jews do not, however, suffice to explain the quantitative and qualitative predominance of persons of Hebrew race in the party of the workers. In Germany, above all, the influence of Jews has been conspicuous in the labour movement. The two first great leaders, Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx, were Jews, and so was their contemporary Moses Hess. The first distinguished politician of the old school to join the socialists, Johann Jacoby, was a Jew. Such also was Karl Höchberg, the idealist, son of a rich merchant in Frankfort-on-the-Main, founder of the first socialist review published in the German language. Paul Singer, who was almost invariably chairman of the German Socialist Congresses, was a Jew. Among the eighty-one socialist deputies sent to the Reichstag in the penultimate general election, there were nine Jews, and this figure is an extremely high one when compared with the percentage of Jews among the population of Germany, and also with the total number of Jewish workers and with the number of Jewish members of the socialist party. Four of the nine were still orthodox Jews (Stadthagen, Singer, Wurm, and Haase). In various capacities, Jews have rendered inestimable services to the party: Eduard Bernstein, Heinrich Braun, Jakob Stern, Simon Katzenstein, and Bruno Schonlank, as theorists; Gradnauer, Eisner, and Josef Bloch, the editor of the “Socialistische Monatshefte,” as journalists; Hugo Heimann, in the field of municipal politics; Leo Arons, as a specialist in electoral affairs; Ludwig Frank, as organizer of the socialist youth. In Austria, the predominance of Jews in the socialist movement is conspicuous; it suffices to mention the names of Victor Adler, Ellenbogen, Fritz Austerlitz, Max Adler, F. Hertz, Therese Schlesinger-Eckstein, Dr. Diamand, Adolf Braun, etc. In America we have Morris Hillquitt, A. M. Simons, M. Untermann. In Holland, we have Henri Polak, the leader of the diamond workers, D. J. Wijnkoop, the independent Marxist, and M. Mendels. In Italy, Elia Musatti, Claudio Treves, G. E. Modigliani, Riccardo and Adolfo Momigliano, R. L. Foà, and the man of science Cesare Lombroso. Even in France, although here the role of the Jews is less conspicuous, we may mention the names of Paul Louis, Edgard Milhaud, and the shareholders of “l'Humanité” in 1904. The first congress of the Parti Ouvrier in 1879 was rendered possible by the liberal financial support of Isaac Adolphe Crémieux, who had been governor of Algeria under Gambetta.

In many countries, in Russia and Roumania for instance, but above all in Hungary and in Poland, the leadership of the working-class parties (the Russian Revolutionary Party excepted) is almost exclusively in the hands of Jews, [189] as is plainly apparent from an examination of the personality of the delegates to the international congresses. Besides, there is a great spontaneous export from Russia of Jewish proletarian leaders to foreign socialist parties: Rosa Luxemburg and Dr. Israel Helphant (Parvus) have gone to Germany; Charles Rappoport to France; Anna Kulishoff and Angelica Balabanoff to Italy; the brothers Reichesberg to Switzerland; M. Beer and Theodor Rothstein to England. Finally, to bring this long enumeration to a close, it may be mentioned that among the most distinguished leaders of the German anarchists there are many Jews, such as Gustav Landauer, Siegfried Nacht, Pierre Ramus, Senna Hoj (Johannes Holzmann).

The origin of this predominant position (which, be it noted, must in no sense be regarded as an indication of “Judaization,” as a symptom of dependence of the party upon the money of Jewish capitalist comrades) is to be found, as far at least as concerns Germany and the countries of eastern Europe, in the peculiar position which the Jews have occupied and in many respects still occupy. The legal emancipation of the Jews has not there been followed by their social and moral emancipation. In large sections of the German people a hatred of the Jews and the spirit of the Jew-baiter still prevails, and contempt for the Jews is a permanent feeling. The Jew's chances in public life are injuriously affected; he is practically excluded from the judicial profession, from a military career, and from official employment. Yet everywhere in the Jewish race there continues to prevail an ancient and justified spirit of rebellion against the wrongs from which it suffers, and this sentiment, idealist in its origin, animating the members of an impassioned race, becomes in them more easily than in those of Germanic blood transformed into a disinterested abhorrence of injustice in general and elevated into a revolutionary impulse towards a grandly conceived world-amelioration. [190]

Even when they are rich, the Jews constitute, at least in eastern Europe, a category of persons who are excluded from the social advantages which the prevailing political, economic, and intellectual system ensures for the corresponding portion of the Gentile population. Society, in the narrower sense of the term, is distrustful of them, and public opinion is unfavorable to them. Besides the sentiment which is naturally aroused in their minds by this injustice, they are often affected by that cosmopolitan tendency which has been highly developed in the Jews by the historical experiences of the race, and these combine to push them into the arms of the working-class party. It is owing to these tendencies that the Jews, guided in part by reason and in part by sentimental considerations, so readily disregard the barriers which the bourgeoisie endeavours to erect against the rising flood of the revolution by the accusation that its advocates are des sans patrie.

For all these reasons, the Jewish intelligence is apt to find a shorter road to socialism than the Gentile, but this does not diminish the obligations of the Socialist Party to the Jewish intellectuals. Only to the intellectuals, indeed, for the Jews who belong to the wealthy trading and manufacturing classes and also the members of the Jewish petty bourgeoisie, while often voting socialist in the elections, steadily refuse to join the Socialist Party. Here the interests of class prevail over those of race. It is very different with the Jewish intellectuals, and a statistical enquiry would certainly show that not less than 2 to 3 per cent of these are members of the Socialist Party. If the Socialist Party has always manifested an unhesitating resistance to antisemite sentiment, this is due not merely to the theoretical socialist aversion for all “nationalism” and all racial prejudices, but also to the consciousness of all that the party owes to the Jewish intellectuals.

“Antisemite socialism” made its first appearance about 1870. Eugen Dühring, at that time Privatdozent at the University of Berlin, inaugurated a crusade in favor of a “German” socialism as opposed to the “Jewish” socialism of Marx and his collabourators. [191] This movement was inspired by patriotic motives, for Dühring held that the victory of Marxian socialism could not fail to result in the complete subordination of the people to the state, to the advantage of the prominent Jews and their acolytes. [192] Towards 1875, Dühring became the center of a small group of Berlinese socialists of which Johann Most and the Jew Eduard Bernstein were members. The influence of this group, however, did not survive the great polemic which Dühring had to sustain with Friedrich Engels, the spiritual brother of “Marx the Jew.” [193] Dühring's influence upon the socialist masses in fact declined in proportion as his antisemitism became accentuated, and towards 1878 it was extinct. In 1894 another attempt was made to give socialism an antisemite tendency. This was the work of Richard Calwer, another socialist of strongly nationalist views, at that time on the staff of the “Braunschweiger Volksfreund.” “For every good Jewish writer,” he declared, “there will be found at least half a dozen who are altogether worthless, but who possess an extraordinary power of self-assertion and an inexhaustible flow of words, but no real understanding of socialism.” [194] Calwer's campaign had, however, no better success than that of Dühring. A year before, when petty bourgeois antisemitism was spreading through the country as an anti-capitalist movement which was forming itself into a poltical party and making victims everywhere, the Cologne congress (October 1893) took up a definite position towards this new political movement. Bebel's report (which in antisemite circles had been anticipated with satisfaction), although far from exhaustive, was inspired throughout by a sentiment friendly towards the Jews. Bebel said: “The Jewish student is as a rule industrious during the greater part of his university career, whereas the 'Germanic' student most commonly spends his time in the drinking-bars and restaurants, in the fencing-schools, or in other places which I will not here more particularly specify (laughter). [195] Wilhelm Liebknecht, in his well-known speech at Bielefeld, notably reinforced the impression hostile to antisemitism produced by the congress. Since that time (if we except certain observations made at the Lübeck congress in 1901 by the barrister Wolfgang Heine in a polemic against Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg [196] —remarks that were maladroit rather than expressions of principle, and at the worst foolish reminiscences of a youth passed as a leader in the Verein deutscher Studenten) the German socialists have remained immune to the virus of race hatred, and have shown themselves quite unconcerned when ignorant opponents have endeavoured to arouse popular prejudice against them by speaking of them as a party of “Jews and their satellites.”

We may now add certain observations upon the frequent adhesion to socialism of members of the plutocracy, an adhesion which at first sight seems so strange. Certain persons of a gentle and charitable disposition, abundantly furnished with everything that can satisfy their desires, are sometimes inspired by the need of undertaking propagandist activities. They wish, for example, to make their neighbors share in the well-being which they themselves enjoy. These are the rich philanthropists. In most cases their conduct is the outcome of hypersensitiveness or sentimentalism; they cannot endure the sufferings of others, not so much because they experience a genuine pity for the sufferers, but because the sight of pain arouses pain in themselves and shocks their aesthetic sense. They thus resemble the majority of human beings, who cannot bear to see pigeons slaughtered but whose sentiments in this respect do not impair their relish for a pigeon-pie.

In the sick brains of certain persons whose wealth is exceeded only by their love of paradox, there has originated the fantastic belief that in view of the imminence of the revolution they can preserve their fortunes from the confiscatory fury of the revolutionists only by making profession of the socialist faith, and by thus gaining the powerful and useful friendship of its leaders. It is this ingenuous belief which has thrown them into the arms of the socialists. Others, again, among the rich, hasten to enroll themselves as members of the Socialist Party, in the dread lest their lives should be threatened through the exasperation of the poor. [197] More frequently, however, as has been well shown by Bernard Shaw, the rich man is drawn towards socialism because he finds the greatest possible difficulty in procuring for himself any new pleasures. He begins to feel a disgust for the bourgeois world, and in the end this may stifle his class consciousness, or at least may suppress the instinct which has hitherto led him to light for self-preservation against the proletariat. [198]

It is a very striking phenomenon how large is the percentage of Jewish rentiers who become members of the Socialist Party. In part his may be due to the racial characteristics of the Jew to which reference has already been made. In part, however, it is the outcome of the psychological peculiarities of the wealthy man afflicted with satiety. In certain cases, again, the strongly developed love of acquisition characteristic of the Jews affords the explanation, where the possibility has been recognized of making a clever investment of capital even in working-class undertakings.

It may, however, be said without fear of error that the great majority of young bourgeois who come over to socialism do so, to quote an expression used by Felice Momigliano, in perfect sincerity and inspired by ardent goodwill. They seek neither popular approbation, nor wealth, nor distinctions, nor well-paid positions. They think merely that a man must set himself right with his own conscience and must affirm his faith in action.

These men, again, may be classed in two distinct categories. We have, on the one hand, the loving apostles of wide sympathies, who wish to embrace the whole of humanity in their, ideal. On the other hand we have the zealots, fierce, rigid, austere, and uncompromising.

But among the socialists of bourgeois origin we find other and less agreeable elements. Above all there are those who make a profession of discontent, the neurasthenics and the mauvais coucheurs. Yet more numerous are the malcontents from personal motives, “the charlatans, and the ambitious. Many hate the authority of the state because it is inaccessible to them. It is the old story of the fox and the grapes. They are animated by jealousy, by the unassuaged thirst for power; their feelings resemble those of the younger sons of great families who are inspired with hatred and envy towards their richer and more fortunate brothers. They are animated by a pride which makes them prefer the position of chief in proletarian Gaul to that of subordinate in aristocratic Rome. There are yet other types somewhat similar to those just enumerated. First of all, these are the eccentrics. It seems natural that those whose position is low should attempt to storm the heights. But there are some whose position is lofty and who yet experience an irresistible need to descend from the heights, where they feel that their movements are restricted, and who believe that by descending they will gain greater liberty. They seek "sincerity"; they endeavour to discover "the people" of whom they have an ideal in their minds; they are idealists to the verge of lunacy.

There may be added all those disillusioned and dissatisfied persons who have not succeeded in gaining the attention of the bourgeoisie to an extent proportionate to their own conception of their genius. Such persons throw themselves on the neck of the proletariat, in most cases with the vague and instinctive hope of attaining a speedier success in view of the deficient culture of the working classes, of gaining a place in the limelight and playing a leading part. They are visionaries, geniuses misunderstood, apostates of all kinds, literary bohemians, the unrecognized inventors of various social panaceas, ratés, rapins, cabotins, quack-salvers at the fair, clowns—all persons who are not thinking of educating the masses but of cultivating their own egos.

The numerical increase of the party, which is associated with an increasing prestige (in the popular esteem, at least, if not in the official word), exercises a great force of attraction. In such countries as Germany, above all, where the gregarious spirit is highly developed, small parties are condemned to a stinted and rickety existence. But numerous bourgeois believe that they will "find in the great Socialist Party what they have not been able to find in the bourgeois parties," a suitable platform for political activity upon a vast scale. For this reason, and above all when the party passes from opposition to governmental collabouration, there results a great increase in the number of those who regard the party as a mere means to their own ends, as a pedestal from whose elevation they can better satisfy their ambition and their vanity, those who regard success not as a goal to be attained for the good of the cause, or as the reward for arduous service in pursuit of ideal aims, but one coveted on its own account for the enlargement of their own personalities. As Arcoleo has well expressed it, we dread the triumph of such persons as if it were the unchaining of hungry wild beasts, but on closer examination we discover that after all they are no more than greedy molluscs, harmless on the whole. These considerations apply to petty affairs as well as to great ones. Whenever the party of the workers founds a cooperative society or a people's bank which offers to intellectuals an assured subsistence and an influential position, there flock to the scene numerous professional socialists who are equally devoid of true socialist knowledge and genuine socialist sentiment. In democracy as elsewhere success signifies the death of idealism.