University of Virginia Library

2. PART TWO
AUTOCRATIC TENDENCIES OF LEADERS

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.

2. CHAPTER II
THE FINANCIAL POWER OF THE LEADERS AND OF THE PARTY

IN the German Socialist Party desertion and treason on the part of the leaders have been rare. This is conspicuous in contrast with what has happened in the French Socialist Party, especially as regards the parliamentary group of the latter. The elections of August 20, 1893, sent to the Palais Bourbon six socialist deputies: Paulin Méry, Alphonse Humbert, A. Abel Hovelacque, Alexandre Millerand, Pierre Richard, and Ernest Roche. Of these, one only, the distinguished linguist and anthropologist, Hovelacque, remained faithful to the party to his death; the other five are now declared enemies of the Socialist Party. The part played by Millerand in socialism, a great one as is well known, came to an end in 1904. In his electoral address of May, 1906, the term “socialist” had passed into the background; he was running in opposition to the official socialist candidate, the sociologist Paul Lafargue, the son-in-law of Marx; his rôle was now that of an anticollectivist and patriotic bourgeois reformer. The other socialist ex-deputies in the above list had deserted their colors at an even earlier date. The trifling political shock which is associated with the name of General Boulanger sufficed to overthrow the house of cards which represented the socialist convictions of these warriors on behalf of the revolutionary proletariat of France. Today they are all vowed to the service of the clerico-nationalist reaction. Paulin Mery became one of the Boulangist leaders; in May, 1906, when, in the second ballot, he was opposed to the bourgeois radical, Ferdinand Buisson, the socialists of his constituency unhesitatingly cast their votes in favor of his opponent. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, Alphonse Humbert was one of the most ardent defenders of the general staff of the army. Ernest Roche, at one time a disciple of Auguste Blanqui, and then, in conjunction with Edouard Vaillant, one of the most noted leaders of the Blanquists, is now the lieutenant of Henri Rochefort; in a recent parliamentary election in the seventeenth arrondissement of Paris he was defeated by the reformist socialist Paul Brousse, although Brousse, the sometime anarchist and theoretical father of the propaganda by deed in western Europe, had recently forfeited the goodwill of the more revolutionary section of the workers (Brousse, as President of the Paris municipal council, had received Alfonso XIII as guest at the Hôtel de Ville, and this conduct was hardly in conformity with socialist principles). It is true that even to-day Roche still belongs to a Parti Blanquiste ni Dieu ni Maître which announces week by week in the “Intransigeant” meetings of a more or less private character, but this party is really fictitious, for though it has a few branches it does not count in political life; in all practical political questions this petty group works hand in hand with the antisemites and the nationalists, and in matters of theory, whenever Roche has occasion to allude to them, he proclaims himself le champion incorruptible de la République, du Socialisme et de la Patrie, his anticapitalism being extremely tame, but his jingoism fanatical. [90]

In contrast with this, the German Socialist Party shares with the Italian and the Belgian parties the good fortune of possessing faithful and devoted leaders. The leadership of the Ger-man party has been again and again reinforced by valuable accessions from the other parties of the left, such as Auguste Bebel, the bourgeois democrat, Max Quarck and Paul Bader, of the “Frankfurter Zeitung,” Paul Göhre and Max Maurenbrecher, who had previously founded the National Socialist Party in opposition to the socialists. On the other hand, it has suffered no extensive losses of significant personalties by desertion to the bourgeois camp. The only exceptions to this generalization relate to leaders of minor importance, such as Max Lorenz, [91] exeditor of the “Leipzige Volkszeitung,” who subsequently passed through the gate of National Socialism to gain a secure position as editor of the “Antisozialdemokratische Korrespondenz”; the young Count Ludwig Reventlow, who in 1906 became a deputy in the antisemite interest; and a few other academic personalities of minor importance, besides one or two exceptional converted proletarians, such as the basketmaker Fischer. It would not be right to regard as treason in the strict sense of the term a simple passage from the Socialist Party properly so-called to some other form of militant socialism, such as happened in the case of socialists as fervent and convinced as the deputy Johann Most, the noted binder of Augsburg, and Wilhelm Hasselmann, the chemist, another deputy, who after 1890 broke openly with the party, to adhere first to antiparliamentary socialism and subsequently to anarchism. To speak of these men as “deserters” would be to identify the notion of desertion of the organized party with desertion of the idea of working-class emancipation. But even if we count as deserters from socialism those who have gone over to the ranks of the anarchists, we are compelled to admit that among the apostates from the German Socialist Party there has not been one of those who have occupied a leading position in the party.

The fighting proletariat in Germany has hitherto been spared the spectacle of its former representatives seated on the government benches surrounded by the enemies of the socialists. There has in Germany been no such figure as Aristide Briand, yesterday advocate of the general strike and counsel for the defense of men prosecuted for antimilitarism, who had expressly declared himself in full sympathy with the anti-militarist theory plutôt l'insurrection que la guerre, and to-day, as Minister of Public Instruction, approving no less vigourously and explicitly the measures of repression enforced by his colleagues in the Cabinet against antimilitarists. Germany has not known a John Burns, who as a labour leader in 1886 played a prominent part in the organization of huge demonstrations of the unemployed, at which open reference was made to the possible need for destroying the palaces and sacking the shops, and whose activities had led to a panic in the bourgeois world of the English capital, but who a few years later as President of the Local Government Board, when a motion was brought forward in Parliament at the instance of the Labor Representation Committee demanding the intervention of Parliament on behalf of the unemployed, replied that he was neither a publichouse politician nor a soft-hearted philanthropist prepared to squander the money of hard-working citizens upon the socalled unemployed, and who advised the workers to save their money in good times and not to spend it upon unworthy objects. Such disillusionments, experienced at the hands of men in whose sincerity and firmness of character the organized workers had an ingenuous confidence, have a politically discouraging and morally enervating effect. They tend to lead the workers to indifferentism, or to onesided specializations, such as the new unionism, or an exclusive belief in the cooperative movement, or, again, to certain forms of libertarian aspiration, and to alienate them from the thought of political organization, and from a considered and measured parliamentary activity. We see this, above all, in France, where the case of Briand was merely a sequel to that of Millerand, and the case of Millerand a sequel, if you will, to the case of Louis Blanc, and where the great mass of the manual workers are split up into the two sections of those who advocate the most defiant abstentionism and of those whose minds are dominated by the spirit which the French aptly term jemenfichisme. [92] The fact that the socialist parties of Germany, Italy, and Belgium have hitherto been free from the disturbing and demoralizing effects of such episodes furnishes the chief if not the only reason for the unlimited and often blind confidence which is displayed, as no unprejudiced observer of the members of these parties can fail to notice, in the “tried and trusted” leaders. In Germany, indeed, the authority which this spirit gives to the party leaders, and which continually accentuates the tendency towards centralization, is enormously reinforced by the spirit of organization, by the intense need for guidance, which characterizes the German proletariat, and also by the comparative poverty of the party in individuals of intellectual pre-eminence and of those possessing economic independence. Owing to these exceptional conditions, the leaders are preserved from the disintegrating influence of personal and tactical dissensions, which would otherwise have led them into conflicts with the masses of the party similar to those that have raged with such violence in Italy and in Holland, notwithstanding the stability and the authoritative position of the socialist leaders in these latter countries.

It may be said of the German socialist leaders that they have not yet lost contact with the masses; that there still prevails complete harmony between the form and the content of their tactics even when there should be a conflict between these; that the community of ideas between leaders and led has not yet been broken; and, to sum up, that the executive committee of the party, and also (though perhaps less perfectly) the parliamentary socialist group, still represent the average opinion of the comrades throughout the country. The confidence which the organized German workers give to those that represent them in the complex game of politics is based upon the security which the leaders offer at once from the moral and the political point of view. This security incontrovertibly exists. The manner in which the masses entrust their interests to the leaders is, historically at least, legitimate and explicable. But the causes of the stability of the leaders are naturally, like all causes, complex. Among various explanations, it has been suggested that all the virtue of the German labour leaders lies in the fact that they have never been exposed to serious temptations, so that it resembles that of a young woman who has never been courted. There is a certain element of truth in this explanation, in so far as we have to do with that special political virtue which consists in the faithful defense of the party flag. In a state where parliamentary government does not exist, where the ministers of state are chosen by the sovereign from among the leading officials of the administration without any regard to the parliamentary majority, and where consequently no direct path to office is open to popular representatives, the possibility of intellectual corruption, that is to say of a more or less complete change of front on the part of the socialist leaders under the influence of a desire for ministerial office, is ipso facto excluded, just as is excluded an adhesion to the party of bourgeois social reform of the revolutionary socialists who aim at changing the very base of the existing economic order. On the other hand, Arturo Labriola, who has followed the German movement with keen interest and lively sympathy, is undoubtedly right in his caustic prediction that as soon as the day comes when the German Government is willing to afford itself the luxury of a lukewarm liberal ministry, since the socialists are really not difficult to satisfy, the “reformist infection” will spread far even in Germany. He adds that the germs of this infection are already widely diffused. [93]

Yet although it is true that the feudal structure of the German Empire, which is still reflected in the laws and in the collective mentality of the country, imposes necessary limits upon the ambition of the labour leaders, it must be admitted that the fact we are now considering does not find an adequate explanation in the mere lack of temptation. Moreover, temptation, in the vulgar and material sense of the term, is no more lacking in Germany than elsewhere. No government, however autocratic, has ever neglected a chance of corrupting the austere virtue of the leaders of any movement dangerous to authority, by the distribution of a portion of those secret service funds which every state has at its disposal, and which have been voted by the popular representatives themselves. Nevertheless, it may be affirmed that the leaders of the German labour movement, even if they do not possess that evangelical morality of which we find so many examples in the early days of the Italian labour movement, have yet always resisted any attempts to corrupt their integrity by bribes. We need hardly reckon as an exception, the case which has not yet been fully cleared up of the president of the Allgemeiner Deutsche Arbeiterverein, Johann Baptist von Schweitzer, in the year 1872, for it seems probable that the fiery Bebel, who secured Schweitzer's condemnation and expulsion from the party, was in reality altogether in the wrong. [94] Even the subordinates in the leadership of the party, those whom we may speak of as the non-commissioned officers, have usually proved altogether inaccessible to the blandish-ments of the police. They have sometimes accepted bribes, but always to hand them over at once to “Vorwärts” or some other socialist paper, in which there has then appeared an invitation to the owner of the money to come and claim it personally within a certain number of days, since if unclaimed it would be handed over to the party funds.

The unshaken fidelity of the German socialist leaders rests upon powerful reasons, and some of these are ideal in nature. The characteristic love of the German for his chosen vocation, devotion to duty, years of proscription and of persecution shared with other comrades, the isolation from the bourgeois world of the workers and their representatives, the invincible conviction that only a party of a compact and solid structure will be able to translate into action the lofty aims of socialism, and the consequent aversion for any socialist struggle conducted by free-lances outside the ranks of the organized party—such are some of the numerous reasons which have combined to produce in the minds of the German socialists a love for their organization enabling it to resist the most violent storms. This attachment to the party, often manifested by fine and moving actions, certainly represents one of the most solid elements in the foundation upon which has been erected the edifice of German socialism. It enables us to understand the conduct of the socialist leaders during and after numerous crises which, in the view of the profane, would necessarily terminate in the open abandonment of the party by a number of its leaders. It is their love for the party, with which the great majority of the comrades feel themself to be identified, which has led such men as Eduard Bernstein and Kurt Elsner to retain their membership after violent conflicts which had almost led to their expulsion. It is proper to add that in the course of this struggle these men have always preserved the personal dignity without which a self-respecting man cannot possibly remain among his companions-at-arms.

These ideal motives are reinforced by motives, no less important, of a material order. The practice of paying for the services rendered to the party by its employees creates a bond which many of the comrades hesitate to break, and this for a thousand reasons. The pecuniary remuneration for services to the party which is given by the German social democracy immunizes the party employees against the grosser forms of temptation. Whereas in France, England, Holland, Italy, and elsewhere, socialist propaganda, spoken and written, is effected chiefly by volunteers, in the German Socialist Party gratuitous propaganda is practically unknown. Elsewhere than in Germany, socialist activity is based upon individual enthusiasm, individual initiative, and individual devotion; but in Germany it reposes upon loyalty, discipline, and the sentiment of duty, encouraged by pecuniary remuneration. In the history of the non-German socialist parties, for example, we find important periodicals, such as the “Avanguardia Socialista” of Milan and the “Nieuwe Tijd” of Amsterdam, which have been founded by individual initiative, and which are maintained by the political idealism of a few individuals. These continue to carry on their work although the expenses of the venture often exceed the income, and although those who write for the papers in question are unpaid or almost wholly unpaid. In Germany, on the other hand, the “Vorwärts” of Berlin, the “Leipziger Volkszeitung” and the “Neue Zeit” were founded and sustained by the party as a whole, and have a paid editorial staff and paid contributors. It would nevertheless be quite wrong to suppose that socialist propagandists and socialist officials are paid on a scale which enables them with the hard-earned pence of the workers to lead that luxurious existence which, with an ignorance bordering on impudence, is often ascribed to them by the “respectable” press and the loungers of the clubs. The life of a socialist journalist is far from resembling that of a spendthrift or a libertine; his day's work is by no means an easy one, his labours demand an abundance of self-denial and sacrifice and are nervously exhausting; whilst the remuneration he receives is a modest one when compared with the gravity and the difficulty of his task. No one will deny this who has even an elementary acquaintance with the conditions of work and pay in the socialist press and with the life led by the employees of the party. Men of the ability and education of Karl Kautsky, Max Quarck, Adolf Müller, and a hundred others, would have been able, had they chosen to devote themselves to some other service than that of the workers, to obtain a material reward much greater than that which they secure in their present positions.

This reference to the practice of the German Socialist Party of remunerating all services rendered was necessary to enable the reader to understand rightly certain peculiarities of German socialist life. But it must not be supposed that there is no unpaid socialist work in Germany. In country districts where the organization is still poor, and in the case of small weekly papers whose financial resources are inconsiderable, much gratuitous work is done by the socialists. In not a few places, moreover, the local comrades do not receive pay for any of the speeches they make. A witness to the idealism which, despite all difficulties, continues to flourish in the working class is the way in which during elections and at other times many working-class socialists sacrifice their Sunday rest in order to do propagandist work in the country, vigourously distributing leaflets, electoral addresses, socialist calendars, etc. This gratuitous work is often carried out, not only under conditions involving the patient endurance of exposure and privation, but also in face of all kinds of abuse and of the danger of arrest on the most trivial pretexts, and of attacks made by excited antisemitic or clerical peasants.

In general, however, the German practice is to pay for all services io the party, from the most trifling notice contributed to a newspaper to the lengthiest public discourse. Whilst this deprives the party to a large extent of the spirit of heroism and enthusiasm, and of work done by voluntary and spontaneous collabouration, it gives to the organization a remarkable cohesion, and an authority over the personnel which, though doubtless detracting from its elasticity and its spirit of initiative, and, in essence, tending to impair the very socialist mentality, constitutes none the less one of the most important and indispensable bases of the party life.

Able critics of socialist affairs, such as Ernst Günther, have endeavoured to explain the fact that persons of recognized ability and worth have preferred as a rule to subject themselves to the party-will rather than to break completely with the organization, by the suggestion that had they decided otherwise they would have imperilled their political existence, and would have renounced “the possibility of continuing to represent efficiently the interests of the workers.” [95] It is unquestionable that the socialist platform is now the best one from which to advocate the interests of the workers, and is historically the most appropriate, so that the renunciation of this platform almost always involves the loss of the opportunity for defending working-class interests. But it is no less indisputable that “to the average man the close association of his own economic existence with his dependence upon the Socialist Party seems a sufficient excuse” for the sacrifice of his own convictions in order to remain in a party with which he is in truth no longer in full sympathy. [96]

It has been written: Staatserhaltend sind nur jene, Die vom Staate viel erhalten. [97]

For all their exaggeration, there is a nucleus of truth in these words, and the criticism applies with equal justice to the party as to the state. The practice of paying for all services rendered, tends in no small degree to reinforce the party bureaucracy, and favors centralized power. Financial dependence upon the party, that is to say upon the leaders who represent the majority, enshackles the organization as with iron chains. The most tenaciously conservative members of the organization are, in fact, those who are most definitely dependent upon it. When this dependence attains to a certain degree of intensity, it exercises a decisive influence upon the mentality. It has been noted that in those countries in which members of parliament are not salaried, but where the party organizations themselves provide for the support of their parliamentary representatives, the deputies have a very strong sense of dependence upon the members of their organizations. Where, on the contrary, members of parliament are remunerated by the state, they feel themselves before all to be parliamentarians, even though they may owe their election exclusively to the Socialist Party.

It is well known that the numerical strength of the trade unions depends to a very considerable extent upon the economic advantages which the unions offer to their members. The success of the trade-union movement from this point of view has suggested to the German socialists that the Socialist Party should extend to the rank and file of the membership some of the advantages which have hitherto been the exclusive privilege of the party bureaucracy. Otto Gerisch, treasurer of the party and member of the executive committee, referred to this possibility in a speech on the problem of organization, made at the Bremen Congress of 1904. [98] After quoting facts proving the superiority of the trade-union organization over that of the party, he stated that in his view the real reason of this superiority was to be found in the “accumulation of benefits” which the unions provided for their members. He added that the workers did not prove faithful to their unions until these organizations undertook the practice of mutual aid on the large scale, but that thereafter the membership increased enormously and became far more stable. Continuing this train of thought, he said: “It is characteristic that the Königsberg comrades, who, in view of the advanced position they occupy in the German socialist movement, must certainly be held to possess extensive experience in matters of organization and propaganda, provide subsidies to members of the party to meet funeral expenses. This practice has been introduced for a very good reason. We are at a disadvantage in the Socialist Party as compared with the trade unions, in that we cannot offer any direct advantages to our members. But this will not always be the case.” It seems doubtful if these words are to be interpreted as a direct announcement of the intention to introduce a system of mutual life-insurance, or whether Gerisch merely intended a warm recommendation of such a measure. Oda Olberg, who was present at the congress on behalf of the Italian socialist paper “Avanti,” interpreted the words in the former sense, and described the speech as a “menace of degeneration.” [99] It is certain that in the German Socialist Party tendencies exist towards laying greater stress upon such material advantages, tendencies which might lead to the transformation of the party organization into a socialistically tinged proletarian assurance society. It is evident that an evolution in this direction would attract to the party hundreds of thousands of new members, so that there would be a considerable accession of strength. At the same time the apparatus of the socialist bureaucracy would be greatly developed. The effects which such an evolution would have upon the real strength of the party vis-a-vis the state, upon its moral impetus, its internal unity, and its tactical cohesion, are questions which cannot be discussed here. For our purpose it has been enough to draw attention to the influence which the practice of paying for services rendered has upon the maintenance and the reinforcement of the organization.

In aristocratic regimes, so long, at least, as the aristocracy retains its essentially plutocratic character, the elected officials are usually unpaid. Their functions are purely honorary, even when they require the whole time of those who undertake them. They are members of the dominant class, are assumed to be rich, to make it a point of honor to spend money for the public good, and to occupy, even at considerable pecuniary sacrifice, eminent positions in the service of the state. A similar practice prevails even in modern democracies. The Lord Mayor of London and his colleagues in the other great cities of England are unpaid. The same is true of the Italian Syndics. Inasmuch as the entertainment allowances, etc., are usually altogether inadequate, the holders of such offices must be men of considerable private means to enable them to support the necessary charges, and they must therefore be either wealthy parvenus or men born to wealth. Similar considerations apply to Italian parliamentary representation. In Italy the government opposes the idea of paying salaries to members of parliament, on the ground that it would be improper for the elected of the nation to receive base money for their activities. The consequence is that in Italy, since the Italian socialist party is a poor one, the manual workers are a priori excluded from parliament. Among the thirty-six socialist deputies in the Italian chamber during 1909, two only had been manual workers (trade-union leaders). In such conditions it is likely that the party representation in the legislature will be restricted to persons with private means, to those, that is to say, who have time and money which they are able to devote to an unremunerative occupation, and one which demands frequent changes of residence, In France, moveover, where the salaries of the deputies are on a liberal scale, it has been noted that the poorest constituencies are represented in parliament by the richest members.

Even in certain democratic parties the assumption of official positions in the party may be regarded as an honorary office, especially where the organization is not well supplied with means. Thus there not infrequently arises within the party a peculiar form of financial authority, since the comrades who are better endowed with means, gain and retain influence through the pecuniary services which they render. A plutocratic supremacy of this nature exists in the press of those parties which, lacking means for the independent maintenance of their own organs, are forced to depend upon the pecuniary assistance given by well-to-do comrades. The result, of course, is that these latter, as principal shareholders in the newspaper, possess a natural right of controlling its policy. A typical example of this is found in France, where for a time “l'Humanité” was supported by a syndicate of wealthy Jews. Again, in choosing delegates to the party congresses, the preference is often given to those who are able and willing to pay their own traveling expenses. In this way it results that the congresses, which constitute the supreme authority of the party, often come to be chiefly composed, like the parliamentary group in certain countries, of persons who are comparatively well-to-do. This is what happens in Italy, France, Holland, etc. As far as Germany is concerned, this is less likely to occur, partly because very few members of the Socialist Party are well off, and partly because of the flourishing condition of the party finances. In Germany, therefore, the financial superiority of the rich comrade over the poor one is often replaced by the superiority of the rich branch. It is naturally very difficult for the organizations that are short of money to send delegates to the party congress, especially if this is held in a distant city. Consequently these poor branches, when they are unable to appoint as delegate some one who has the time, the means, and the will to undertake the journey at his own expense, are compelled to abandon the idea of being represented at the congress. It should be added that public opinion within the party has often shown itself strongly adverse to the practice, stigmatizing the delegates who are appointed on these terms as “mandataries by accommodation,” and regarding the conferring and the acceptance of such a mandate as a treason to the party and as a form of corruption. At the Bremen congress of 1904, in the case of Fehndrich, it was loudly denounced as a veritable crime. Such accusations are often unjust, for more spirit of sacrifice and love of duty are commonly needed to induce a comrade to attend a congress at his own cost than would be the case if he had a week's holiday at the expense of his local branch.

Nevertheless it remains true that as regards representation at party congresses, the smaller sections are in a position of ser-ious inferiority. Numerous proposals have been made for the remedy of this state of affairs. For instance, in order to realize the democratic postulate of the equal representation of all districts, in the years 1903 and 1904 the section of Marburg proposed that all the costs of delegation should be defrayed by the central treasury. This proposal was not accepted, and consequently another attempt was made to find a remedy, and this has taken the form of uniting numerous local branches into provincial federations. Thus the rules of the provincial federation of Hesse-Nassau contain a clause to the following effect: “Those local branches of the federation which are unable to pay the costs of delegation to the congress will draw lots every year to select one among their number, and the branch thus chosen will have the right to send a delegate to the congress at the expense of the federation.” It may be noted in passing that five of the branches out of the ten of which the federation consists have to avail themselves of this privilege.

A party which has a well-filled treasury is in a position, not only to dispense with the material aid of its comparatively affluent members, and thus to prevent the acquirement by these of a preponderant influence in the party, but also to provide itself with a body of officials who are loyal and devoted because they are entirely dependent on the party for their means of subsistence. Before the year 1906, when the payment of members was conceded by the German state, the German Socialist Party had provided the salaries of its deputies. In this way the party leaders, poor men for the most part, were enabled to enter parliament without being in a position to emancipate themselves from the party, or to detach themselves from the majority of the parliamentary group of socialists—as has happened in France with the formation of the group of “independent socialists.” The French Socialist Party has been forced to recognize the danger involved in the existence of leaders who are not economically dependent on the party. In those countries in which the representatives of the people are not paid by the government nor salaried by the party, the danger of plutocracy arises from the fact that the members of parliament must necessarily be men of means; but in France such a danger arises in the opposite way, for here not only are the deputies paid, but they are paid at the high rate of £600 a year. Consequently it has occurred to the French socialists to adopt a measure which shall at once reduce the financial supremacy of its representatives at the Palais Bourbon and provide a steady accession to the party funds, and they have decreed that every deputy elected under the aegis of the party must pay over one-fifth of his salary, £120 per annum, to the party treasury. Many of the French socialist deputies, in order to elude this obligation, have simply resigned their membership of the party. Among the causes which in the year 1905 led to the formation of the new parliamentary socialist group, the so-called independent socialists, the chief was certainly the desire to escape this heavy tax, and to preserve intact for themselves the fine round sum paid as salary by the state. Even in the case of the deputies who, in order to preserve their seats, have found it expedient to accept as a matter of principle their liability to the party treasury, the majority have shown little alacrity in the discharge of this liability. Year after year, in fact, at the party congresses, there have been interminable discussions as to the means to be adopted to compel the recalcitrant socialist deputies to discharge their financial obligations. And yet (and here is one of the ironies of history) it has not taken long to discover that to despoil the deputies of a portion of their salary does not after all constitute the most efficacious means of preventing the formation within the party of an oligarchy of plutocrats. From the report made to the congress of Nimes (1910) by the executive committee it appears that of the 128,000 francs which constitute the party revenue, more than half, 67,250 francs to be precise, was made up by the contributions of the socialist members of parliament. Such a state of affairs is eminently calculated to favor the predominance of the deputies, who become the financial props of the party administration, and thus are persons of importance whom the rank and file must treat with all possible respect.

Speaking generally, when the manual workers become employers it is not found that they are easy masters. They are prone to mistrust, and are extremely exacting. Were it not that these employees have as a rule abundant means of escaping from the influence of their many-headed masters, they would be worse treated—so runs the complaint—than by any private employer. In relation to the salaried officials, every member of the organization considers himself a capitalist and behaves accordingly. Moreover, the manual workers often lack any criterion for the appreciation of intellectual labour.

In Rome, many societies for cooperative production make it a principle to pay their commercial and technical managers on the same scale as their manual workers. In Germany, too, for a long time the same tendency prevailed. At the assembly of the Christian miners held at Gelsenkirchen in 1898, the demand found expression that Brust, one of the leaders, should continue manual work as a miner, since otherwise he would forfeit the esteem of his comrades. At the socialist congress held at Berlin in 1892 a motion was discussed for many hours in accordance with which no employee of the party was to be paid a salary exceeding £125 per annum; whilst at the congress of Frankfort in 1894 the proposal to increase the salary of the two party secretaries by £25 had to be withdrawn, since the voting was indecisive, although the ballot was taken several times. For a long time in the German Socialist Party there continued to prevail the erroneous view that the salaries paid to the party employees, and even the disbursements made to propagandists on account of expenses and time lost, were a sort of gratuity, a “pourboire.” In the case of the socialist newspapers, the editor was often worse paid than the business manager and even than the compositors. Matters have changed since then, but there always exists a tendency on the part of the manual workers which induces them to endeavour to keep down the salaries of the party officials to the level of what is paid to a factory hand. A few years ago a trade union passed a motion to the effect that the employees of the union should be paid by the hour, and on the same scale as that which prevailed in the branch of industry to which they belonged as trade unionists. Even now, in fixing the salaries of their own employees, many of the comrades adopt as a principle that the remuneration ought to be less than that which is paid for the same work by capitalist employers. Speaking generally, however, it may be said that the German working class is now accustomed to pay its employees liberally. This improvement is explicable, in part, from the improved financial position of the trade unions and of the Socialist Party. But there is another reason. The employees have succeeded in withdrawing the question of their salaries from the publicity of the congresses and of reserving the discussion of this question for private committees.

In France, on the other hand, the tendency among the workers to stint their employees has gained ground, especially of late, since the deputies to the Chamber have been allotted salaries of £600 a year. The indignation against the “Quinze Mille” (15,000 francs) has been so great that in many cases the manual workers have been unwilling to pay their employees in the trade unions more than the tenth part of this sum, the modest annual salary of £60. During 1900-1901, the three employees of the Confédération Générale du Travail (the secretary, the treasurer, and the organizer) received in all only 3,173 francs (i.e., a little over £40 a year each). The two chief employees of the Printers' Federation receive an annual salary of £144 each, whilst the treasurer receives £48 a year. The Metal-workers' Federation regards itself as extraordinary in engaging three employees at a salary of £ 112 per annum and (in 1905) seven district secretaries at salaries of £95 each.

In Italy there has not yet come into existence a numerous general staff of employees salaried by the Socialist Party and the trade-union organizations. This is chiefly explicable by lack of funds. For many years it has been necessary to improvise secretaries, administrators, and treasurers of trade unions and local branches, to find them from day to day by appealing to the goodwill and devotion of the comrades. Before 1905, the Printers' Federation was the only one which had special employees for bookkeeping and for the administration of the funds. Even to-day the life of the labour organizations is extremely rudimentary and is exposed to great vicissitudes. Of late years, indeed, the number of permanent employees of the federations and the Bourses du Travail has undergone a continuous increase, but these employees are still very badly paid. We are told by Rigola that the salary has been raised from 100 lire to 200 lire a month, and that “no self-respecting organization will now offer less.” But this increase does not suffice to provide a remedy, for 200 lire will not induce a skilled workman to abandon his trade to become a trade-union leader. Nothwithstanding this, if we are to believe the trade unionists, even in Italy some of the trade-union leaders are already manifesting that tendency to grow fat and idle for which the leaders of the rich English labour organizations have sometimes been reproached.

The meagerness of the salaries paid to their employees by the Socialist Party and the trade unions is not due solely to that employers' arrogance and arbitrariness from which the working class is by no means exempt when it becomes an employer. Where the younger organizations are concerned, the trouble may arise simply from lack of means. Moreover, in paying at a low rate there is a practical end in view, the desire being that the employees should serve for love of the cause, and not with an eye to the material advantages attaching to their office. It was hoped that in this way the idealism of the leaders would be artificially fostered, and that it would be possible to prevent them from raising themselves above the social level of their proletarian comrades. During the early and revolutionary period of the labour movement, whether economic or political, such attempts were made in every country of the world. The labour organizations have not always been satisfied with paying their employees on a stingy scale, but members of the party or the union have even been forbidden to accept the money which the state paid to those who became members of parliament. Among the reasons which in the year 1885 induced the socialists of Berlin to abstain from participation in the elections to the Prussian Landtag, the chief was the consideration that the fifteen marks a day which the members of this body receive would tend to lift the socialist members out of their class.

In practice, however, the grudging payment of the leaders which at least in the early days of the trade-union movement was a deliberate policy, has proved to be a very untrustworthy safeguard against possible breaches of duty.

For the great majority of men, idealism alone is an inadequate incentive for the fulfillment of duty. Enthusiasm is not an article which can be kept long in store. Men who will stake their bodies and their lives for a moment, or even for some months in succession, on behalf of a great idea often prove incapable of permanent work in the service of the same idea even when the sacrifices demanded are comparatively trifling. The joy of self-sacrifice is comparable to a fine gold coin which can be spent grandly all at once, whereas if we change it into small coin it dribbles imperceptibly away. Consequently, even in the labour movement, it is necessary that the leaders should receive a prosaic reward in addition to the devotion of their comrades and the satisfaction of a good conscience. Quite early in the history of the organizations formed by the Italian agricultural workers we find in a manual written for the guidance of these that if the capolega or chief of the union is to do his duty it would be well to pay him for his work. [100]

For two additional reasons it is necessary that the employees should be adequately paid. The first of these is a moral one, belonging to the department of socialist ethics. The labourer is worthy of his hire. In Marxist terminology, the worker who does not receive pay correspondent to the social value of his work is being exploited. The other reason belongs to the sphere of practical politics. To pay the leaders poorly as a matter of principle is dangerous precisely because it stakes everything upon the single card of idealism. Eduard Bernstein is right in contending that underpayment leads to corruption and demoralization. [101] The leader who is poorly paid is more likely to succumb to temptation, more likely to betray the party for gain, than one who, being well paid, finds in his occupation a safe and sufficient income. Moreover, the payment of the leaders at a low rate renders difficult the application of another preventive means against the establishment of an oligarchy, for it hinders frequent changes in the personnel of the leading employees, and thus indirectly favors the formation of an oligarchy. In France, where it is still the rule to pay the tradeunion leaders very small salaries, there is lacking a new generation of leaders ready to take the place of the old, and for this reason at the trade-union congresses the same members continually appear as delegates.

If, however, the non-payment of the party leaders or their remuneration on a very moderate scale does not afford any safeguard for the observance of democratic principles on the part of the officials, we have on the other hand to remember that an increase in the financial strength of the party, which first renders liberal payment of the officials possible, contributes greatly to nourish the dictatorial appetites of the members of the party bureaucracy, who control the economic forces of the party in virtue of their position as administrators. In the history of Christianity we learn that as the wealth of the Church increased, there increased also the independence of the clergy, of the ecclesiastical employees, vis-à-vis the community. As representatives of the community they were in charge of the goods. Consequently all those who had need of these goods, or wished in any way to speculate upon them, were dependent upon the clergy. This applied not only to mendicants and to all kinds of receivers of alms, but also to those whose aim it was to swell the ranks of the clergy, or to succeed to the positions of these, all aspirants to sacerdotal honors. For the administration of the funds and for the conduct of affairs, Christianity needed a graded corps of employees. This was the origin of the hierarchy which changed the inner meaning of Christianity and perverted its aims. A similar danger is encountered by all democratic parties which possess an elabourate financial administration. This danger is especially marked in the case of the German Socialist Party, whose central organization in the year 1908 employed merely in its printing office 298 persons, and all of these, having no share whatever in the net profits, nor any rights in the management of the social property, depend upon the party just as they might depend upon any ordinary private employer. In the hands of the party bureaucracy are the periodical press, the publication and sale of the party literature, and the enrollment of orators in the list of paid propagandists. All these sources of income can at any time be closed to undesirable competitors or to dissatisfied members of the rank and file, and this power is utilized in actual practice. The concentration of power in those parties which preach the Marxist doctrine is more conspicuous than the concentration of capital predicted by Marx in economic life. For some years past the leaders of the German Socialist Party have employed numerous methods of oppression, such as the threat to give no aid either in men or money on behalf of the electoral propaganda of a candidate from whose views they dissent, although the local comrades give this candidate their full confidence. It is hardly necessary to say that such a practice as this accords ill with the principles of liberty and fraternity. In this way have come into existence strict relationships of dependence, of hierarchical superiority and inferiority, engendered by the invisible force of the great god Money, and this within the bosom of the working-class party which has taken as its motto Blanqui's phrase, ni Dieu ni Maître.

Brief allusion may be made in conclusion to another kind of economic pressure which labour organizations are able to exercise. Publicans whose houses are frequented chiefly or exclusively by members of the working class, or small shopkeepers whose customers consist mainly of working women, are indirectly if not directly dependent, in the economic sense, upon the party and upon the trade union. They are dependent, that is to say, upon the leading personalities in these organizations, who, by declaring a boycott, can involve them in absolute ruin.

3. CHAPTER III
THE LEADERS AND THE PRESS

THE press constitutes a potent instrument for the conquest, the preservation, and the consolidation of power on the part of the leaders. The press is the most suitable means of diffusing the fame of the individual leaders among the masses, for popularizing their names. The labour press, and this applies equally to the trade-union journals and to those which devote themselves predominantly to political ends, is full of panegyrics concerning the personalities of the leaders, of references to their “disinterestedness and self-sacrificingness,” to their “ardent idealism, conjoined with a vigourous force of conviction and with invincible tenacity,” qualities which, we are told, have alone made it possible for them to create the great working-class organizations. Such flattering phrases as are from time to time used of the socialist leaders by the capitalist press (mostly dictated by motives of electoral opportunism) are complacently reproduced by socialist journals, and whether taken at par value or not they serve, by their diffusion among the socialist rank and file, to increase the prestige of the leaders.

It is true that the press cannot exert the immediate influence which the popular propagandist exercises over his audience in public meetings, debates, and party congresses. In compensation for this defect, however, the circle of influence of the written word is far more extensive. The press can be used with effect to influence public opinion by cultivating a “sensation”—a point in which modern party democracy exhibits a fundamental trait which it shares with Bonapartism. This means is frequently employed by the leaders in order to gain or to retain the sympathy of the masses, and to enable them to keep the guidance of the movement in their own hands. The democratic press is also utilized by the leaders in order to make attacks (more or less masked) upon their adversaries; or to launch grave accusations against persons of note in the world of Politics or finance. These attacks may or may not be established upon a sufficient foundation of proof, but at any rate they serve to raise a duststorm. Sometimes, again, the leaders endeavour to ingratiate themselves with the masses by employing in respect of their capitalist opponents, coarse and insulting language which recalls the proverbial “Billingsgate.” All means are good to the popularity hunter, and he varies them to suit his environment.

The manner in which the leaders make use of the press to secure their domination naturally varies from one country to another in accordance with variation in national customs. Where the party organization and the force at its disposal are still weak, the influence of the leaders is direct and personal. The consequence is that in France, in England, and in Italy, where the popular character still presents a strongly individual stamp, the democratic leader presents himself as personally responsible for what he writes, and signs his articles in full. An article which appears in “Le Socialiste” in Paris will attract attention, not so much on account of its own merits, but because at the foot it displays in large type the signature of a Jules Guesde. The leader imposes his influence upon the masses directly, manifesting his opinion openly, often giving it the form of a decree, published in the most conspicuous part of the paper. From the aesthetic and ethical points of view, this is, moreover, the best form of journalism, for the reader has a right to know the source of the wares which are offered him, and this altogether apart from the consideration that to all public activity there should be applied the fundamental moral principle that each one is responsible to all for his conduct. For the aspirants to leadership, again, the practice of signing newspaper articles has the incontestable advantage that it makes their names known to the masses, and this facilitates their gradual rise in the scale of representative honors until they attain to the highest.

In other countries, as for instance in Germany, the faith of the masses in authority is so robust that it does not require to be sustained by the prestige of a few conspicuous individualities. Hence journalism is here almost always anonymous. The individual contributor disappears behind the editorial staff. The journal does not serve to diffuse the writers' names far and wide, and regular readers are often totally ignorant of the individualities of the staff. This explains the comparative unimportance of the personal role played by German publicists when compared with those of most other countries; it explains their small part in public life, and the trifling social consideration they enjoy. But this must not be taken to mean that the anonymous press fails to serve the leaders as an instrument of domination. Since the German journalist is identified with the whole editorial staff, and even with the entire party, the result is that his voice appeals to the public with the entire force of this collective authority. His personal ideas thus acquire a prominence and attain an influence which would otherwise be lacking. What the individual member of the staff loses through his anonymity, in respect of direct influence upon the masses, is gained by the journalist leaders as a group. The editorial “we,” uttered in the name of a huge party, has a much greater effect than even the most distinguished name. The “party,” that is to say the totality of the leaders, is thus endowed with a special sanctity, since the crowd forgets that behind an article which thus presents itself under a collection aspect there is concealed in the great majority of cases but one single individual. In Germany it is not difficult to observe that the anonymous polemical and other articles of “Vorwärts,” the central organ of the party, are regarded by the rank and file, and especially in Prussia, as a sort of periodical gospel, as a Bible in halfpenny numbers. It is more especially for the publication of violent personal attacks that anonymous journalism furnishes convenient and almost tempting opportunities, guaranteeing moral and legal impunity. Behind the shelter thus afforded by anonymity those of base and cowardly nature are apt to lurk in order that they may launch thence in safety their poisoned arrows against their personal or political adversaries. The victim of aggression is thus for four separate reasons placed in a position of inferiority. The rank and file consider the censure which has been expressed against him as having been uttered in the name of a principle or a class, as emanating from a superior and impersonal region, and as consequently of an extremely serious character and practically indelible. On the other hand, the whole editorial staff feels itself responsible for what has been published, for the anonymous article is regarded as published with the unanimous consent of the collectivity; the result is that the whole staff makes common cause with the aggressor, and this renders it almost impossible to secure any reparation for the wrong which hs been committed. Further, the person attacked does not know who is the aggressor, whereas if he knew the latter's name he might be able to understand the motives for the attack instead of being forced to fight a shadow. Finally, if he is by chance able to unveil the personality of the aggressor, journalistic etiquette forbids him to undertake his defense on lines directed against the aggressor individually, and he is thus deprived of one of the most efficient methods of defense. It recently happened that a writer in the German socialist press, who had attacked another member of the party, when this latter made a reply which unquestionably demanded a rejoinder, refused to continue the discussion because the person attacked had addressed his reply, not to the editorial staff generally, but “to one single member of that staff,” who was in fact the aggressor. The reason given for this refusal was that in thus replying to an individual instead of to the staff the second writer had “infringed the most elementary decencies of party life.” [102]

The obliteration of personality in German journalism has favored the institution, in connection with the socialist press of that country, of what are known as “correspondence bureaux.” These organizations, which are managed by some of the writers of the party, transmit every day to the socialist press information relating to special branches, such as foreign politics, cooperative questions, and legislative problems. The bureaux owe their origin in great part to the spirt of intense economy which dominates the party press. They confer upon this press a stamp of great uniformity, since dozens of newspapers receive their inspiration from the same source. Further, they insure the supremacy of a small closed group of official journalists over the independent writers—a supremacy which is manifested chiefly in the economic sphere, since those who write for the correspondence bureaux seldom play any notable part in the political life of the party.

In all cases the press remains in the hands of the leaders and is never controlled by the rank and file. There is often intercalated between the leaders and the mass an intermediate stratum of press commissaries who are delegated by the rank and file to exercise a certain supervision over the editorial staff. In the most favorable circumstances, however, these functionaries cannot aspire to more than a very small share of power, and constitute merely a sort of inopportune and untechnical supplementary government. Speaking broadly it may be said that it is the paid leaders who decide all the political questions which have to do with the press.

4. CHAPTER IV
THE POSITION OF THE LEADERS IN RELATION TO THE MASSES IN ACTUAL PRACTICE.

IN the political organizations of the international proletariat, the highest order of the leaders consists chiefly of members of parliament. In proof of this it suffices to mention the names of a few men who were or are the most distinguished socialist leaders of their day, at the same time men of note as parliamentarians: Bebel, Jaurés, Guesde, Adler, Vandervelde, Troelstra, Turati, Keir Hardie, Macdonald, Pablo Iglesias. Hyndman is an exception only because he has never succeeded in winning an election. The section of the English party to which he belongs is unrepresented in parliament.

The fact here noted indicates the essentially parliamentary character of the modern socialist parties. The socialist members of parliament are those who have especially distinguished themselves in the party by their competence and by their capacity. But in addition to this superiority, recognized and consecrated by the party itself, there are two reasons for the great authority exercised by the socialist parliamentarian. In the first place, in virtue of his position, he largely escapes the supervision of the rank and file of the party, and even the control of its executive committee. He owes his comparative independence to the fact that the parliamentary representative is elected for a considerable term of years, and can be dispossessed by no one so long as he retains the confidence of the electors. In the second place, and even at the moment of his election, his dependence on the party is but indirect, for his power is derived from the electoral masses, that is to say, in ultimate analysis from an unorganized body. It is true that in certain countries the independence of the party organization thus enjoyed by the parliamentary deputies is subject to limits more or less strict according to the degree of organization and cohesion of the party. But even then the respect and the power enjoyed by the parliamentarians remains unquestioned, since it is they who within the party fill the principal offices, and whose power predominates to a notable degree in the party executive. This is true, above all, of Germany. Where the rules torbid the deputy to function also as a member of the executive committee (in Italy, for example, only one deputy, chosen by the parliamentary group, can sit on the party executive), much friction is apt to arise between the two groups of leaders, impairing the authority of both. But, for the reasons expounded above, the influence of the parliamentary group commonly predominates.

The influence of parliamentarism is particularly great in the German social democracy. This is clearly shown by the attitude towards the party commonly assumed by the socialists in parliament. There is no other socialist party in the world in which the conduct of its representatives in parliament is subject to so little criticism. The socialist members of the Reichstag , frequently make speeches in that body which might be expected to give rise to the liveliest recriminations, and yet neither in the party press nor at the congresses is to be heard a word of criticism or of disapproval. During the discussions in the Reichstag concerning the miners' strike in the basin of the Ruhr (1905), the deputy Hue spoke at the maximum program of the party as “Utopian,” and in the socialist press there was manifested no single symptom of revolt. On the first occasion on which the party departed from its principle of unconditional opposition to all military expenditure, contenting itself with simple absention when the first credit of 1,500,000 marks was voted for the war against the Hereros, this remarkable innovation, which in every other socialist party would have unquestionably evoked a storm from one section of the members, even if there might have been manifested cheerful approval by another, aroused among the German socialists no more than a few dispersed and timid protests. Subsequently, at the Bremen congress of 1904, when the deputies had to give an account of their conduct, very few delegates were found to express disapproval. It is, further, remarkable to what a degree the power of the parliamentary group becomes consolidated as the party increases throughout the country. In earlier days, far less important questions aroused much more acute struggles between the party and the parliamentary group. Today, the socialist masses in Germany have accustomed themselves to the idea that the decisive struggle on behalf of the aims they have at heart will be carried out in parliament, and for this reason they scrupulously avoid doing anything which might make difficulties for their parliamentary representatives. This conviction constantly determines the conduct of the masses in relation to their leaders. Hence in many questions the conduct of the parliamentary group is really decisive, suprema lex. All vigourous criticism, though made in accordance with the basic principles of socialism, is at once repudiated by the rank and file if it tend to weaken the position of the parliamentary group. Those who, notwithstanding this, venture to voice such criticism are immediately put to silence and are severely stigmatized by the leaders. Two examples may be given in illustration, The “Leipziger Volkszeitung,” in the year 1904, in a leading article entitled The Usury of Bread, vented its anger in somewhat violent terms upon the political leaders of the capitalist parties. Thereupon in the Reichstag certain orators of the right and of the center, when Prince Bülow had himself read this article to the house, adducing it as an evil example of journalistic methods, made a great display of indignation against the socialists. When this happened, Bebel, who had hitherto been a declared friend of the “Leipziger Volkszeitung,” did not hesitate to repudiate the article in open parliament, though his conduct was here in flagrant contradiction with the best established traditions of democracy, and with the essential principle of party solidarity. At the congress of Bremen in 1904, Georg von Vollmar openly condemned the first attempts at anti-militarism made in Germany by certain members of the party. He did this with the express approval of most of the delegates and without arousing any disapproval from the others. Yet antimilitarism is a logical consequence of socialism, and for such a party as the socialist, anti-militarist propaganda must surely be a matter of primary importance. Vollmar, however, justified his attitude by remarking that if a systematic anti-militarist propaganda were to be undertaken, the Minister of War would have a pretext ready to his hand for disregarding all the protests and complaints which might be made by the socialist deputies on account of the differential treatment of soldiers known to hold socialist views. If, for example, the party representatives in parliament were to take action against the secret inquiries which the authorities are accustomed to make and to transmit to the district commanders, sending the names of recruits who before enlistment have been in the habit of frequenting socialist meetings and have even been known as local leaders, the minister could readily reply, and with effect, that socialists, being antimilitarists, are enemies of their country and as such deserve to be handled with all possible rigor. Vollmar concluded by saying: “Antimilitarist propaganda will make it impossible for the socialist in parliament to continue to assert that socialists fulfil their military duties no less patriotically than nonsocialists, and that for this reason it is unjust to subject them to exceptional treatment.” [103]

It is well known that great efforts have been made by the parliamentary socialist groups in every country to secure for their members ex-officio the right to vote at the party congresses. In Germany this right was recognized in 1890 by the congress of Berlin, with the unimportant restriction that in questions concerning their parliamentary activities the rights of the members of the group in congress should be purely deliberative. Despite some opposition, this right was confirmed in the new rules of the party which were passed at the Jena congress in 1905. It is obvious that the deputy, even if he does not as such possess the right to vote, will not find much difficulty in securing delegation to the congress. Auer once said that those deputies who are not thus delegated must be poor fellows indeed. [104] Nevertheless they have been saved this trifling trouble. Thus the members of the parliamentary group are admitted to an active participation in the most intimate deliberations of the party, not as delegates approved by a vote of the branch to which they belong, but as representatives of the entire electorate of their constituency for the whole period for which they are elected to the legislature. This involves an express recognition of their position as leaders (and a further admission that this leadership owes its origin in part to nonparty sources), and obviously raises them to the position of super-comrades independent of the rank and file of the party, or makes them irremovable delegates for so long as they may remain members of the Reichstag. This institution is certainly peculiar to Germany. In other countries identical rules apply for the appointment of all delegates to the congress, whether these may happen to be parliamentary representatives or not. [105] In France and Holland, for instance, the deputies can take part in the congresses, and are able to vote in these only if they are specially delegated for the purpose. In Italy, the members of the executive committee and the members of the parliamentary group cannot speak in the congress unless they are charged by the executive committee to present a report of some kind In Italy, as in France and Holland, they can vote only when regularly delegated.

Yet in view of their greater competence in various questions, the socialist parliamentary groups consider themselves superior even to the congresses, which are in theory the supreme courts of the party, and they claim an effective autonomy. The members of the parliamentary group obey a natural tendency to restrict more and more the circle of questions which must be submitted to the congress for decision, and to make themselves the sole arbiters of the party destinies. In Germany, many of the socialist deputies put forward a claim in 1903 to decide for themselves, independently of the party congresses, whether the parliamentary group should or should not accept the vicepresidency of the Reichstag for one of its members, and whether, if this post were accepted, the socialist vice-president should conform to the usage attaching to his office, and put in appearances at court. In Italy, the socialist and the republican parliamentary groups have secured complete independence of the executives of their respective parties. The socialist group has even been accused at times of accepting deputies who, are not even regular members of the party, men who contend that their electors would look askance should they adhere officially to the local socialist organization.

The parliamentary leaders of the socialist as well as those of the capitalist parties assume the right to constitute a closed corporation, cut off from the rest of their party. The parliamentary group of the German socialists has on more than one occasion, and of its own initiative, disavowed the actions of considerable sections of the party. The most notable of such disavowals have been those of the article The Usury of Bread, in the “Leipziger Volkszeitung” (1904),106 and that of the antimilitarist agitation of Karl Liebknecht (1907). In the former instance, the “Leipziger Volkszeitung” could very well console itself for the disapproval of the “fifty-seven comrades” (i.e., the members of the parliamentary group) as that of an infinitesimal minority of the party—in accordance with the historic and typically democratic utterance of the Abbé Sieyès on the eve of the French Revolution, when he said that the rights of the king bore to those of his subjects the ratio of 1:30,000,000. As a matter of pure theory, and considering the democratic principles of the party, the paper here hit the right nail on the head; but in practice its contention had no significance, for to the ineffective right of principle there was opposed the right of the stronger, immanent in the leadership.

The local branches of the party follow their deputies. In the congresses the great majority of the delegates accept as a matter of habit the guidance of the men of note. At the Bremen congress in 1904 the German socialists rejected the idea of the general strike as a general absurdity; at Jena, in 1905, they acclaimed it as an official weapon of the party; at Mannheim,, in 1906, they declared it to be Utopian. All the individual phases of this zigzag progress were hailed with the conscientious applause of the mass of the delegates in the congress and of the comrades throughout the country, who exhibited on each occasion the same lack of critical faculty and the same unthinking enthusiasm. In France, the little handful of men who constituted the general staff of the French Marxists when these still formed a separate party under the leadership of Jules Guesde was so permeated with the authoritarian spirit that at the party congresses the executive committee (Comité National) was not elected in due form, but was appointed en bloc by acclamation; it was impossible for the chiefs to conceive that the rank and file of the party could dream of refusing to follow their leaders. Moreover, the congresses were conducted in camera. Reports were published in an extremely condensed form so that no one could check the speakers. In the German Socialist Congresses, and in the reports of these assemblies, it is easy to distinguish between a higher and a lower circle of delegates. The report of what is said by the “ordinary” delegates is greatly abbreviated, whilst the speeches of the big guns are reproduced verbatim. In the party press, too, different measures are applied to the comrades. In the year 1904, when “Vorwarts,” then edited by Eisner, did not publish a letter sent by Bebel, the latter moved heaven and earth with his complaints, saying that freedom of opinion was being suppressed in the party and that it was “the most elementary right” for all the comrades to have their letters printed in the party organs. Yet it is hardly possible to ignore that the “right” which Bebel thus invoked is in practice proportional to a comrade's degree of elevation in the party. The excitement over the non-appearance of Bebel's letter shows that his case was an exceptional one.

In the trade-union movement, the authoritative character of the leader's and their tendency to rule democratic organizations on oligarchic lines, are even more pronounced than in the political organizations. [107]

Innumerable facts recorded in the history of trade-union organizations show to what an extent centralized bureaucracy can divert from democracy a primarily democratic working-class movement. In the trade union, it is even easier than in the political labour organization, for the officials to initiate and to pursue a course of action disapproved of by the majority of the workers they are supposed to represent. It suffices here to refer to the two famous decisions of the trade-union congress at Cologne in 1905. In one of these the leaders declared themselves to be opposed (in opposition to the views of the majority) to the continued observance of the 1st of May as a general labour demonstration of protest. In the second, the discussion of the general strike was absolutely forbidden. By these and similar occurrences the oligarchical practices of the leaders are sufficiently proved, although some of writers continue to dispute the fact. [108]

For a good many years now, the executive committees of the trade-union federations have endeavoured to usurp the exclusive right to decide on behalf of the rank and file the rhythm of the movement for better wages, and consequently the right to decide whether a strike is or is not “legitimate.” Since the leaders of the federation are in charge of the funds, which often amount to a considerable sum, the dispute reduces itself in practice to a question as to who is to decide whether a strike shall or shall not be subsidized. This question is one which involves the very life of the democratic right of the organized masses in the trade unions to regulate their own affairs. When the leaders claim that they alone have a right to decide in a matter of such importance, and still more when they already largely possess this right, it is obvious that the most essential democratic principles are gravely infringed. The leaders have openly converted themselves into an oligarchy, leaving to the masses who provide the funds no more than the duty of accepting the decisions of that oligarchy. This abuse of power may perhaps find justification on tactical grounds, the leaders alleging in defense of their procedure the supreme need that a strike should be declared cautiously and in unison. They claim the right to decide the merits of the question on the sole ground that they know better than the workers themselves the conditions of the labour market throughout the country and are consequently more competent to judge the chances of success in the struggle. The trade-union leaders add that since the stoppage of work in a town necessarily impairs the financial strength of the union in that town, and sometimes disturbs the conditions of work of a whole series of organized workers, it is for the leaders to decide when and where a strike should be declared. Thus they consider that their action is justified by the democratic aim of safeguarding the interests of the majority against the impulsive actions of the minority.

We are not here concerned, however, with the causation of the oligarchy which prevails in the trade unions. It suffices to point out how little difference exists between the tendencies of proletarian oligarchies and those of such oligarchies as prevail in the life of the state—governments, courts, etc. It is interesting to note that in Germany, as elsewhere, the socialist leaders do not hesitate to admit the existence of a well-developed oligarchy in the trade-union movement; while the leaders of the trade unions, in their turn, draw attention to the existence of an oligarchy in the socialist party; both groups of leaders unite however in declaring that as far as their own organizations are concerned these are quite immune to oligarchical infection.

Nevertheless, the trade-union leaders and the leaders of the Socialist Party sometimes combine upon a course of action which, were it undertaken by either group of leaders alone, those of the other group would not fail to stigmatize as grossly undemocratic. For example, in the serious question of the 1st of May demonstration, one of primary democratic importance in the year 1908, the executive committee of the Socialist Party and the general committee of the trade unions issued by common accord an announcement definitely decreeing from above the conduct of the separate political and trade-union organizations. In a question thus profoundly affecting the individual trade unions and local socialist committees, the executives regarded it as quite unnecessary to ask these for their opinion. Such conduct shows how much justification there is for the criticism which each of the two branches of the working-class movement directs against the other. Moreover, the question which has been debated whether the local trades councils might not be directly represented at the trade-union congresses is after all merely one of the enlargement of the oligarchical circle.

Let us next briefly consider the third form of the working-class movement, cooperative organizations, and in particular the organizations for cooperative production, as those which in their very nature should incorporate most perfectly the democratic principle.

As far as concerns distributive cooperative societies, it is easy to understand that these cannot be directly governed by the mass of the members. As Kautsky has shown, we are here concerned with an enterprise whose functions are essentially commercial, and therefore outside the competence of the rank and file. For this reason, the principal business activities of these societies must be entrusted to the employees and to a few experts. “Unless we consider buying as cooperation, in which case the customers of an ordinary shopman are also cooperators with the shopman, the members of a cooperative society have nothing more to do with the management than have the shareholders of a limited company; they choose their managing committee, and then leave the machine to run itself, waiting till the end of the year to express their approval or disapproval of the management, and to pocket their dividends. [109] In actual fact, the distributive cooperative societies present in general a monarchical aspect. Read, for example, what was written by a welldisposed critic concerning the cooperative society “Vooruit” of Ghent, which is led by Edouard Anseele, the socialist, and which is definitely socialist in its tendency: “Cette prospérité et cette bonne administration ne vont pas sans quelques sacrifices à la sacrosainte liberté ouvrière. Le 'Vooruit' tout entier porte l'empreinte de la forte personalité qui l'a créé.... Une volonté puissante, avide à revendiquer des responsabilités, alors que d'autres reculent sans cesse devant les responsabilités, s'enivre presque toujours d'elle-même. M. Anseele, grand industriel de fait, a volontiers les manières impétueuses, impérieuses et brusques des capitaines d'industrie les plus bourgeois, et le 'Vooruit' n'est rien moins qu'une république anarchique. Il repose plutôt sur le principe d'autorité.” [110]

Societies for cooperative production, on the other hand, and especially the smaller of these, offer in theory the best imaginable field for democratic collabouration. They consist of homogeneous elements belonging to the same stratum of the working class, of persons following the same trade, and accustomed to the same manner of life. In so far as the society needs a management, this management can readily be effected by all the members in common, since all possess the same professional competence, and all can lend a hand as advisers and coadjutors. In a political party it is impossible that every member should be engaged in important political work, and it is for this reason that in the political party there necessarily exists a great gulf between the leaders and the rank and file. But in a society for cooperative production, for bootmaking for example, all the members are equally competent in the making of boots, the use of tools, and knowledge of the quality of leather. There do not exist among them any essential differences in matters of technical knowledge. Yet despite the fact that the circumstances are thus exceptionally favorable for the constitution of a democratic organism, we cannot as a general rule regard productive cooperatives as models of democratic auto-administration. Rodbertus said on one occasion that when he imagined productive associations to have extended their activities to include all manufacture, commerce, and agriculture, when he conceived all social work to be effected by small cooperative societies in whose management every member had an equal voice, he was unable to avoid the conviction that the economic system would succumb to the cumbrousness of its own machinery. [111] The history of productive cooperation shows that all the societies have been faced with the following dilemma: either they succumb rapidly owing to discord and powerlessness resulting from the fact that too many individuals have the right to interfere in their administration; or else they end by submitting to the will of one or of a few persons, and thus lose their truly cooperative character. In almost all cases such enterprises owe their origin to the personal initiative of one or a few members. They are sometimes miniature monarchies, being under the dictatorship of the manager, who represents them in all internal and external relations, and upon whose will they depend so absolutely that if he dies or resigns his post they run the risk of perishing. This tendency on the part of the productive cooperative societies is further accentuated by their character as aggregates of individuals whose personal advantages decrease in proportion as the number of the members increases. Thus from their very nature they are subject to the same immutable psychological laws which governed the evolution of the medieval guilds. As they become more prosperous, they become also more exclusive, and tend always to monopolize for the benefit of the existing members the advantages they have been able to secure. For example, by imposing a high entrance fee they put indirect obstacles in the way of the entry of new members. In some cases they simply refuse to accept new members, or pass a rule establishing a maximum membership. When they have need of more labour-power they supply this need by engaging ordinary wagelabourers. Thus we not infrequently find that a society for cooperative production becomes gradually transformed into a jointstock company. It even happens occasionally that the cooperative society becomes the private enterprise of the manager. In both these cases Kautsky is right in saying that the social value of the working-class cooperative is then limited to the provision of means for certain proletarians which will enable them to climb out of their own class into a higher. Rodbertus described labour associations as a school for the education of the working class, in which the manual workers could learn administration, discussion, and within limits the art of government. [112] We have seen to how small an extent this statement is applicable.

In the democratic movement the personal factor thus plays a very considerable part. In the smaller associations it is often predominant. In the larger organizations, larger questions commonly lose the personal and petty characteristics which they originally possessed, but all the same the individuals who bring these questions forward, and who in a sense come to personify them, retain their influence and importance. In England, three or four men, Macdonald, Keir Hardie, Henderson, and Clynes, for instance, enjoy the confidence of the socialist masses so unrestrictedly that, as an able observer declares, it is impossible to exercise an influence upon the rank and file except by influencing these leaders. [113] In Italy, the first among the leaders of the trade-union organizations has affirmed that those only which are headed by a good organizer can continue in existence. “Categories of the most various trades, found in the most diverse environments, have been unable to secure organization and to live through crises, except in so far as they have been able to find first-class men to manage their affairs. Those which have had bad leaders have not succeeded in establishing organizations; or the organizations if formed have proved defective.” [114] In Germany, the supreme authority of Bebel was manifested by a thousand signs, [115] from the joy with which he was hailed wherever he went, to the efforts always made in the various congresses by the representatives of different tendencies to win him over to their side. Moreover, the working-class leaders are well aware of their ascendancy over the masses. Sometimes political opportunism leads them to deny it, but more commonly they are extremely proud of it and boast of it. In Italy, and in other countries as well, the socialist leaders have always claimed that the bourgeoisie and the government are greatly indebted to them for having held the masses in check, and as having acted as moderators to the impulsive crowd. This amounts to saying that the socialist leaders claim the merit, and consequently the power, of preventing the social revolution, which, according to them, would, in default of their intervention, have long ago taken place. Disunion in parties, although often evoked by objective necessities, is almost always the work of the leaders. The masses never oppose the reconciliation of their chiefs, partly, no doubt, because the differences between the leaders, in so far as they are of an objective character, are for the most part outside the narrow circle of interests and the limited understanding of the rank and file.

The esteem of the leaders for the masses is not as a rule very profound, even though there are some among them who profess great enthusiasm for the masses and repay with interest the honor which these render. In the majority of cases the veneration is a one-sided affair, if only for the reason that the leaders have had an opportunity of learning the miseries of the crowd by first-hand experience. Fournière said that the socialist leaders regarded the crowd, which had entrusted them with the fulfilment of its own aspirations and which consisted of devoted followers, as a passive instrument in their own hands, as a series of ciphers whose only purpose was to increase the value of the little figure standing to the left. “N'en a-t-il qu'un à sa droite, il ne vaut que pour dix; en a-t-il six, il vaut pour un million.” [116]

The differences in education and competence which actually exist among the members of the party are reflected in the differences in their functions. It is on the ground of the incompetence of the masses that the leaders justify the exclusion of these from the conduct of affairs. They contend that it would be contrary to the interests of the party if the minority of the comrades who have closely followed and attentively studied the questions under consideration should be overruled by the majority which does not really possess any reasoned opinion of its own upon the matters at issue. This is why the chiefs are opposed to the referendum, at any rate as far as concerns its introduction into party life. “The choice of the right moment for action demands a comprehensive view which only a few individuals in the mass can ever possess, whilst the majority are guided by momentary impressions and currents of feeling. A limited body of officials and confidential advisers, in closed session, where they are removed from the influence of colored press reports, and where every one can speak without fearing that his words will be bruited in the enemy's camp, is especially likely to attain to an objective judgment.” [117]

To justify the substitution of the indirect vote for the direct vote, the leaders invoke, in addition to political motives, the complicated structure of the party organization. Yet for the state organization, which is infinitely more complicated, direct legislation by means of the initiative and the referendum is an integral part of the socialist programme. The antinomy which underlies these different ways of looking at the same thing according as it presents itself in the politics of the state or in those of the party pervades the whole life of the latter.

The working-class leaders sometimes openly avow, with a sincerity verging on cynicism, their own superiority over the troops they command, and may go so far as to declare their firm intention to refuse to these latter any facility for dictating the leaders' conduct. The leaders even reserve to themselves the right of rebelling against the orders they receive. A typical example, among many, is the opinion expressed on this subject by Filippo Turati, an exceptionally intelligent and well-informed man and one of the most influential members of the Italian Socialist Party, in a labour congress held at Rome in 1908. Referring to the position of the socialist deputy in relation to the socialist masses, he said: “The socialist parliamentary group is always at the disposal of the proletariat, as long as the group is not asked to undertake absurdities.”118 It need hardly be said that in each particular case it is the deputies who have to decide whether the things they are asked to do are or are not “absurd.”2

The accumulation of power in the hands of a restricted number of persons, such as ensues in the labour movement to-day, necessarily gives rise to numerous abuses. The “representative,” proud of his indispensability, readily becomes transformed from a servitor of the people into their master. The leaders, who have begun by being under obligations to their subordinates, become in the long run the lords of these: such is the ancient truth which was recognized by Goethe when he made Mephistopheles say that man always allows himself to be ruled by his own creatures. The very party which fights against the usurpations of the constituted authority of the state submits as by natural necessity to the usurpations effected by its own constituted authorities. The masses are far more subject to their leaders than to their governments and they bear from the former abuses of power which they would never tolerate from the latter. The lower classes sometimes react forcibly against oppression from above, and take bloody reprisals, as happened in the French Jacqueries, in the German Peasants' Wars, in the English revolts under Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, and more recently in the revolts of the Sicilian Fasci in 1893; whereas they do not perceive the tyranny of the leaders they have themselves chosen. If at length the eyes of the masses are opened to the crimes against the democratic ideal which are committed by their party leaders, their astonishment and their stupor are unbounded. If, however, they then rise in rebellion, the nature of their criticisms shows how little they have understood the true character of the problem. Far from recognizing the real fount of the oligarchical evil in the centralization of power within the party, they often consider that the best means of counteracting oligarchy is to intensify this very centralization.

5. CHAPTER V
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE LEADERS AND THE MASSES

THOSE who defend the arbritrary acts committed by the democracy, point out that the masses have at their disposal means whereby they can react against the violation of their rights. These means consist in the right of controlling and dismissing their leaders. Unquestionably this defense possesses a certain theoretical value, and the authoritarian inclinations of the leaders are in some degree attenuated by these possibilities. In states with a democratic tendency and under a parliamentary regime, to obtain the fall of a detested minister it suffices, in theory, that the people should be weary of him. In the same way, once more in theory, the ill-humor and the opposition of a socialist group or of an election committee is enough to effect the recall of a deputy's mandate, and in the same way the hostility of the majority at the annual congress of trade unions should be enough to secure the dismissal of a secretary. In practice, however, the exercise of this theoretical right is interfered with by the working of the whole series of conservative tendencies to which allusion has previously been made, so that the supremacy of the autonomous and sovereign masses is rendered purely illusory. The dread by which Nietzsche was at one time so greatly disturbed, that every individual might become a functionary of the mass, must be completely dissipated in face of the truth that while all have the right to become functionaries, few only possess the possibility.

With the institution of leadership there simultaneously begins, owing to the long tenure of office, the transformation of the leaders into a closed caste.

Unless, as in France, extreme individualism and fanatical political dogmatism stand in the way, the old leaders present themselves to the masses as a compact phalanx — at any rate whenever the masses are so much aroused as to endanger the position of the leaders.

The election of the delegates to congresses, etc., is sometimes regulated by the leaders by means of special agreements, whereby the masses are in fact excluded from all decisive influence in the management of their affairs. These agreements often assume the aspect of a mutual insurance contract. In the German Socialist Party, a few years ago, there came into existence in not a few localities a regular system in accordance with which the leaders nominated one another in rotation as delegates to the various party congresses. In the meetings at which the delegates were appointed, one of the big guns would always propose to the comrades the choice as delegate of the leader whose “turn” it was. The comrades rarely revolt against such artifices, and often fail even to perceive them. Thus competition among the leaders is prevented, in this domain at least; and at the same time there is rendered impossible anything more than passive participation of the rank and file in the higher functions of the life of that party which they alone sustain with their subscriptions. [119] Notwithstanding the violence of the intestine struggles which divide the leaders, in all the democracies they manifest vis-à-vis the masses a vigourous solidarity. “Ils conçoivent bien vite la nécessité de s'accorder entre eux, afin que le parti ne puisse pas leur échapper en se divisant.” [120] This is true is true above all of the German social democracy, in which, in consequence of the exceptional solidity of structure which it possesses as compared with all the other socialist parties of the world, conservative tendencies have attained an extreme development.

When there is a struggle between the leaders and the masses, the former are always victorious if only they remain united. At least it rarely happens that the masses succeed in disembarrassing themselves of one of their leaders. At Mannheim, a few years ago, the organized workers did actually dismiss one of their chiefs, but not without arousing intense indignation among the leaders, who described this act of legitimate rebellion as a crime on the part of the rank and file, and were careful to obtain another post for the poor victim of popular anger. In the course of great political agitations and in extensive economic struggles undertaken by the masses against the will of their leaders these soon reacquire the supremacy which they may for a moment have lost. Then it often happens that the leaders, over the heads of the crowd and in opposition to its expressed will, contravening the fundamental principles of democracy and ignoring all the legal, logical, and economic bonds which unite the paid leaders to the paying masses, make peace with the enemy, and order the close of the agitation or the resumption of work. This is what happened in the last Italian general strike, and also in the great strikes at Crimmitschau, Stetten, Mannheim, etc. The masses in such cases are often sulky, but they never rebel, for they lack power to punish the treachery of the chiefs. After holding tumultuous meetings in which they declare their legitimate and statutory displeasure, they never fail to provide their leaders with the democratic figleaf of a bill of indemnity. In 1905 the miners of the Ruhr basin were enraged against their leaders when these had taken it upon themselves to declare the great miners' strike at an end. It seemed as if on this occasion the oligarchy was at length to be called to account by the masses. A few weeks later, tranquility was completely restored, as if it had never been disturbed. The leaders had defied the anger of their followers, and had nevertheless remained in power. In Turin, in October, 1907, on the third day of the general strike, the workers had decided by a large majority that the strike should be continued, but the leaders (the executive committee of the local branch of the party and the committees of the local trade unions) went counter to this decision, which ought to have been valid for them, by issuing a manifesto in which they counselled the strikers to return to work. In the meetings of the party and of the trades council which followed upon these events the breach of discipline was condoned. The rank and file dreaded the resignation of the leaders and the bad appearance which their organizations would have displayed in face of the bourgeoisie when deprived of their best known and most highly esteemed men. Thus the governing bodies of democratic and socialist parties can in case of need act entirely at their own discretion, maintaining a virtual independence of the collectivity they represent, and in practice making themselves omnipotent.

Such a condition of affairs is essentially oligarchical, and manifold are its consequences in the movements that have been initiated under the banner of democracy. One of the chief of these consists in the daily infringement on the part of the executive of the tactical resolutions whose fulfilment is entrusted to the executive as a sacred charge by the numerous leaders of the second rank who make up the congresses and assemblies of the party; hence arises the practice which becomes continually more general of discussing en petit comité questions of the greatest importance, and of confronting the party subsequently with accomplished facts (for example, electoral congresses are not summoned until after the elections, so that the leaders decide on their sole responsibility what is to be the electoral platform). Again, there are secret negotiations among different groups of leaders (as happened in Germany in the case of the 1st of May demonstration and in that of the general strike), and secret understandings with the government. Once more, silence is often maintained by the members of the parliamentary group upon matters which have been discussed by the group and upon decisions at which they have arrived, and this practice is censured by members of the executive only when they themselves are kept in the dark, but is approved by them when it is merely the masses who are hoodwinked.

There is no indication whatever that the power possessed by the oligarchy in party life is likely to be overthrown within an appreciable time. The independence of the leaders increases concurrently with their indispensability. Nay more, the influence which they exercise and the financial security of their position become more and more fascinating to the masses, stimulating the ambition of all the more talented elements to enter the privileged bureaucracy of the labour movement. Thus the rank and file becomes continually more impotent to provide new and intelligent forces capable of leading the opposition which may be latent among the masses. [121] Even to-day the masses rarely move except at the command of their leaders. When the rank and file does take action in conflict with the wishes of the chiefs, this is almost always the outcome of a misunderstanding. The miners' strike in the Ruhr basin in 1905 broke out against the desire of the trade-union leaders, and was generally regarded as a spontaneous explosion of the popular will. But it was subsequently proved beyond dispute that for many months the leaders had been stimulating the rank and file, mobilizing them against the coal barons with repeated threats of a strike, so that the mass of the workers, when they entered on the struggle, could not possibly fail to believe that they did so with the full approval of their chiefs.

It cannot be denied that the masses revolt from time to time, but their revolts are always suppressed. It is only when the dominant classes, struck by sudden blindness, pursue a policy which strains social relationships to the breaking-point, that the party masses appear actively on the stage of history and overthrow the power of the oligarchies. Every autonomous movement of the masses signifies a profound discordance with the will of the leaders. Apart from such transient interruptions, the natural and normal development of the organization will impress upon the most revolutionary of parties an indelible stamp of conservatism.

6. CHAPTER VI
THE STRUGGLE AMONG THE LEADERS THEMSELVES

THE thesis of the unlimited power of the leaders in democratic parties, requires, however, a certain limitation. Theoretically the leader is bound by the will of the mass, which has only to give a sign and the leader is forced to withdraw. He can be discharged and replaced at any moment. But in practice, as we have learned, for various reasons the leaders enjoy a high degree of independence. It is none the less true that if the Democratic Party cannot dispense with autocratic leaders, it is at least able to change these. Consequently the most dangerous defect in a leader is that he should possess too blind a confidence in the masses. The aristocratic leader is more secure than the democratic against surprises at the hands of the rank and file. It is an essential characteristic of democracy that every private carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack. It is true that the mass is always incapable of governing; but it is no less true that each individual in the mass, in so far as he possesses, for good or for ill, the qualities which are requisite to enable him to rise above the crowd, can attain to the grade of leader and become a ruler. Now this ascent of new leaders always involves the danger, for those who are already in possession of power, that they will be forced to surrender their places to the newcomers. The old leader must therefore keep himself in permanent touch with the opinions and feelings of the masses to which he owes his position. Formally, at least, he must act in unison with the crowd, must admit himself to be the instrument of the crowd, must be guided, in appearance at least, by its goodwill and pleasure. Thus it often seems as if the mass really controlled the leaders. But whenever the power of the leaders is seriously threatened, it is in most cases because a new leader or a new group of leaders is on the point of becoming dominant, and is inculcating views opposed to those of the old rulers of the party. It then seems as if the old leaders, unless they are willing to yield to the opinion of the rank and file and to withdraw, must consent to share their power with the new arrivals. If, however, we look more closely into the matter, it is not difficult to see that their submission is in most cases no more than an act of foresight intended to obviate the influence of their younger rivals. The submission of the old leaders is ostensibly an act of homage to the crowd, but in intention it is a means of prophylaxis against the peril by which they are threatened—the formation of a new élite.

The semblance of obedience to the mass which is exhibited by the leaders assumes, in the case of the feebler and the more cunning among them, the form of demagogy. Demagogues are the courtesans of the popular will. Instead of raising the masses to their own level, they debase themselves to the level of the masses. Even for the most honest among them, the secret of success consists in “knowing how to turn the blind impulsiveness of the crowd to the service of their own ripely pondered plans.”122 The stronger leaders brave the tempest, well-knowing that their power may be attacked, but cannot be broken. The weak or the base, on the other hand, give ground when the masses make a vigourous onslaught; their dominion is temporarily impaired or interrupted. But their submission is feigned; they are well aware that if they simply remain glued to their posts, their quality as executants of the will of the masses will before long lead to a restoration of their former dominance. One of the most noted leaders of German socialism said in a critical period of tension between the leaders and the masses, that he must follow the will of the masses in order to guide them. [123] A profound psychological truth is hidden in this sarcasm. He who wishes to command must know how to obey.

It has been affirmed that popular revolutions usually end by destroying their leaders. In proof there have been quoted the names of Rienzi, Masaniello, and Michele di Lando, for Italy, and of Danton and Robespierre, for France. For these and many similar instances the observation is a true one. It would, however, be an error to accuse the crowd of rising against its leaders, and to make the masses responsible for their fall. It is not the masses which have devoured the leaders: the chiefs have devoured one another with the aid of the masses. Typical examples are that of Danton, who was overthrown by Robespierre, and that of Robespierre, who was destroyed by the surviving Dantonists.

The struggle which arises between the leaders, and their mutual jealousies, induce them to employ active measures and often to have recourse to artifices. Democratic deputies endeavour to disarm their adversaries within the party, and at the same time to acquire a new prestige in the eyes of the masses, by displaying in parliament “a formidable activity on behalf of the common cause.” This is regarded at once as a democratic duty and as a measure of personal precaution. Since the great majority of the deputies, electors, and comrades have no precise ideas concerning the functions he exercises, and are continually inclined to accuse him of slackness, the deputy is from time to time forced to recall himself to their memories. It is this need which has given rise to not a few of those speeches to which the Germans give the name of Dauerreden (interminable speeches), and it has also been the cause of more than one “scene” in the various parliaments of Austria, France, England, and Italy. It is, in fact, held that the most efficacious means for retaining the attention of the masses and of rendering them proud of their leaders is to be found in the provocation of those personal incidents which are far more interesting to the great public and far more within the scope of its intelligence than a report upon the utilization of water power or upon a commercial treaty with the republic of Argentina. Moreover, it has to be remembered that in many countries, and above all in Italy, such scenes are recorded in the capitalist press with the greatest abundance of detail, whilst serious speeches are summed up in a few lines, and with especial brevity when the speaker is a socialist. Thus even in normal times the oratorical activity of the parliamentary representatives of the democratic parties is considerable. In Italy, the socialist deputies have boasted that between March 25 and July 10, 1909, they spoke in the Chamber 212 times. The figure represents 20 per cent of all the speeches made in parliament during the period, whilst the socialist deputies at this time constituted only 8 per cent of the members. [124] Such loquacity serves not merely to maintain the prestige of the party in the eyes of its opponents, but it is also a matter of personal interest to each deputy, being a means to secure his reelection in competition, not only with enemies in other parties, but also with jealous rivals belonging to his own organization.

The differences which lead to struggles between the leaders arise in various ways. Reference has previously been made to the inevitable antagonism between the “great men” who have acquired a reputation in other fields, and who now make adhesion to the party, offering it their services as generals, and the oldestablished leaders, who have been socialists from the first. Often conflict arises simply between age and youth. Sometimes the struggle depends upon diversity of social origin, as when there is a contest between proletarian leaders and those of bourgeois birth. Sometimes the difference arises from the objective needs of the various branches of activity into which a single movement is subdivided, as when there is a struggle between the political Socialist Party and the trade-union element, or within the political party between the parliamentary group and the executive. In some cases there is a horizontal stratification, causing a struggle between one stratum of the bureaucracy and another: at other times the stratification is vertical, as when there occurs a conflict between two local or national groups of leaders; between the Bavarian socialists and the Prussian; between those of Frankfort and those of Hanau; between the French followers of Vaillant, Jaurès, and Hervé, and the German adherents of Bebel and von Vollmar (in the antimilitarist discussion at the international congress of Stuttgart). Often enough struggles among the socialists are the outcome of racial differences. The unceasing contests in the international congresses between the German socialists and the French afford in more than one respect a parallel with the Franco-German War of 1870. In these same congresses there participates a third group, misunderstood and heterogeneous, the representatives of English socialism, hostile to all the others and encountered with the enmity of all. In most cases, however, the differences between the various groups of leaders depend upon two other categories of motives. Above all there are objective differences and differences of principle in general philosophical views, or at least in the mode in which the proximate social evolution is conceived, and consequent divergences of opinion as to the most desirable tactics: this leads to the manifestation of the various tendencies known as reformist and Marxist, syndicalist and political socialist, and so on. In the second place, we have the struggles that depend on personal reasons: antipathy, envy, jealousy, a reckless attempt to grasp the first positions, demagogy. Enrico Ferri said of his opponent Filippo Turati: “He hates me because he thinks there is not room for two cocks in the same fowl-house.” [125] In most cases the two series of motives are somewhat confounded in practice; and in the long run we find that those of the former series tend to be replaced by those of the latter, inasmuch as differences of principle and of the intellectual order soon become personal and lead to a profound hostility between the representatives of the various theories. Conversely it is clear that motives of the second series, since those who are influenced by them are ashamed to display them in their true colors, always endeavour to assume the mantle of theory; personal dislike and personal hostility pompously masquerade as differences of views and tactics.

The oligarchy which issues from democracy is menaced by two grave dangers: the revolt of the masses, and (in intimate relationship with this revolt, of which it is often the result) the transition to a dictatorship when one among the oligarchs succeeds in obtaining supreme power. Of these two dangers, one comes from below, whilst the other arises within the very bosom of the oligarchy: we have rebellion on one side, and usurpation on the other. The consequence is that in all modern popular parties a spirit of genuine fraternity is conspicuously lacking; we do not see sincere and cordial mutual trust; there is a continual latent struggle, a spirit of irritation determined by the reciprocal mistrust of the leaders, and this spirit has become one of the most essential characteristics of every democracy. The mistrust of the leaders is directed above all against those who aspire to command their own organizations. Every oligarchy is full of suspicion towards those who aspire to enter its ranks, regarding them not simply as eventual heirs but as successors who are ready to supplant them without waiting for a natural death. Those who have long been in possession (and this applies just as much to spiritual and psychical possession as to material) are proud of their past, and are therefore inclined to look down upon those whose ownership is of more recent date. In certain Sicilian towns, struggles go on between two parties who in popular phrase are ironically termed i ricchi and gli arricchiti (the wealthy and those who have attained to wealth). The former consist of the old landed gentry; whilst the latter, the parvenus, are merchants, contractors for public works, manufacturers, and the like. A similar struggle makes its appearance in modern democratic parties, although it is not in this case characterized by any flavour of economic distinction. Here also we have a struggle between the détenteurs d'emploi et les chercheurs d'emploi, or as the Americans put it, between the “ins” and the “outs.” The latter declare war on the former, ostensibly on the ground of eternal principle, but in reality, in most cases, because in such opposition they find the most effective means of forcing their way into the circle of the chiefs. Consequently in meetings they display themselves as implacable theoretical adversaries, “talking big” solely in order to intimidate the accepted leaders, and in order to induce them to surrender a share of the spoil to these turbulent comrades. Often enough, the old leaders resist, and maintain their ground firmly; in such cases their opponents, changing front, abandon the attitude of struggle, and attach themselves to the triumphal care of the men in power, hoping thus to attract favor, and, by a different route, to realize their own ambitions.

The struggle between the old leaders and the aspirants to power constitutes a perpetual menace to freedom of speech and thought. We encounter this menace in every democratic organization in so far as it is well ordered and solidly grounded, and in so far as it is operating in the field of party politics (for in the wider life of the state, in which the various parties are in continual reciprocal concussion, it is necessary to leave intact a certain liberty of movement). The leaders, those who already hold the power of the party in their hands, make no concealment of their natural inclination to control as strictly as possible the freedom of speech of those of their colleagues from whom they differ. The consequence is that those in office are great zealots for discipline and subordination, declaring that these qualities are indispensable to the very existence of the party. They go so far as to exercise a censorship over any of their colleagues whom they suspect of rebellious inclinations, forcing them to abandon independent journals, and to publish all their articles in the official organs controlled by the leaders of the majority in the party. The prohibition, in the German Socialist Party, of collabouration on the part of its members with the capitalist press, is in part due to the same tendency; whilst the demand that the comrades should have nothing to do with periodicals which, though socialist, are founded with private capital and are not subject to the official control of the party executive, arises solely from this suspicion on the part of the leaders.

In the struggle against the young aspirants, the old leader can as a rule count securely upon the support of the masses. The rank and file of the working-class parties have a certain natural distrust of all newcomers who have not been openly protected or introduced into the party by old comrades; and this is above all the case when the newcomer is derived from another social class. Thus the new recruit, before he can come into the open with his new ideas, must submit, if he is not to be exposed to the most violent attacks, to a long period of quarantine. In the German Socialist Party, this period of quarantine is especially protracted, for the reason that the German party has been longer established than any of the others, and because its leaders therefore enjoy an exceptional prestige. Many of them were among the actual founders of the party, and their personalities have been consecrated by the baptism of fire which they suffered during the enforcement of the anti-socialist laws. A socialist who has had his party card in his pocket for eight or ten years is often regarded in his branch as a “young” member. This tendency is reinforced by the respect for age which is so strong among the Germans, and by the tendency towards hierarchy of which even the democracy has not been able to divest itself. Finally, it may be added that the bureaucracy of the German labour movement, like every strongly developed bureaucracy, tends instinctively towards exclusivism. Consequently in the German social democracy, in contradistinction to other socialist parties which are less solidly organized, we find that not merely the recently enrolled member of the party (the so-called Fuchs), but also the ordinary member who does not live in the service and by the service of the party but has preserved his outward independence as a private author or in some other capacity, and has therefore not been incorporated among the cogwheels of the party machine, very rarely succeeds in making his influence felt. There can be no doubt that this fact plays a large part in the causation of that lack of a number of capable young men, displaying fresh energies, and not greatly inferior to the old leaders, a lack which has often been deplored. The annual congresses of the Socialist Party have even been spoken of as “congresses of the party officials.” The criticism is not unjust, for among the delegates to the socialist congresses the percentage of party and trade-union officials is enormous. It is above all in the superior grades of the organization that the tendencies we are here analyzing are especially conspicuous. In Germany, the management of the Socialist Party is not entrusted to young men, as often happens in Italy, or to free publicists, as in France, but to old members, des anciens, elderly officials of the party. Moreover, the conservative psychology of the masses supports the aspirations of the old leaders, for it would never occur to the rank and file to entrust the care of their interests to persons belonging to their own proper sphere, that is to say, to those who have no official position in the party and who have not pursued a regular bureaucratic career.

Often the struggle between the old leaders in possession of power and the new aspirants assumes the aspects of a struggle between responsible and irresponsible persons. Many criticisms leveled by the latter against the former are beside the mark, because the leaders have grave responsibilities from which the aspirants are free. This freedom gives the aspirants a tactical advantage in their conflict with the old leaders. Moreover, precisely because they are irresponsible, because they do not occupy any official position in the party, the opponents are not subject to that simulacrum of democratic control which must influence the conduct of those in office.

In order to combat the new chiefs, who are still in a minority, the old leaders of the majority instinctively avail themselves of a series of underhand methods through which they often secure victory, or at least notably retard defeat. Among these means, there is one which will have to be more fully discussed in another connection. The leaders of what we may term the “government” arouse in the minds of the masses distrust of the leaders of the “opposition” by labeling them incompetent and profane, terming them spouters, corrupters of the party, demagogues, and humbugs, whilst in the name of the mass and of democracy they describe themselves as exponents of the collective will, and demand the submission of the insubordinate and even of the merely discontented comrades.

In the struggle among the leaders an appeal is often made to loftier motives. When the members of the executive claim the right to intervene in the democratic functions of the individual sections of the organization, they base this claim upon their more comprehensive grasp of all the circumstances of the case, their profounder insight, their superior socialist culture and keener socialist sentiment. They often claim the right of refusing to accept the new elements which the inexpert and ignorant masses desire to associate with them in the leadership, basing their refusal on the ground that it is necessary to sustain the moral and theoretical level of the party. The revolutionary socialists of Germany demand the maintenance of the centralized power of the executive committee as a means of defense against the dangers, which would otherwise become inevitable as the party grows, of the predominant influence of new and theoretically untrustworthy elements. The old leaders, it is said, must control the masses, lest these should force undesirable colleagues upon them. Hence they claim that the constituencies must not nominate parliamentary candidates without the previous approval of the party executive.

The old leaders always endeavour to harness to their own chariot the forces of those new movements which have not yet found powerful leaders, so as to obviate from the first all competition and all possibility of the formation of new and vigourous intellectual currents. In Germany, the leaders of the Socialist Party and the tradeunion leaders at first looked askance at the Young Socialist movement. When, however, they perceived that this movement could not be suppressed, they hastened to place themselves at its head. There was founded for the guidance of the socialist youth a “Central Committee of Young German Workers,” comprising four representatives from each of the three parties, that is to say, four from the executive of the Socialist Party, four from the general committee of trade unions, and four from the Young Socialist (the representatives of the latter being thus outnumbered by two to one). [126] The old leaders endeavour to justify the tutelage thus imposed on the Young Socialists by alleging (with more opportunist zeal than logical acuteness) the incapacity of the youthful masses, if left to their own guidance, of wisely choosing their own leaders and of exercising over these an efficient control.

We have by no means come to an end of our enumeration of the weapons at the disposal of the old leaders in their conflict with the new aspirants to power. Charlemagne effected the final subjugation of the Saxon tribal chiefs by making them counts. In this way he not only increased the brilliancy of their position, but also gave them a restricted share in his own power. This means has been practiced again and again in history, where an old ruler has wished to render harmless, insubordinate but influential chiefs, and thus to prevent a rebellion against his own authority. Oligarchies employ this stratagem with just as much success as monarchies. The feudal state of Prussia appointed to the privy council the most defiant among the leaders of its bourgeoisie. At a time when the youthful German bourgeoisie was still filled with a rebellious spirit towards the nobility and towards the traditional authority of the state, this tendency aroused much bitterness. Thus Ludwig Borne wrote in 1830: “Wherever a talented force of opposition has made itself apparent and has secured respect from those in authority, it is chained to the professorial chair, or is controlled by being harnessed to the government. If the governmental ranks are full, so that no place can be found for the new energies, a state livery is at least provided for the authors by giving them titles and orders. In other cases the dangerous elements are isolated from the people by immuring them in some noble's castle or princely court. It is for this reason that nowhere else do we find so many privy councillors as in Germany, where the courts are least inclined to take any one's advice.” [127] In the Spanish elections of 1875, we learn that so great was the popular indifference that the government had matters altogether in its own hands, but in order to be secure in any event it thoughtfully selected a certain number of opposition candidates. [128] It seems that things are much the same in Spain even to-day. [129] These tactics are not confined to states that are still permeated by feudal conceptions. Where plutocratic rule is supreme, corruption persists unchanged, and it is only the corruptor who is different. This is plainly shown by Austin Lewis when he writes: “The public ownership contingent in politics being composed of the middle and subjugated class have neither the political ability nor the vital energy necessary for the accomplishment of the task which they have undertaken. The brains of the smaller middle class have already been bought by the greater capitalists. Talent employed in the service of the chiefs of industry and finance can command better prices than can be obtained in the uncertain struggle for economic standing which members of the middle class have to wage. The road to professional and political preferment lies through the preserves of the ruling oligarchy, whose wardens allow no one to pass, save servants in livery. Every material ambition of youth is to be gratified in the service of the oligarchy, which shows, generally, an astuteness in the selection of talent that would do credit to a bureaucrat or a Jesuit.” [130]

Of late years the ruling classes in the countries under a democratic regime have hoped to impose obstacles in the way of the revolutionary labour movement by conceding posts in the ministry to its most conspicuous leaders, thus gaining control over the revolutionary impulse of the proletariat by allowing its leaders to participate in power, though cautiously and in an extremely restricted measure. The oligarchy which controls the modern democratic party has often employed the same means to tame the opposition. If the leaders of the opposition within the party are dangerous because they have a large following among the masses, and if they are at the same time few in number, the old party-leaders endeavour to hold them in check and to neutralize their influence by the conciliatory methods just described. The leaders of the opposition receive high offices and honors in the party, and are thus rendered innocuous—all the more so seeing that they are not admitted to the supreme offices, but are relegated to posts of the second rank which give them no notable influence, and they are without hope of one day becoming a majority. On the other hand, they divide with their ancient adversaries the serious weight of responsibility which is generated by common deliberations and manifestations, so that their activities become confounded with those of the old leaders.

In order to avoid having to divide their power with new elements, especially such as are uncongenial by tendency or mental characteristics, the old leaders tend everywhere with greater or less success to acquire the right of choosing their own colleagues, thus depriving the masses of the privilege of appointing the leaders they themselves prefer.

The path of the new aspirants to power is always beset with difficulties, bestrewn with obstacles of all kinds, which can be overcome only by the favor of the mass. Very rarely does the struggle between the old leaders and the new end in the complete defeat of the former. The result of the process is not so much a circulation des élites as a réunion des élites, an amalgam, that is to say, of the two elements. Those representing the new tendency, as long as their footing is still insecure, seek all sorts of side paths in order to avoid being overthrown by the powers-that-be. They protest that their divergence from the views of the majority is trifling, contending that they are merely the logical advocates of the ancient and tried principles of the party, and express their regret that the old leaders display a lack of true democratic feeling. Not infrequently it happens that they avert the blows directed against them by craftily creeping behind the backs of their established and powerful opponents who are about to annihilate them, solemnly declaring, when wrathful blows are directed against them, that they are in complete accord with the old leaders and approve of all their actions, so that the leaders seem to beating the air. On many occasions in the recent history of the socialist parties, the reformist minorities, in order to avoid destruction, have bowed themselves beneath the yoke of the so-called revolutionary majorities by voting (with a fine practical and tactical sense, but with an entire lack of personal pride and political loyalty) resolutions which were drafted precisely in order to condemn the political views dear to the minority. In two cases only does it sometimes happen that the relationships between the two tendencies become strained to the breakingpoint. In the first place this may happen when the leaders of one of the two factions possess a profound faith in their own ideas, and are characterized at once by tactical fanaticism and theoretical irreconcilability—or, in other words, when the objective reasons which divide them from their opponents are felt with an unaccustomed force and are professed with an unwonted sincerity. In the second place it may happen when one of the parties, in consequence of offended dignity or reasonable susceptibility, finds it psychologically impossible to continue to live with the other, and to carry on within the confines of the same association a continued struggle for dominion over the masses. The party will then break up into two distinct organisms, and in each of these there will be renewed the oligarchical phenomena we have been describing.

One of the most interesting chapters in the history of the struggles between leaders deals with the measures which these leaders adopt within their own closed corporations in order to maintain discipline—that is to say, in order to preserve the cementing force of the will of the majority. In the struggle of which the various groups of leaders carry on for the hegemony of the party, the concept of democracy becomes a lure which all alike employ. All means are good for the conquest and preservation of power. It is easy to see this when we read the discussions concerning the system to be employed for the appointment of the party executive. The various tendencies manifested in this connection all aim at the same end, namely, at safeguarding the dominance of some particular group. Thus in France the Guesdists, whose adherents are numerous but who control a small number only of the groups, advocate a system of proportional representation; the Jauressists, on the other hand, who are more influential in respect of groups than of members, and also the Hervéists, oppose proportional representation within the party, for they fear that this would give the Guesdists group too great a facility for the enforcement of its own special methods of action, and they propose to maintain the system of local representation or of representation by delegation.

In the American Congress, each party possesses a special committee which exercises a control over the attendance of its members at the sessions, and which on the occasion of decisive votes issues special summonses or “whips.” When an interesting bill is before the house, the party committee also summons a caucus, that is to say, a private meeting of the parliamentary group, and this decides how the congressmen are to vote. All members of the party are bound by the decision of such a caucus. Naturally no immediate punishment is possible of those who rebel against the authority of the caucus; but at the next election the independent congressman is sure to lose his seat, for the party-managers at Washington will not fail to report to their colleagues, the bosses of the local constituency, the act of insubordination committed by the congressman concerned. The most vital of all the caucuses is that which precedes the election of the president of the congress. The ideas and sympathies of the speaker have a decisive influence upon the composition of the committees and therefore upon the whole course of legislation. For this reason his election is of fundamental importance, and is preceded for several weeks by intrigues and vote-hunting campaigns. Doubtless it is not in every case that the votes are decided in advance at a meeting of the group. Where laws of minor importance are concerned, every member of congress is free to vote as he pleases. But in times of excitement obedience is exacted, not only to the decisions of the caucus, but also to the authority of the party leaders. This last applies especially to Congress, for in the Senate the members are extremely jealous of their absolute equality. On the other hand, the caucus has an even greater importance in the case of the Senate, for here the groups are smaller and the caucus can therefore function more efficiently. The groups in Congress may number more than two hundred members, whereas those of the Senate rarely exceed fifty. [131]

The parliamentary group of the German social democracy is likewise dominated, as far as its internal structure is concerned, by a most rigorous application of the principle of subordination. The majority of the parliamentary group decides the action of all its members on the various questions submitted to the Reichstag or to the diets, exercising what is known as the Fraktionszwang (group coercion). No individual member has the right to independent action. Thus the parliamentary group votes as a single entity, and this not merely in questions of a distinctively socialist bearing, but also in those which are independent of socialist ideas, which each might decide according to his own personal conceptions. It was very different in the French parliament during the fratricidal struggle between the Jauressists and the Guesdists before the attainment of socialist unity in France, for at that time each deputy used to vote as he pleased. But the German example shows that liberty of opinion no longer exists where the organization demands common action and where it has some force of penetration in political life.

In certain cases, however, all these preventive measures fail of their effect. This happens when the conflict is not simply between a minority and a majority within the group, but between the group and one single member who possesses outside parliament, in certain sections of the party, the full support of the subordinate leaders. When a conflict occurs in such conditions, the deputy, though isolated, is sure of victory. The electors, in fact, usually follow with great docility the oscillations and evolutions of their parliamentary representatives, and they do this even in constituencies where socialist voters predominate. The ministers Briand, Viviani, and Millerand have been expelled from the French Socialist Party, but the former members of the socialist organizations in their constituencies have remained faithful to these leaders, resigning from the Socialist Party, and continuing as electors to give the exsocialists their support. Analogous were the cases of John Burns in England (Battersea) and of Enrico Ferri in Italy (Mantua). It was enough in Ferri's case that at an appropriate moment he should reveal a new truth to produce immediately a collective change in the political opinions of an entire region. Having first been, with Ferri, revolutionary and irreconcilable, this region became converted in a single night, always following Ferri, to the principle of class cooperation and of participation in ministerial activity. In Germany, the party executive had to make use of all its authority in order, at the last minute, to induce the comrades of Chemnitz to withdraw their support from their deputy Max Schippel, and those of Mittweid.a from Otto Göhre, when these two deputies had displayed heterodox leanings.

The tendency of the deputy to set himself above his party is most plainly manifest precisely where the party is strongly organized; especially, therefore, in the modern labour parties; and within these, again, more particularly in the reformist sections. The reformist deputies, as long as they have not upon their side a majority within the party, carry on an unceasing struggle to withdraw themselves from the influence of the party, that is to say, from the mass of the workers who are organized as a party. In this period of their evolution they transfer their dependence upon the organized mass of the local socialist section of the electors of the constituency, who constitute a gray, unorganized, and more or less indifferent mass. Thus from the organized masses, who may be under the influence of their opponents within the party, they appeal to the mass of the electors, with the contention that it is to these latter alone, or at least chiefly, that they have to give an account of their political conduct. It is right to recognize that this appeal to the electorate as the body which has conferred a political mandate is frequently based upon genuinely democratic sentiments and principles. Thus, at the International Socialist Congress of London (1893), the four French socialist deputies refused to make use of the mandates which had been conferred upon them by political or corporative groups, thus defying the rules of admission to the congress. After extremely violent discussions they were ultimately admitted simply as deputies, having raised the question of principle whether an important constituency capable of returning a socialist deputy to the Chamber should not have the same rights which are granted to a local socialist or trade-union branch, especially when it is remembered that such a branch may consist of a mere handful of members. It is true that in certain circumstances a constituency inspired by socialist sentiment, even if it be not socialistically organized, constitutes a better basis, in the democratic sense, for political action than a small socialist branch whose members are mostly petty bourgeois or lawyers;132 and even if a large local organization exists, the constituency as a whole is a better basis than a badly attended party meeting for the selection of a candidate.

From our study of the intricate struggles which proceed between the leaders of the majority and those of the minority, between the executive organs and the masses, we may draw the following essential conclusions.

Notwithstanding the youth of the international labour movement, the figures of the leaders of that movement are more imposing and more imperious than those displayed in the history of any other social class of modern times. Doubtless the labour movement furnishes certain examples of leaders who have been deposed, who have been abandoned by their adherents. Such cases are, however, rare, and only in exceptional instances do they signify that the masses have been stronger than the leaders. As a rule, they mean merely that a new leader has entered into conflict with the old, and, thanks to the support of the mass, has prevailed in the struggle, and has been able to dispossess and replace the old leader. The profit for democracy of such a substitution is practically nil.

Whenever the Catholics are in a minority, they become fervent partisans of liberty. In proof of this we need merely refer to the literature issued by the Catholics during the Kulturkampf under the Bismarckian regime and during the struggle between Church and State which went on a few years ago in France. In just the same way the leaders of the minority within the Socialist Party are enthusiastic advocates of liberty. They declaim against the narrowness and the authoritative methods of the dominant group, displaying in their own actions genuine democratic inclinations.

As soon as the new leaders have attained their ends, as soon as they have succeeded (in the name of the injured rights of the anonymous masses) in overthrowing the odious tyranny of their predecessors and in attaining to power in their turn, we see them undergo a transformation which renders them in every respect similar to the dethroned tyrants. Such metamorphoses as these are plainly recorded throughout history. In the life of monarchical states, an opposition which is headed by hereditary princes is rarely dangerous to the crown as an institution. In like manner, the opposition of the aspirants to leadership in a political party, directed against the persons or against the system of the old leaders, is seldom dangerous. The revolutionaries of to-day become the reactionaries of to-morrow.

7. CHAPTER VII
BUREAUCRACY. CENTRALIZING AND DECENTRALIZING TENDENCIES

The organization of the state needs a numerous and complicated bureaucracy. This is an important factor in the complex of forces of which the politically dominant classes avail themselves to secure their domination and to enable themselves to keep their hands upon the rudder.

The instinct of self-preservation leads the modern state to assemble and to attach to itself the greatest possible number of interests. This need of the organism of the state increases pari passu with an increase among the multitude, of the conviction that the contemporary social order is defective and even irrational—in a word with the increase of what the authorities are accustomed to term discontent. The state best fulfils the need for securing a large number of defenders by constituting a numerous caste of officials, of persons directly dependent upon the state. This tendency is powerfully reinforced by the tendencies of modern political economy. On the one hand, from the side of the state, there is an enormous supply of official positions. On the other hand, among the citizens, there is an even more extensive demand. This demand is stimulated by the ever-increasing precariousness in the position of the middle classes (the smaller manufacturers and traders, independent artisans, farmers, etc.) since there have come into existence expropriative capitalism on the grand scale, on the one hand, and the organized working classes on the other—for both these movements, whether they wish it or not, combine to injure the middle classes. All those whose material existence is thus threatened by modern economic developments endeavour to find safe situations for their sons, to secure for these a social position which shall shelter them from the play of economic forces. Employment under the state, with the important right to a pension which attaches to such employment, seems created expressly for their needs. The immeasurable demand for situations which results from these conditions, a demand which is always greater than the supply, creates the so-called “intellectual proletariat.” The numbers of this body are subject to great fluctuations. From time to time the state, embarrassed by the increasing demand for positions in its service, is forced to open the sluices of its bureaucratic canals in order to admit thousands of new postulants and thus to transform these from dangerous adversaries into zealous defenders and partisans. There are two classes of intellectuals. One consists of those who have succeeded in securing a post at the manger of the state, whilst the other consists of those who, as Scipio Sighele puts it, have assaulted the fortress without being able to force their way in. [133] The former may be compared to an army of slaves who are always ready, in part from class egoism, in part for personal motives (the fear of losing their own situations), to undertake the defense of the state which provides them with bread. They do this whatever may be the question concerning which the state has been attacked and must therefore be regarded as the most faithful of its supporters. The latter, on the other hand, are sworn enemies of the state. They are those eternally restless spirits who lead the bourgeois opposition and in part also assume the leadership of the revolutionary parties of the proletariat. It is true that the state bureaucracy does not in general expand as rapidly as do the discontented elements of the middle class. None the less, the bureaucracy continually increases. It comes to assume the form of an endless screw. It grows ever less and less compatible with the general welfare. And yet this bureaucratic machinery remains essential. Through it alone can be satisfied the claim of the educated members of the population for secure positions. It is further a means of self-defense for the state. As the late Amilcare Puviani of the University of Perugia, the political economist to whom we are indebted for an important work upon the legend of the state, expresses it, the, mechanism of bureaucracy is the outcome of a protective reaction of a right of property whose legal basis is weak, and is an antidote to the awakening of the public conscience. [134]

The political party possesses many of these traits in common with the state. Thus the party in which the circle of the élite is unduly restricted, or in which, in other words, the oligarchy is composed of too small a number of individuals, runs the risk of being swept away by the masses in a moment of democratic effervescence. Hence the modern party, like the modern state, endeavours to give to its own organization the widest possible base, and to attach to itself in financial bonds the largest possible number of individuals. Thus arises the need for a strong bureaucracy, and these tendencies are reinforced by the increase in the tasks imposed by modern organization.

As the party bureaucracy increases, two elements which constitute the essential pillars of every socialist conception undergo an inevitable weakening: an understanding of the wider and more ideal cultural aims of socialism, and an understanding of the international multiplicity of its manifestations. Mechanism becomes an end in itself. The capacity for an accurate grasp of the peculiarities and the conditions of existence of the labour movement in other countries diminishes in proportion as the individual national organizations are fully developed. This is plain from a study of the mutual international criticisms of the socialist press. In the days of the so-called “socialism of the émigrés,” the socialists devoted themselves to an elevated policy of principles, inspired by the classical criteria of internationalism. Almost every one of them was, if the term may be used, a specialist in this more general and comprehensive domain. The whole course of their lives, the brisk exchange of ideas on unoccupied evenings, the continued rubbing of shoulders between men of the most different tongues, the enforced isolation from the bourgeois world of their respective countries, and the utter impossibility of any “practical” action, all contributed to this result. But in proportion as, in their own country, paths of activity were opened for the socialists, at first for agitation and soon afterwards for positive and constructive work, the more did a recognition of the demands of the everyday life of the party divert their attention from immortal principles. Their vision gained in precision but lost in extent. The more cotton-spinners, boot and shoe operatives, or brushmakers the labour leader could gain each month for his union, the better versed he was in the tedious subtleties of insurance against accident and illness, the greater the industry he could display in the specialized question of factory inspection and of arbitration in trade disputes, the better acquainted he might be with the system of checking the amount of individual purchases in cooperative stores and with the methods for the control of the consumption of municipal gas, the more difficult was it for him to retain a general interest in the labour movement, even in. the narrowest sense of this term. As the outcome of inevitable psychophysiological laws, he could find little time and was likely to have little inclination for the study of the great problems of the philosophy of history, and all the more falsified consequently would become his judgment of international questions. At the same time he would incline more and more to regard every one as an “incompetent,” an “outsider,” an “unprofessional,” who might wish to judge questions from some higher outlook than the purely technical; he would incline to deny the good sense and even the socialism of all who might desire to fight upon another ground and by other means than those familiar to him within his narrow sphere as a specialist. This tendency towards an exclusive and all-absorbing specialization, towards the renunciation of all farreaching outlooks, is a general characteristic of modern evolution. With the continuous increase in the acquirements of scientific research, the polyhistor is becoming extinct. His place is taken by the writer of monographs. The universal zoologist no longer exists, and we have instead ornithologists and entomologists; and indeed the last become further subdivided into lepidopterists, coleopterists, myrmecologists.

To the same of the “non-commissioned officers” who occupy the inferior grades of the party bureaucracy may be aptly applied what Alfred Weber said of bureaucracy in general at the congress of the Verein für Sozialpolitik held in Vienna in 1909. Bureaucracy is the sworn enemy of individual liberty, and of all bold initiative in matters of internal policy. The dependence upon superior authorities characteristic of the average employee suppresses individuality and gives to the society in which employees predominate a narrow petty-bourgeois and philistine stamp. The bureaucratic spirit corrupts character and engenders moral poverty. In every bureaucracy we may observe place-hunting, a mania for promotion, and obsequiousness towards those upon whom promotion depends; there is arrogance towards inferiors and servility towards superiors. Wolfgang Heine, who in the German Socialist Party is one of the boldest defenders of the personal and intellectual liberty of the members, who is always in the breach to denounce “the tendency to bureaucracy and the suppression of individuality,” goes so far, in his struggle against the socialist bureaucracy, as to refer to the awful example of the Prussian state. It is true, he says, that Prussia is governed in accordance with homogeneous principles and by a bureaucracy which must be considered as a model of its kind; but it is no less true that the Prussian state, precisely because of its bureaucratic characteristics, and notwithstanding its external successes, is essentially retrogressive. If Prussia does produce any distinguished personalities, it is unable to tolerate their existence, so that Prussian politics tends more and more to degenerate into a spiritless and mechanical regime, displaying a lively hostility to all true progress. [135] We may even say that the more conspicuously a bureaucracy is distinguished by its zeal, by its sense of duty, and by its devotion, the more also will it show itself to be petty, narrow, rigid, and illiberal.

Like every centralizing system, bureaucracy finds its justification in the fact of experience that a certain administrative unity is essential to the rapid and efficient conduct of affairs. A great many functions, such as the carrying out of important statistical inquiries, can never be satisfactorily effected in a federal system.

The outward form of the dominion exercised by the leaders over the rank and file of the socialist party has undergone numerous changes pari passu with changes in the historical evolution of the labour movement.

In Germany, the authority of the leaders, in conformity with the characteristics of the nation and with the insufficient education of the masses, was at first displayed in a monarchical form; there was a dictatorship. The first labour organization on German soil was the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein of Ferdinand Lassalle. This organization was founded in 1873 and lasted until 1875, when it became fused with the internationalist and Marxist section of German socialism, the “Eisenachers.” The personal creation of a man of extraordinary force of character, it received even in its smallest details the stamp of his personality. It has been contended that Lassalle's association was founded upon the model of the Nationalverein, a German national league which was extremely influential at that epoch. This may be true in respect of the base of the Arbeiterverein, but is certainly not true of its summit. The Arbeiterverein, like the Nationalverein, was a unitary society whose members were dispersed throughout Germany and did not form any properly organized local branches. The membership was not local but national, each member being directly dependent upon the central organization. But whereas in the Nationalverein the central executive was a committee of several members, the Arbeiterverein was autocratically ruled by a single individual, Ferdinand Lassalle, who exercised, as did his successor Johann Baptist von Schweitzer, as president of the party of German workers, a power comparable with that of the doge of the Venetian Republic, and indeed a power even more unrestricted, since the president's power was not, as was that of the doge, subject to any kind of control through oligarchical institutions. The president was an absolute monarch, and at his own discretion nominated his subordinate officials, his plenipotentiaries, and even his successor. He commanded, and it was for the others to obey. This structure of the organization was not the outcome merely of the personal qualities of Lassalle, of his insatiable greed for power, and of that egocentric character which made him, despite his genius, so poor a judge of men; it corresponded also to his theoretical view of the aim of all party organization. In his famous speech at Ronsdorf he said: “Wherever I have been I have heard from the workers expressions of opinion which may be summarized as follows: 'We must forge our wills into a single hammer, and place this hammer in the hands of a man in whose intelligence, characters, and, good-will we have the necessary confidence, so that he can use this hammer to strike with!' . . . The two contrasts which our statesmen have hitherto believed incapable of being united, freedom and authority, whose union they have regarded as the philosopher's stone —these contrasts are most intimately united in our Verein, which thus represents in miniature the coming social order!” Thus in the eyes of the president his dictatorship was not simply a sad necessity temporarily forced upon a fighting organization, but dictatorship was the ultimate aim of the labour movement. In the days of Lassalle, the labour movement in Germany was still weak, and, like a little boy, was still urgently in need of paternal guidance. When the father came to die he made testamentary arrangements for the provision of a guardian (for the German labour movement could still be an object of testamentary depositions). After Lassalle's death, the decisive executive power, the quintessence (if the term be permitted) of the structure of the young labour movement, continued to rest at the most absolute disposal of a single individual, Schweitzer. This authoritative tendency was an outcome, not so much of the historical necessity of the moment, as of the traditions and of the racial peculiarities of the German stock. With the lapse of time this characteristic has been notably attentuated by theoretical and practical democracy, and by the varying necessities of the case; above all by the appearance of a typically southern socialism, less rigid than that of Prussia and of Saxony, and jealous of its own autonomy. But the tendency has not disappeared, nor can it disappear.

Whilst there was thus forming in Germany the massive organization of the followers of Lassalle, the leaders of the International Association adopted a different form of organization. The International Working-men's Association was characterized by mutual jealousy on the part of the various national sections, and this was a potent obstacle in the way of any tendency towards dictatorship. Thus there came into existence in London the General Council, the supreme authority of the International, consisting of a handful of members belonging to the different countries represented in the organization. But the powers of this executive were in many respects hardly less restricted than those of the president of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein. The General Council forbade the associations which were affiliated to it to elect presidents, regarding this as contrary to democratic principles. Yet as far as concerned itself, it proudly asserted, through the mouth of the most conspicuous among its members, that the working class had now discovered a “common leadership.” [136] It nominated from among its own members the officers necessary for the general conduct of its business, such as the treasurer, the general secretary, and the corresponding secretaries for the different countries, nor did it hesitate on occasions, to allot several offices to the same individual. Engels, though a German, was for some time secretary for four different countries—Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Denmark. [137] It may be added that the secretariat carried with it important prerogatives, such as the right of recognizing newly constituted sections, the right to grant or refuse pecuniary subsidies, and the adjustment of disputes among the comrades. It is unquestionable that for several years the General Council was subject, in respect of all its most significant practical and theoretical manifestations, to the iron will of one single man, Karl Marx. The conflict in the General Council between the oligarchy de jure and the monarchy de facto was the inner cause of the rapid decline of the Old International. The General Council and especially Marx were accused of being the negation of socialism because, it was said, in their disastrous greed for power, they had introduced the principle of authority into the politics of the workers. [138] At first these accusations were directed from without, coming from the groups that were not represented on the General Council: the accusers were Bakunin, the Italians, and the Jurassians. The General Council, however, easily got the upper hand. At The Hague congress in 1872, the “authoritarians,” making use of means characteristic of their own tendencies (the hunting of votes, the calling of the congress in a town which was little accessible to some of the opponents and quite inaccessible to others), [139] obtained a complete victory over the anti-authoritarians. Before long, however, voices were raised within the Council itself to censure the spirit of the autocracy. Marx was abandoned by most of his old friends. The French Blanquists ostentatiously separated themselves from him when he had arbitrarily transferred the General Council to New York. The two influential leaders of the English trade unions who were members of the General Council, Odger and Lucraft, quarreled with Marx because they had not been consulted about the manifesto in favor of the Paris Commune to which their signatures were attached. The German refugees in England, Jung and Eccarius, declared that it was impossible to work with persons as dictatorial as Marx and Engels. Thus the oligarchs destroyed the larval monarchy.

In 1889 the so-called New International was founded. The socialists parties of the various countries agreed to undertake common deliberations, and to meet from time to time in congresses for this purpose. Therewith the “idea of internationalism” (to quote a phrase employed by Jaeckh) underwent a transformation. The Old International had worked along the lines of the greatest possible centralization of the international proletariat, “so that it might be possible, at any place at which the economic class-struggle became especially active, to throw there immediately into the scale the organized power of the working class.” [140] The New International, on the other hand, took the form of an extremely lax system, a union of elements which were strangers one to another; these elements were national organizations of a very rigid form, each confined within the limits of its own state. In other words, the New International is a confederation of autonomous states, and lacks any unitary and homogeneous organization. The Old International was an individual dictatorship, masquerading as an oligarchy. The New International may be compared to the old States General of the Netherlands; it is a federal republic, consisting of several independent oligarchies. The General Council of London was all-powerful. The modern Secretariat Socialiste International, whose seat is in Brussels, is nothing but an office for the exchange of letters, devoid of all authority. It is true that the international socialist congresses have sometimes furnished an opportunity for thoroughly self-conscious and vigourous national oligarchies to attempt usurpations in the international field. Thus, in particular, the German social democracy, when forced upon the defensive at the Stuttgart congress of 1907, endeavoured, and not without success, to impose upon other socialist parties its own particular tactics, the verbal revolutionarism which had originated in the peculiar conditions of Germany. [141] The international unification of tactics has always been limited by the varying needs of the different national oligarchies. In other words, whilst national supremacies are still possible in the contemporary socialist International, it is no longer possible for the socialist party of one country to exercise a true hegemony over the other national parties. The dread of being dominated increases in each national party in proportion as it becomes firmly established, consolidating its own existence and rendering itself independent of other socialist parties. International concentration is checked by the competition of the various national concentrations. Each national party stands on guard to prevent the others from extending their sphere of influence. 142 The result is that the international efficiency of the resolutions voted at the international congresses is almost insignificant. At the International Socialist Congress of Amsterdam, in 1904, the Belgian Anseele made it clear that he would not regard himself as bound by an international vote forbidding socialists to participate in bourgeois governments. [143] Thus, again, Vollmar, with the approval of the Germans, speaking at the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart in 1907, repudiated any interference on the part of the French in the military policy of the German socialists, protesting in advance against any international resolution regulating the conduct of the socialists of all countries in case of war. [144] Considered from close at hand the international socialist congresses present an aspect similar to that of the minor German principalities of the eighteenth century, consisting of nobles, ecclesiastics, and a few burgomasters, assemblies whose chief preoccupation was to avoid yielding to the prince a jot of their “freedoms,” that is to say of their peculiar privileges. In just the same way, the various national socialist parties, in their international congresses, defend with the most jealous care all their prerogatives and their national particularism, being all determined to yield not an inch of ground in favor of His Majesty the International.

The national oligarchies are willing to recognize the authority of international resolutions only when by an appeal to the authority of the International they can quell a troublesome faction in their own party. Sometimes the leaders of the minority secure an international bull to authenticate the purity of their socialist sentiments as contrasted with the majority, whom they accuse of heresy. Sometimes, on the other hand, it is the leaders of the majority who endeavour, on the international field, to gain a victory over the leaders of the minority, whom they have been unable to subdue within the limits of their national organization. A typical example of the former case is furnished by the action of the Guesdist minority, at the congress of Amsterdam in 1904, which endeavoured to discredit in the opinion of the International the ideas of their great cousin Jaurès in matters of internal policy. The manœuver proved effective, for the Guesdists succeeded in attaching Jaures to their chariot, and in holding him prisoner within the serried ranks of the unified French party. An example of the second mode of action is afforded by the conduct of the Italian and German Socialist Parties in appealing to the decisions of the international congresses (Paris, 1889; Zurich, 1893; London, 1895) in order to get rid of their anti-parliamentary and anarchist factions.

Side by side with this international decentralization, we see to-day a vigourous national centralisation. Certain limitations, however, must be imposed on this generalization.

In the modern labour movement, within the limits of the national organizations, we see decentralizing as well as centralizing tendencies at work. The idea of decentralization makes continuous progress, together with a revolt against the supreme authority of the central executive. But it would be a serious error to imagine that such centrifugal movements are the outcome of the democratic tendencies of the masses, or that these are ripe for independence. Their causation is really of an opposite character. The decentralization is the work of a compact minority of leaders who, when forced to subordinate themselves in the central executive of the party as a whole, prefer to withdraw to their own local spheres of action (minor state, province, or commune). A group of leaders which finds itself in a minority has no love for strong national centralization. Being unable to rule the whole country, it prefers to rule at home, considering it better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Vollmar, for example, who in his own land possesses so great an influence that he has been called the uncrowned king of Bavaria, cannot consent to play second fiddle in the German national organization. He would rather be first in Munich than second in Berlin!

The rallying cry of the majority is centralization, while that of the minority is autonomy. Those of the minority, in order to gain their ends, are forced to carry on a struggle which often assumes the aspect of a genuine fight for liberty, and this is reflected in the terminology of the leaders, who declare themselves to be waging war against the new tyranny. When the leaders of the minority feel themselves exceptionally strong, they push their audacity to the point of attempting to deny the right to existence of the majority, as impersonated in the central executive. At the Italian Socialist Congress held at Imola in 1902, the leader of the Italian reformists, Filippo Turati, joined with his friends in putting forward a formal proposal to suppress the central executive. It was necessary, he said, to substitute for this obsolete, dictatorial, and decrepit institution the complete autonomy of the local organizations, or at least to replace it by a purely administrative and executive organism consisting of three specialist employees. He added that it was a form of jacobinism to wish to govern the whole party from above. The opponents of this democratic conception rejoined with an effective argument when they pointed out that if the central executive were abolished, the parliamentary deputies would remain the sole and uncontrolled masters of the party. Consequently, whenever it became necessary to take action upon some urgent question, when time was lacking to make a direct reference to the party as a whole, it would be the parliamentary group, deriving its authority not from the party but from the electorate, which would decide upon the line of conduct to be pursued. If we accept the hypothesis that a true democracy may exist within the party, the tendency to the subdivision of powers is unquestionably anti-democratic, while centralization is, on the other hand, the best way of giving incontestable validity to the will of the masses. From this point of view, Enrico Ferri was perfectly right when he told the reformists that the proposed abolition of the central executive would be equivalent to the suppression of the sovereignty of the members in general, since the executive is the legitimate expression of the mass-will, and derives its rights from the party congresses.

This decentralizing movement which manifests itself within the various national socialist parties does not conflict with the essential principle of oligarchy. The minority in opposition, which has been thus careful to withdraw itself from the control of the central executive, proceeds within its own sphere of dominion to constitute itself into a centralized power no less unrestricted than the one against which it has been fighting. Thus such movements as we have been considering represent no more than an attempt to effect a partition of authority, and to split up the great oligarchies into a number of smaller oligarchies. In France and in Italy every socialist deputy endeavours to become as independent as possible of the central executive of his party, making himself supreme in his local organization. A similar process may be observed in Germany, where the persistence of numerous petty states, mutually independent, and each governed by its own parliament, has hitherto prevented the constitutional and administrative unification of the party throughout the country, and has greatly favored decentralizing tendencies. In consequence of this state of affairs we find in Germany that all the parties in the separate states, from Bavaria to Hesse, desire autonomy, independence of the central executive in Berlin. But this does not prevent each one of them from exercising a centralized authority within its own domain.

The decentralizing currents in German Socialism, and more particularly those of the German south, are adverse to cen-tralization only as far as concerns the central executive of Berlin, whilst within their own spheres they resist federalism with the utmost emphasis. Their opposition to the centralization in Berlin takes the form of a desire in the local parties to retain financial independence of the central treasury. At the Schweinfurt congress in 1906, Ehrhart, socialist deputy to the Bavarian diet, said: “It comes to this, the central executive has the management of the money which goes to Berlin, but it is for us to decide how we shall spend the money which is kept here.” 145 Hugo Lindenmann of Würtemberg, one of the most ardent adversaries of the Prussianization of the party and an advocate of federalism has declared that it is undesirable to deplete the local finances of the South German states in favor of the central treasury in Berlin, where the executive is always inclined to a policy of hoarding money for its own sake.

The struggles within the modern democratic parties over this problem of centralization versus decentralization are of great scientific importance from several points of view. It would be wrong to deny that the advocates of both tendencies bring forward a notable array of theoretical considerations, and occasionally make valid appeals to moral conceptions. We have, however, to disabuse our minds of the idea that the struggle is really one for or against oligarchy, for or against popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the party masses. The tendency to decentralization of the party rule, the opposition to international centralization (to the far-reaching authority of the international bureaux, committees, congresses), or to national centralization (to the authority of the party executives), has nothing to do with the desire for more individual liberty.

The democratic tendency may be justified by practical reasons, and in particular by differences in the economic or social situation of the working classes in the various districts, or by other local peculiarities. The tendencies to local, provincial, or regional autonomy are in fact the outcome of effective and ineradicable differences of environment. In Germany, the socialists of the south feel themselves to be divided as by an ocean from their comrades of the north. They claim the rights of selfgovernment and participation in government because they live in countries where parliamentarism already possesses a glorious history dating from more than a century back, whereas Prussia is still thoroughly imbued with the authoritarian and feudal spirit. They claim it also because in the south agriculture is carried on mainly under a system of petty proprietorship, whereas in the central and eastern provinces of Germany large landed estates predominate. The result is that class differences, with their consequent differences of mental outlook, are less conspicuous in the south than in the north, so that the opposition to the socialists is of a different character in the two regions. In the struggles between the northern and the southern leaders within the Socialist Party, struggles which are often lively and at times extremely violent, each section levels the same accusation against the other, declaring it to belong to a country in which civilization is comparatively backward and where theoretical conceptions are obsolete. The socialists of the north contend that those of the south are still living in a petty bourgeois, pacific, countrified environment, whereas they themselves, in the land of large-scale manufacture, represent the future. The men of the south proudly reply that it is they who live in conditions to which their comrades of the north have yet to attain, by abolishing the large landed estates and by suppressing the class of junkers.

Similar environmental differences divide the Italian socialists. Here also the socialists of the south demand complete autonomy, contending that the theoretical basis of socialism in the south is different from that in the north. They say that in the former kingdom of Naples the actual conditions of production and distribution are not such as to establish a sharp distinction between the two classes which according to classical socialism exist everywhere in strife. Consequently the introduction into this region of the Marxist revolutionary propaganda would marshal against socialism, not the great and medium landowners alone, but also the petty proprietors. Whilst the socialists of the plain of the Po fiercely oppose a duty upon grain because this would increase the cost of living for the labouring masses agglomerated in great cities, the socialists of the south have on several occasions declared in favor of the existing protectionist system, because its suppression would bring about a crisis in production in a region where proletarians and employers all alike live by agriculture. Again, in the north, where manufacturing industry is dominant, the socialists disapproved of the Tripolitan campaign, whereas in the south, where they are for the most part agriculturists, an enthusiastic sentiment in favor of territorial expansion prevailed. In addition to these reasons, which may be termed intrinsic because they derive from the objective differences between the north and the south, we find that an opposition between the socialists of the two areas arises from the attitude of the government in the respective regions. The Italian government is double-faced, being liberal in the north, but often very much the reverse in the south, for here it is largely in the hands of the local coteries which, in a region where the voters are scattered, become the sole arbiters in times of election. In the year 1902, when Giolitti was in power, this duplex attitude of the government gave rise to a serious difference within the Socialist Party, for the socialists of the north did not disguise their ardent desire to participate in government, while those of the south (although their tendencies were rather reformist than revolutionary) attacked the government fiercely.

Thus, as has been shown at length, the various tendencies towards decentralization which manifest themselves in almost all the national parties, while they suffice to prevent the formation of a single gigantic oligarchy, result merely in the creation of a number of smaller oligarchies, each of which is no less powerful within its own sphere. The dominance of oligarchy in party life remains unchallenged.