University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III
SOCIAL CHANGES RESULTING FROM ORGANIZATION

THE social changes which organization produces among the proletarian elements, and the alterations which are effected in the proletarian movement through the influx of those new influences which the organization attracts within its orbit, may be summed up in the comprehensive customary term of the embourgeoisement of working-class parties. This embourgeoisement is the outcome of three very different orders of phenomena: (1) the adhesion of petty bourgeois to the proletarian parties; (2) labour organization as the creator of new petty bourgeois strata; (3) capitalist defense as the creator of new petty bourgeois strata.

1. The Adhesion of Petty Bourgeois to the Proletarian Parties

For motives predominantly electoral, the party of the workers seeks support from the petty bourgeois elements of society, and this gives rise to more or less extensive reactions upon the party itself. The Labor Party becomes the party of the “people.” Its appeals are no longer addressed simply to the manual workers, but to “all producers,” to the “entire working population,” these phrases being applied to all the classes and all the strata of society except the idlers who live upon the income from investments. Both the friends and the enemies of the Socialist Party have frequently pointed out that the petty bourgeois members tend more and more to predominate over the manual workers. During the struggles which occurred during the early part of 1890 in the German Socialist Party against the so-called “youths,” the assertion that during recent years a complete transposition of power had occurred within the party aroused a veritable tempest. On one side it was maintained that the proletarian elements were to an increasing extent being thrust into the background by the petty bourgeois. The other faction repudiated this accusation as a “calumny.” One of the best established generalizations which we obtain from the study of history is this, that political parties, even when they are the advocates of moral and social ideas of profound import, find it very difficult to tolerate the utterance of inconvenient truths. We have seen that the most unprejudiced enquiries are apt to be regarded as the outcome of a vicious tendency to fault-finding. The truth is, however, that an objective and searching discussion of the question leads us to recognize the wrongheadedness at once of those who are content flatly to deny the embourgeoisement of the Socialist Party and also of those who are content to sing the praises of the great socialist petty bourgeois party. Neither view is sound. The processes at work are too complex for solution by easy phrase-making.

It may sometimes happen (although statistical proof is lacking) that in South Germany in certain socialist branches, and still more in certain party congresses, the petty bourgeoisie, though not numerically predominant, can yet exercise a preponderant influence. It may even be admitted that under certain conditions the strength of the petty bourgeois elements and the respect which is paid to them may at times compromise the proletarian essence of the party. Even so rigid a Marxist as Karl Kautsky is of opinion that the attitude of socialists towards the minor distributive trade in general, so that, “on political grounds,” socialists must oppose the foundation of cooperative societies wherever, as often happens, small traders offer a favorable recruiting-ground for socialism. [199]

Wherever it has been possible to analyse the composition of the socialist party, and to ascertain the classes and the professions of its adherents, it has generally been found that the bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements, although well represented, are far from being numerically preponderant. The official statistics of the Italian Socialist Party present the following figures:—Industrial workers, 42.27%; agricultural labourers, 14.99%; peasant proprietors, 6.1%; independent artisans, 14.92%; employees, 3.3%; property owners, 4.89%; students and members of the liberal professions, 3.8%. [200] As regards the German Socialist Party, the writer has shown elsewhere [201] that in all the branches the proportion of proletarians is yet greater than in Italy, ranging from 77.4% to 94.7%. It may even be said, with Blank, that if there is a party in which the proletarian element predominates, it is the German Socialist Party—not indeed in respect of its voting strength, [202] but pre-eminently in respect of its inscribed membership. It is this social homogeneity which renders the Socialist Party so great an electoral force, giving to it a cohesion unknown to the other political parties, and especially to the other parties of the left German liberalism has always been (at any rate since the unification of the empire) a multicolored admixture of classes, united not so much by economic needs as by common ideal aims. Socialism, on the other hand, derives its human materials from the only class which presents those economic, social, and numerical conditions requisite to furnish the greatest possible vigour for the struggle to overthrow the old world and to install a new one in its place. Blind indeed must be he who fails to recognize that the spring which feeds the Socialist Party in Germany, a spring which shows no signs of running dry, is the proletariat, the class of wage-labourers.

We must therefore accept with all reserve the statements of those anarchizing socialists and bourgeois radicals who accuse the Socialist Party of “embourgeoisement” because it contains a certain number of small manufacturers and small traders. The embourgeoisement of the party is an unquestionable fact, but its causes will be found in a process very different from the entry into the organizations of the fighting proletariat of a few hundred members of the middle class. The chief of these causes is the metamorphosis which takes place in the leaders of working-class origin, with the resulting embourgeoisement of the whole atmosphere in which the political activities of the party are carried on. [203]

2. Labor Organization as the Creator of New Petty Bourgeois Strata.

The class struggle, through the action of the organs whereby it is carried out, induces modifications and social metamorphoses in the party which has come into existence to organize and control the struggle. Certain groups of individuals, numerically insignificant but qualitatively of great importance, are withdrawn from the proletarian class and raised to bourgeois dignity.

Where, as in Italy, the party of the workers contains a considerable proportion of bourgeois, most of the posts which the party has at its disposal are in the hands of intellectuals. In England, on the other hand, and still more in Germany, it is otherwise, for here the demand on the part of the socialist movement for employees is met chiefly by a supply of persons from the rank and file. In these countries the party leadership is mainly in the hands of the workers, as is shown by the following table: —

SOCIALIST GROUP IN THE REICHSTAG, 1903-6.

Consequently an entry into the party hierachy becomes an aim of proletarian ambition.

An ex-member of the German Socialist Party who some years ago, having entered the service of one of the bourgeois parties, amused himself by caricaturing his former comrades, declared that the whole party organization with all its various degrees of propagandist activity was “cut upon the military model,” and that the members were “promoted by seniority.” [204] There is at least this much truth in Abel's assertion, that to every member of the party the possibility of gradual advance remains open, and that each may hope, should circumstances prove exceptionally favorable, to scale the olympian heights of a seat in the Reichstag.

Proletarian leaders of the socialist parties and of the trade unions are an indirect product of the great industry. At the dawn of the capitalist era certain workers, more intelligent and more ambitious than their fellows, succeeded, through indefatigable exertions and thanks to favorable circumstances, in raising themselves to the employing class. Today, however, in view of the concentration of enterprise and wealth and of the high cost of production, such a transformation can be observed only in certain parts of North and South America (which explains, it may be mentioned in passing, the insignificant development of socialism in the New World). As far as Europe is concerned, where there is no longer any virgin soil to exploit, the “self-made man” has become a prehistoric figure. Thus it is natural that enlightened workmen should seek some compensation for the lost paradise of their dreams. Numerous are to-day the workers whose energies and aptitudes are not fully utilized in the narrow circle of their professional occupations, often utterly uninteresting and demanding purely mechanical labour. [205] It is chiefly in the modern labour movement that such men now seek and obtain the opportunity of improving their situation, an opportunity which industry no longer offers. The movement represents for them a new and loftier mode of life, and offers at the same time a new branch of employment, with a chance, which continually increases as the organization grows, that they will be able to secure a rise in the social scale. There can be no doubt that the Socialist Party, with its posts of honor, which are almost always salaried, exercises a potent stimulus upon active-minded youths of the working class from the very outset of their adhesion to its ranks. Those who are keen in political matters, and also those among the workers who possess talent as writers or speakers, cannot fail to experience the magnetic influence of a party which offers so rich a field for the use and development of their talents. Consequently we must accept as a logical truth what was pointed out by Guglielmo Ferrero, that while the adhesion of anyone of proletarian origin to the Socialist Party always presupposes a certain minimum of special aptitudes and favorable circumstances, yet such adhesion must be considered desirable and advantageous, not only upon ideal grounds and from motives of class egoism, but also for speculative reasons of personal egoism. For an intelligent German workman there is hardly any other way which offers him such rapid opportunities of “improving his condition” as service in the socialist army. [206] One of the first persons to recognize the bearing of these possibilities, and to utilize them, with considerable partisan exaggeration, for his own peculiar political ends, was Prince Bismarck. During the violent struggle between the government and the Socialist Party he declared: “The position of socialist agitator has to-day become a regular industry, just like any other. A man becomes an agitator or a popular orator as in former days he became a smith or a carpenter. One who adopts this new occupation is often much better off than if he had kept at his old work, gaining a more agreeable and freer life, one which in certain circles brings him more respect.” [207] The allusion to the agreeable and free life of the socialist agitator recalls a phrase used by William II, who, apropos of the Krupp affair, spoke of the “safe ambush” from which socialist editors could shoot their carefully aimed arrows of calumny. The emperor's criticism is unjust, for the socialist editor who departs from the truth is always exposed to the risk of prosecution and punishment. Bismarck hit the right nail on the head.

A gigantic and magnificently organized party like the German Socialist Party has need of a no less gigantic apparatus of editors, secretaries, bookkeepers, and numerous other employees, whose sole task is to serve this colossal machine. Mutatis mutandis the same is true of the other great branch of the working-class movement, the trade-union organizations. Now, for the reasons that have previously been discussed, there are available for the service of the German labour movement no more than a very small number of refugees from the bourgeoisie. It is for this reason that most of the posts are filled by men of working-class origin, who by zeal and by study have succeeded in gaining the confidence of their comrades. It may, then, be said that there exists a proletarian élite which arises spontaneously by a process of natural selection within the Socialist Party, and that its members come to perform functions altogether different from those which they originally exercised. To make use of a phrase which is convenient and comprehensible, despite its lack of scientific precision, we may say that such men have abandoned manual work to become brainworkers. For those who make such a change considerable advantages accrue, altogether independent of the advantages which attach per se to mental work when compared to manual. The manual worker who has become an official of the Socialist Party is no longer in a position of strictly personal and purely mercenary dependence upon his employer or upon the manager of the factory; he has become a free man, engaged in intellectual work on behalf of an impersonal enterprise. Moreover, he is bound to this enterprise, not solely by his strongest material interests, but also by the powerful ties of the ideal and of solidarity in the struggle. And notwithstanding certain exceptions which may confuse the minds of the profane, he is treated far more humanely than by an private employer. In relation to the party the employee is not a simple wage-earner, but rather a profit-sharing associate—not, of course, a profitsharer in the industrial sense, since the party is not a commercial undertaking for the earning of dividends, but a profitsharer in the ideal sense. It is not suggested that the party employee earns his bread in the most pleasant way in the world. On the contrary, as has been said in earlier chapters, the daily bread, which with rare exceptions is not unduly plentiful, must be earned by the fulfilment of an enormous amount of labour, prematurely exhausting health and energy. Nevertheless the exmanual worker can live with dignity and comparative ease. Since he has a fixed salary, his position is more secure, and though outwardly more stormy, it is inwardly more tranquil, than that of the ordinary wage-earner. Should he be imprisoned, the party cares for him and his dependents, and the more often he is prosecuted the better become his chances of rapid advancement in his career of socialist official with all the advantages attaching to the position.

We may here consider the interesting question, What is the numerical ratio between the socialist bureaucracy and the organized masses; how many comrades are there for each party official? If we include in the term “official” all the mandataries of the party in the communes, etc., most of whom are unpaid, we sometimes attain to surprising results. For example, the socialist organization of the grand duchy of Baden, with a membership (1905) of 7,332, had more than 1,000 municipal councilors. [208] According to these figures, every seventh member of the Badenese party had the honor of being a party representative. This example, however, was quoted by the executive in its report to the congress of Jena precisely on account of its abnormality. Even though it may not be unique in southern Germany, it does not in truth bear upon the question we are now considering, which is the numerical relation between the enrolled membership and the party employees in the strict sense of the term, considered as a group of persons permanently and directly engaged in the service of the collectivity. The following figures give some idea of this ratio. According to a notice which in 1904 went the round of the German socialist press, [209] the party at that time employed, in addition to 1,476 persons engaged in the party printing establishment (about two-thirds of whom enjoyed the benefits of the eighthour day, while many also had the right to regular holidays), 329 individuals working on the editorial staff and as delivery agents. The daily socialist press had in 1909 a circulation of one million, while the trade-union journals, weekly for the most part, had a far higher circulation. [210] Alike in the trade unions and in the Socialist Party the number of paid employees is rapidly increasing. The first regularly appointed and paid leaders in the European labour movement were the officials nominated in 1840 by the English Ironfounders' Society. Today in the trade-union organizations of the United Kingdom there are more than one thousand salaried employees. [211] In Germany, in the year 1898, the number of trade-union officials was 104; in 1904 it was 677, of whom 100 belonged to the metal-workers and 70 to the bricklayers and mason's union. This increase in the officialdom is accelerated, not merely by the steady increase in the membership, but also by the increasing complexity of the benefits offered by the organizations. Almost every meeting of the central executives discusses and determines upon the appointment of new officials, rendered essential by the further differentiation of the trade-union functions. There are always found advocates for the creation of fresh specialized posts in the labour movement, to fulfil various technical offices, to keep abreast of new discoveries and advances in methods of manufacture, to check the returns made by factory employers, to act as economists and compile trade statistics.

For some years past the same tendency has been manifest in the German Socialist Party. According to the report of the executive for the year 1909, very many district organizations now employ salaried secretaries. The number of district secretaries is 43, while in a single year the number of secretaries of constituencies increased from 41 to 62. There is a mutual aid society for officials of the Socialist Party and of the trade unions, and its membership continually increases. In 1902 it had 433 members; in 1905, 1,095; in 1907, 1,871; and in 1909, 2,474. But there must be officials who are not members of the society.

When he abandons manual work for intellectual, the worker undergoes another transformation which involves his whole existence. He gradually leaves the proletariat to become a member of the petty bourgeois class. At first, as we have seen, there is no more than a change in his professional and economic situation. The salaries paid by the party, although modest, are distinctly greater than the average wage which the worker gained before his entry into the socialist bureaucracy, and are calculated to enable the recipients to lead a petty bourgeois life. In one of the German Socialist Congresses, Wilhelm Liebknecht apostrophized the other leaders in the following terms: “You are for the most part aristocrats among the workers — aristocrats, I mean, in respect of income. The workers in the Erzgebirge or the weavers of Silesia would regard the salaries you earn as the income of a Croesus. [212] It is true, at least in the majority of cases, that the career of the party or trade-union employee does not positively transform the ex-manual worker into a capitalist. Yet this career effects a notable elevation of the worker above the class to which he primarily belonged, and in Germany there is applied to the existence led by such persons the sociologically precise term of gehobene Arbeiterexistenz (a working-class life on a higher scale). Karl Marx himself did not hesitate to classify the working-class leaders under two heads, as höherklassige (workers of a superior class, intellectual workers) and Arbeiter (manual workers properly speaking). [213] As we shall show in fuller detail in a subsequent chapter, the manual worker of former days becomes a petty bourgeois or even a bourgeois. In addition to this metamorphosis, and despite his frequent contact with the mass of the workers, he undergoes a profound psychological transformation. The paid official, living at a higher social level, will not always possess the moral strength to resist the seductions of his new environment. His political and social education will seldom suffice to immunize him against the new influences. August Bebel repeatedly drew the attention of the party to the dangers by which the leaders were beset, the risks to their class purity and to their unity of thought. The proletarian party-officials, he said, are “persons whose life has become established upon a comparatively stable basis.” [214]

A closer examination will show that the phenomenon here considered has a profound social significance, and that neither within nor without the party has it hitherto received the attention it deserves. For the German workers, the labour movement has an importance analogous to that of the Catholic Church for certain fractions of the petty bourgeoisie and of the rural population. In both cases we have an organization which furnishes opportunities to the most intelligent members of certain classes to secure a rise in the social scale. In the Church, the peasants' son will often succeed in achieving social advance, whose equivalent in all the other liberal professions has remained the monopoly of members of the aristocracy of birth or of wealth. No one of peasant birth becomes a general or a prefect, but not a few peasants become bishops. Pope Pius X was of peasant origin. Now that which the Church offers to peasants and to petty bourgeois, namely, a facility for ascent in the social scale, is offered to intelligent manual workers by the socialist party.

As a source of social transformations the Socialist Party has many affinities with another institution, namely, the Prussian military organization. The son of a bourgeois family who adopts a permanent military career becomes a stranger to his own class. Should he attain to high rank, he will receive a title from the emperor. He loses his bourgeois characteristics and adopts the usages and opinions of his new feudal environment. It is true that these military officers are only manifesting the tendency to the attainment of “gentility” in which the whole bourgeoisie is involved, [215] but in their case this process is greatly accelerated, and is effected with a full consciousness of its consequences. Every year hundreds of young men from the upper and middle strata of the bourgeois class become officers in the army, simply from the desire to secure a higher position and more social consideration. In the Socialist Party a similar effect is often the result of necessity, the individual's social metamorphosis taking place independently of the will. But the general results are similar.

Thus the Socialist Party gives a lift to certain strata of the working class. The more extensive and the more complicated its bureaucratic mechanism, the more numerous are those raised by this machine above their original social position. It is the involuntary task of the Socialist Party to remove the proletariat, to deproletarianize, some of the most capable and best informed of its members. Now, according to the materialist conception of history, the social and economic metamorphosis gradually involves a metamorphosis in the realm of ideas. The consequence is that in many of the ex-workers this embourgeoisement is very rapidly effected. Naturally the change is less speedy in proportion as socialist theory is more deeply rooted in the mind of the individual. Numerous are those manual workers who, having attained a higher social and economic situation, none the less remain throughout their lives profoundly attached to the socialist cause. In this case, however, the ex-manual worker is, just like the ex-bourgeois socialist, an “ideologue,” since his mentality does not correspond to his position in society. Sometimes, again, the psychological metamorphosis we are considering is, as it were, inhibited by a tenacious and vigourous hereditary socialist mentality: here we see the children and grandchildren following their parents as whole-hearted combatants on behalf of the labour party, notwithstanding the elevated position to which they have attained. Experience shows, however, that such cases are exceptional. Even when the deproletarianized socialist remains a sincere advocate of proletarian emancipation, and grows gray in his position of socialist editor or deputy, his children, sons as well as daughters, are thoroughgoing members of the higher social class into which they have been removed by the improvement in their father's social position, and this not merely in the material sense, but in respect of their ideas, so that it becomes impossible to distinguish them from their fellow-bourgeois. In most cases the only bond which remains to attach the father to the working class, his faith in the politico-social dogma of socialism, is slackened in the son to become an absolute indifference and sometimes an open hostility to socialism. To sum up, it may be said that these former working-class people, considered as families and not as individuals, are absorbed sooner or later into the new bourgeois environment. The children receive a bourgeois education; they attend better schools than those to which their father had access; their interests are bourgeois and they very rarely recall the revolutionary and antibourgeois derivation of their own entrance into the bourgeoisie. The working-class families which have been raised by the revolutionary workers to a higher social position, for the purpose of a more effective struggle against the bourgeoisie, thus come before long to be fused with the bourgeoisie.

Reference has previously been made to a similar phenomenon in the case of the families of working-class leaders who are refugees from the class of bourgeois intellectuals. The final result is the same, the only difference being that the children of the ex-manual workers forget their class of origin, while the children of the bourgeois intellectuals recall it. The result is that in the history of the labour movement we may observe a similar irony to that which may be seen in the history of the bourgeois resistance to the workers. The bourgeoisie has not been able to prevent a number of the best instructed, most capable, and most adroit among its elements from placing themselves at the head of the mortal enemies of the bourgeoisie; it is often these ex-bourgeois who stimulate the proletarians to resistance and organize them for the struggle. The proletariat suffers a similar fate. In the severe struggle it has undertaken for the expropriation of the expropriators, it elevates from the depths of its own class those who have the finest intelligences and the keenest vision, by serious collective sacrifices gives them the pen to use in place of ruder tools, and in doing so it throws into the arms of the enemy those who have been selected with the express purpose of fighting the privileged class. If the chosen combatants do not themselves go over to the enemy, their children at least will do so. This is indeed a tragical destiny: ex-bourgeois on the one side, and ex-manual workers on the other. The imposing political contest between the classes representing respectively capital and labour ends, however paradoxical this may appear, in a manner analogous with that which in the sphere of economic competition is determined through the operation of supply and demand, speculation, personal adroitness, etc.—in a social exchange among the classes. It is hardly necessary to repeat that this interchange of the ripples on the surface of the waves does not weaken, and far less annul, the profundity of social antagonisms. It is obvious that the process of social exchange can on either side effect no more than infinitesimal minorities. But it affects the most influential, and herein lies its sociological importance. It affects the self-made leaders.

3. Capitalist Defense as the Creator of New Petty Bourgeois Strata.

The embourgeoisement of certain strata of the working-class party has other factors in addition to the influence of the bureaucratic apparatus of the Socialist Party, the trade unions, and the cooperative societies. This development, which is a necessary characteristic of every movement towards emancipation, is to a certain extent paralleled by the constitution of a petty bourgeoisie of strongly proletarian characteristics, itself also developed from below upwards, itself also an accessory phenomenon of the struggle of the organized workers for social emancipation, but which takes place outside the various forms of socialist organization. We allude to those proletarian elements which become particularly numerous in times of crisis, when the labour organizations are still weak and persecuted, as was the case in Germany during the days of the antisocialist law. At such times numerous proletarians are victimized, it may be on account of their passive fidelity to party or trade union, it may be because their attitude is frankly socialist and “subversive.” Forced by necessity, these victims of capitalist reprisals have no other resource than to adopt some form of independent enterprise. Abandoning their ancient handicraft, they open a small shop, fruit and vegetables, stationery, grocery, or tobacco; they become pedlars, keep a coffee-stall, or the like. In most cases their ancient associates support them with admirable solidarity, regarding it as a duty to assist these unfortunate comrades by giving them their custom. It sometimes happens that some of these new petty bourgeois find their way definitely into the middle class. Thus capitalist resistance has automatically created new strata of petty bourgeois.

In addition to these victims of the struggle for proletarian emancipation, there are not a few workers who leave their class, not from necessity, but influenced to a large extent by the love of speculation and the desire to improve their social position. Thus there has come into existence a whole army of ex-proletarians, petty bourgeois and small shopkeepers, who all claim, in virtue of a superior moral right, that the comrades must support them by dealing exclusively at their establishments. The mode of life of these small traders often reduces them, despite all their good wishes, to the level of social parasites; their command of capital being extremely small, the goods they offer to their customers, that is to say to the organized workers, are both bad and dear.

Still more important in German socialism is the rôle of those who are termed Parteibudiger, that is to say tavern-keepers who are members of the party. During the prevalence of the anti-socialist law their political mission was of incontestable importance. In many small towns the tavern-keepers belonging to the party still exercise multifarious and important functions. It is in their houses that the executive committee meets; often these are the only places where socialist and trade-union journals are found on the tables; and in many cases, since the owners of other halls are hostile or timid, it is here alone that public meetings can be held. In a word, they are necessary instruments in the local socialist struggle. In the more important centers, however, these places, with their unhygienic environment, become a veritable curse to the party. It may be added that the brutal struggle for existence leads the petty bourgeois tavern-keepers to exercise improper pressure upon the socialist organizations. They enjoy a considerable influence among the comrades, and this pressure is commonly exerted in a manner directly injurious to the interests of the proletariat. The attempts which have been made in Germany, especially since 1890, to induce the workers to abandon the unwholesome rooms of the old taverns and to frequent the great modern establishments with fine airy halls, have led, as was inevitable, to “a vigourous opposition” on the part of the socialist tavern-keepers. [216] For many years the members of the party whose living is made by the sale of drink have energetically resisted the foundation of “People's Houses”; notwithstanding the sympathy for such institutions they may theoretically possess, they dread this new form of competition, and act in accordance with their immediate personal interests. In most cases their opposition has proved ineffectual. Not always, however. Even to-day there exist German towns with from twenty thousand to thirty thousand inhabitants in which the existence of a Parteikneipe (which despite its name of “Party tavern” is the exclusive property of some individual member of the party) has proved an insuperable obstacle in the way of the local labour organizations when they have desired to build a place of their own, or even to obtain from other and nonsocialist inkeepers the use of a more commodious hall for their meetings.

For an additional reason, these socialist taverns are calamitous in their influence upon the party, in that they oppose a potent obstacle to the extension of the temperance movement which has been initiated during recent years. It is no secret in socialist circles that long before the congress of Essen (1907) the party would have declared openly against alcoholism, and that after this congress it would have applied its decisions with greater vigour, had not the party leaders been restrained by the fear that the measures recommended, and even a simple temperance propaganda, would react injuriously upon the interests of an influential category of the members of the party.

It is impossible to determine with any accuracy the number of individuals who have become independent petty bourgeois as the outcome of the struggles of the workers and the political reprisals of the employers. Tobacconists, grocers, etc., elude statistical investigation. The only definite information we possess relates to tavernkeepers. In the parliamentary group we find that in 1892, of 35 socialist deputies, 4 were publicans (11.4%); in 1903, of 58 socialist deputies, 5 were publicans (8.6%); and in 1906, of 81 socialist deputies, 6 were publicans (7.4%). In the local socialist sections, the proportion of tavern-keepers is considerable. At Leipzig, in 1887, there were 30 Partiekneipen. In 1900, among the socialist branches of the Leipzig country districts with 4,855 members there were 84 restaurant-keepers and publicans (1.7%); in Leipzig city, where the socialists numbered 1,681, there were in 1900, 47 tavernkeepers, and in 1905, 63 (3.4%). Offenbach, in 1905, 1 668 members, 74 publicans and 2 retailers of bottled beer (4.6%). Munich, in 1906, 6,704 members; milkretailers, tobacconists, sellers of cheese, etc., and publicans (wine merchants not included), 369 (5.5%). Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1906, 2,620 members, 25 publicans (12 retailers of bottled beer and tobacconists excluded—approximately 1% ). Marburg, in 1906, 114 members, 2 publicans (1.8%). Reinickendorf-Ost, near Berlin, in 1906, 303 members, 18 tavernand restaurant-keepers (5.9%). These figures serve to show that in certain towns there is a socialist publican for every twenty members. Since the socialist publican depends mainly upon socialist customers, it follows that these twenty comrades must provide the chief financial resources of the enterprise.

The best proof of the numerical strength and the importance of this category of the members of the party is that they have founded at Berlin a powerful association, the Berlin League of Socialist Publicans and Innkeepers. It must not be forgotten that this association has largely come into existence from the consideration that the socialist publicans have other political tasks to fulfil from those which devolve upon their “bourgeois” colleagues, nor can it be denied that its members constitute a category of chosen socialists of tried fidelity, who have rendered important services to the party in its political campaigns and agitations, and whose socialist clientele is actuated by a high spirit of solidarity in giving these comrades its custom. It is inevitable, however, that the existence of such an organization, which represents peculiar economic interests, should in certain cases involve inconveniences, not merely for its competitors, the bourgeois publicans, but also for the socialist comrades, and that it should tend to assume the aspect of a party within the party. In the summer of 1906, the increase in the cost of production of beer, which resulted from new taxation by which the breweries were especially hard hit, led the publicans to raise the price to the consumers. Thereupon the German workers in a great many towns protested most energetically, and declared what was known as the “beer war,” boycotting certain breweries and the publicans who had raised the price—an agitation which led certain foreign socialists to observe sarcastically that you may take anything from the German worker except his beer. In this struggle, which was in many places conducted with great obstinacy, the organized workers encountered resistance from a notable proportion of socialist publicans. These, adopting a tactical outlook estranged from socialist principles, endeavoured to alarm the comrades by insisting upon the dangers of their campaign, and by predicting that if the consumers should succeed in forcing the producers to bear the new taxes, the government, delighted to find that these taxes were not pressing upon the masses of the people but were borne only by a restricted class of brewers and factory owners, would hasten to introduce new and yet heavier taxation, which could not fail to affect the consumers.

To sum up, it may be said that the petty bourgeois of proletarian origin, although the conditions of their life are not as a rule notably better than those of the proletarian strata from which they derive, constitute in more than one respect, on account of the particular interests they represent, a serious obstacle to the forward march of the working class legions. Moreover, it has to be remembered that the influence of this new stratum impresses upon the party from the mental point of view (in consequence of the new place which these elements occupy in the general economic process) a markedly petty bourgeois stamp.