In principle it is quite a matter of indiffer- ence to-day to socialism, or the workmen's movement, whether new colonies should prove successful or not. The assumption that the extension of colonies will restrict the realisation of socialism, rests at bottom on the altogether outworn idea that the realisation of socialism depends on an increasing narrowing of the circle of the well-to-do and an increas- ing misery of the poor. That the first is a fable was shown in earlier chapters, and the misery theory has now been given up nearly everywhere, if not with all its logical con- clusions and outright, yet at least by explaining it away as much as possible.* But even if the theory were right, the * H. Cunow makes such an attempt in his article The Catastrophe. He says that if Marx at the end of his first volume of Capital speaks of the " increasing mass of misery" which will appear with the progress of capitalist production we must understand by that "not a simple retrogression of the social state of existence of the worker" but only a "retrogression of his social total position in relation to progressive, civilised development — that is, in relation to the increase of productivity and the increase of the general wants of civilisation." The idea of misery is no fixed one. " What appears to one workman in a certain category, whom a great difference in education separates from his 'master of work,' as a lot worthy to be striven after, may appear to a well- qualified worker of another category, who mentally, perhaps, is intellectually superior to his 'master of work,' as such a ' mixture of misery and oppression ' that he rises in revolt against it " (Neue Zeit xvii., pp. 402-403).
Unfortunately Marx speaks in the sentence referred to not only of the increasing mass of misery, of oppression, but also of " slavery, of deterioration, of exploitation." Are we to understand these also in the implied — " Pick- wickian"— sense? Are we to admit, perhaps, a deteriora- tion of the worker which is only a relative deterioration in proportion to the increase of the general civilisation? I am not inclined to do it, nor Cunow probably. No, Marx speaks in the passage referred to quite positively of " a constantly decreasing number of millionaires " who " usurp all the advantages " of the capitalist transformation and the growth " of the man of misery, of oppression," etc. {Capital, I., chap. xxiv. 7). One can ground the catastrophe theory on this contrast, but not on the moral misery caused by the intellectually inferior managers who are to be found in every counting house — in every hierarchical organisation.
Incidentally it is a little satisfaction to me to see how Cunow here can only reconcile with reality the sentences on which the catastrophe theory rests by suddenly allow- ing workers of different categories to appear with fundamentally opposed social ideas? Are those, then, also u English workers "?
colonies about which there is now an interest in Germany are far from being in the position to re-act so quickly on social conditions at home, that they could only keep off a possible catastrophe for a year. In this respect the German social democracy would have nothing to fear from the colonial policy of the German Empire. And because it is so, because the development of the colonies which Germany has acquired (and of those which it could per- haps win, the same holds good) will take so much time that there can be no question for many a long year of any reaction worth mentioning on the social conditions of Ger- many. Just from this reason the German social democracy can treat the question of these colonies without prejudice. There can even be no question of a serious reaction of colonial possessions on the political conditions of Germany. Naval Chauvinism, for example, stands undoubtedly in close connec- tion with colonial Chauvinism, and draws from it a certain nourishment. But the first would also exist without the second, just as Germany had her navy before she thought of the conquest of colonies. It must nevertheless be granted that this connection is the most rational ground for justifying a thorough resistance to a colonial policy.
Otherwise, there is some justification during the acquisition of colonies to examine carefully their value and prospects, and to control the settlement and treatment of the natives as well as the other matters of administration; but that does not amount to a reason for con- sidering such acquisition beforehand as some- thing reprehensible.
Its political position, owing to the present system of government, forbids social democracy from taking more than a critical attitude to these things, and the question whether Germany to-day needs colonies can, particu- larly in regard to those colonies that are still to be obtained, be answered in the negative with good authority. But the future has also its rights for us to consider. If we take into account the fact that Germany now im- ports yearly a considerable amount of colonial produce, we must also say to ourselves that the time may come when it will be desirable to draw at least a part of these products from our own colonies. ] However speedy socialists may imagine the course of development in Germany towards themselves to be, yet we cannot be blind to the fact that it will need a considerable time before a whole series of other countries are converted to socialist But if it is not reprehensible to enjoy the produce of tropical plantations, it cannot be so to culti- vate such plantations ourselves. Not the whether but the how is here the decisive point. It is neither necessary that the occu- pation of tropical lands by Europeans should injure the natives in their enjoyment of life, nor has it hitherto usually been the case. Moreover, only a conditional right of savages to the land occupied by them can be recog- nised. The higher civilisation ultimately can claim a higher right. Not the conquest, but the cultivation, of the land gives the historical legal title to its use.* According to my judgment these are the essential points of view which should decide the position of social democracy as regards the question of colonial policy. They also, in practice, would bring about no change worth mentioning in the vote of the party; but we are not only concerned, I repeat, with what would be voted in a given case, but also with the reasons given for the vote.
There are socialists to whom every admis- sion of national interests appears as Chauvin- ism or as an injury to the internationalism and class policy of the proletariat. As in his time Domela Nieuwenhuis declared Bebel's well-known assertion — that in case of an attack on the part of Russia the social democracy would set up their men for the defence of Germany — to be Chauvinism, so lately, Mr. Belfort Bax also found reprehen- sible jingoism in a similar assertion by Mr. Hyndman.| * " Even a whole society, a nation, nay, all contem- poraneous societies taken together are not proprietors of the earth. They are only its tenants, its usufructuaries, and have to leave it improved as boni patres familias to the following generation" (Marx, Capital, III. 2, p. 309).
f Hyndman insists with great decision on the idea that England, for the protection of the importation of its foodstuffs, needs a navy large enough for every possible combination of adversaries. " Our existence as a nation of free men depends on our supremacy at sea. This can be said of no other people of the present day. However much we socialists are naturally opposed to armaments, we must, however, recognise facts" (Justice, December 31st, 1898).
i8o It must be admitted that it is not always easy to fix the boundary where the advocacy of the interests of one's nation ceases tobe just and to pass into pseudo-patriotism; but the remedy for exaggeration on this side certainly does not lie in greater exaggeration on the other. It is much more to be sought in a movement for the exchange of thought between the demo- cracies of the civilised countries and in the support of all factors and institutes working for peace.
Of greater importance to-day than the question of raising the demands already standing on the programme, is the question of supplementing the party's programme. Here practical development has placed a whole series of questions on the orders of the day which at the drawing up of the programme were partly considered to be lying away too far in the future for social democracy to concern itself specially with them, but which were also partly, not sufficiently considered in all their bearings. To these belong the agrarian question, the policy of local administration, co-operation and different matters of industrial law. The great growth of social democracy in the eight years since the drawing up of the Erfurt Programme, its reaction on the home politics of Germany as well as its experiences in other lands, have made the more intimate consideration of all these questions imperative, and many views which were formerly held about them have been materially corrected.
Concerning the agrarian question, even those i8i who thought peasant cultivation doomed to decay have considerably changed their views as to the length of time for the completion of this decay. In the later debates on the agrarian policy to be laid down by the social democracy, certainly many differences of opinion have been shown on this point, but in principle they revolved round this — whether, and in a given case to what limit, social democracy should offer assistance to the peasant as an independent farmer against capitalism.
The question is more easily asked than answered. The fact that the great mass of peasants, even if they are not wage earners, yet belong to the working classes, i.e., do not maintain existence merely on a title to posses- sions or on a privilege of birth, places them near the wage-earning class. On the other side they form in Germany such an important fraction of the population that at an election in very many constituencies their votes decide between the capitalist and socialist parties. But if social democracy would not or will not limit itself to being the party of the workers in the sense that it is only the political completion of trade unionism, it must be careful to interest at least a great part of the peasants in the victory of its candidates. In the long run that will only happen if social democracy commits itself to measures which offer an improvement for the small peasants in the immediate future. But with many measures having this object the legislature cannot dis- tinguish between the small and the middle class peasants, and on the other hand they cannot help the peasant as a citizen of the state or as a worker without supporting him at least in- directly as an " undertaker. " This is shown with other things in the pro- gramme of socialist agrarian policy which Kautsky sketched at the end of his work on the agrarian question under the heading The Neutralisation of the Peasantry. Kautsky shows most convincingly that even after a victory for social democracy no reason will exist for the abolition of peasants' holdings. But he is at the same time a strong opponent of such measures, or the setting up of such demands, as aim at forming a M protection for peasants " in the sense that they would retain the peasant artificially as an undertaker. He proposes quite a series of reforms, or declares it admissible to support them, which result in relieving the country parishes and in increasing their sources of income. But to what class would these measures be a benefit in the first instance? According to Kautsky 's own representation, to the peasants. For, as he shows in another passage of his work, in the country, even under the rule of universal suffrage, there could be no question of an influence of the proletariat on the affairs of the parish worth mentioning. For that influence is, according to him, too isolated, too back- ward, too dependent on the few employers of labour who control it, " A communal policy other than one in the interest of the landowner is not to be thought of. M Just as little can we think to-day ' * of a modern management of the land by the parish in a large co-operative farming enterprise controlled by the village community. "* But, so far, and so long, as that is so, measures like " Amalgamation of the hunting divisions of the great landowners in the Community/ ' " Nationalisation of the taxes for schools, roads, and the poor,M would obviously contribute to the improvement of the economic position of the peasants and therewith also to the strengthening of their possessions. Practically, then, they would just work as protection for the peasants.
Under two hypotheses the support of such protection for the peasants appears to me innocuous. First a strong protection of agri- cultural labourers must go hand in hand with it, and secondly democracy must rule in the commune and the district. Both are assumed by Kautsky. But Kautsky undervalues the influence of agricultural labourers in the democratised country parish. The agricultural labourers are as helpless as he describes them in the passage quoted, only in such districts as lie quite outside commercial intercourse; and their number is always becoming smaller. Usually the agricultural labourer is to-day tolerably conscious of his interests and with universal suffrage would even become more so. Besides that, there exist in most parishes all kinds of antagonisms among the peasants themselves, and the village community con- tains, in craftsmen and small traders, elements * The Agrarian Question, pp. 337 and 338.
which in many respects have more in common with the agricultural labourers than with the peasant aristocracy. All that means that the agricultural labourers, except in a very few cases, would not have to make a stand alone against an unbroken " reactionary mass. " Democracy has, in the country districts, if it is to exist, to work in the spirit of socialism. I consider democracy in conjunction with the results of the great changes in the system of communication, of transport, a more powerful lever in the emancipation of agricultural labourers than the technical changes in peasant farming.
I refrain from going through all the details of Kautsky's programme with which, as I have already remarked, I agree thoroughly in prin- ciple; but I believe that a few observations on it ought not to be suppressed. For me, as already observed, the chief task which social democracy now has to fulfil for the agricultural population can be classified under three heads, namely: (1) The struggle against all the present remnants and supports of feudal landowners, and the fight for democracy in the commune and district. This involves a fight for the removal of entail, of privileged estate parishes, hunting privileges, etc., as laid down by Kautsky., In Kautsky's formulation " the fullest self-government in the parish and the province,' ' the word " fullest M does not seem to me well chosen, and I would substitute for it the word ' ■ democratic. ' ' Superlatives are nearly always misleading. M Fullest self-government M can apply to the circle of those entitled to have a say, what it means can be better expressed by " democratic self-govern- ment M; but it can also denote the administrative functions, and then it would mean an absolutism of the parish, which neither is necessary nor can be reconciled with the demands of a healthy democracy. The general legislature of the nation stands above the parish, apportioning its definite functions and representing the general interests against its particular interests.
(2) Protection and relief of the working classes in agriculture. Under this heading falls the protection of labourers in the narrower sense: Abolition of regulations for servants, limitation of hours of labour in the various categories of wage earners, sanitary police regulations, a system of education, as well as measures which free the small peasant as a taxpayer.
(3) Measures against the absolutism of pro- perty and furthering co-operation. Hereunder would fall demands like " Limitation of the rights of private property in the soil with a view to promoting (1) the suppression of adding field to field, (2) the cultivation of land, (3) prevention of disease " (Kautsky); " reduction of exorbitant rents by courts of justice set up for the purpose M (Kautsky); the building of healthy and comfortable workmen's dwellings by the parish; * * facilities for co-operative unions by means of legislation M (Kautsky); the right of the parish to acquire land by purchase or expropriation and to lease it at a cheap rent to workmen and workmen's associa- tions.
This latter demand leads to the question of co-operation. After what has been said in the chapter on the economic possibilities of co- operative associations I need say little here. The question to-day is no longer whether co-operative associations ought to exist or not. They exist and will exist whether the social democracy desires it or not. By the weight of its influence on the working classes, social democracy certainly can retard the spread of workmen's co-operative societies, but it will not thereby do any service for itself or the working class. The hard-and-dry Manchesterism which is often manifested by sections of the party in regard to co-operation and is grounded on the declaration that there can be no socialist co-operative society within a capitalist society is not justified. It is, on the contrary, important to take a decided position and to be clear which kind of associations social democracy can recommend, and can morally support.
We have seen what an extraordinary advance associations for credit, purchasing, dairy farm- ing, working and selling, make in all modern countries. But these associations in Germany are generally associations of peasants, repre- sentatives of the " middle class movement M in the country. I consider it incontrovertible that they, in conjunction with the cheapening of the rate of interest which the increased accumula- tion of capital brings with it, could indeed help much towards keeping peasant enterprises capable of competing with large enterprises. Consequently, these peasant associations are in most cases the scene of the action of anti- socialist elements, of petits bourgeois liberals, clericals, and anti-semites. So far as social democracy is concerned, they can to-day be put out of reckoning nearly everywhere — even if in their ranks there are here and there small peasants who are nearer to the socialist than to other parties. The middle-class peasant takes the lead with them. If social democracy ever had a prospect of winning a stronger influence on the class of the country population referred to by means of co-operation, it has let the opportunity slip.
But if the social democratic party has not the vocation of founding co-operative stores, that does not mean it should take no interest in them. The dearly-loved declara- tion that co-operative stores are not socialist enterprises, rests on the same formalism which long acted against trade unions, and which now begins to make room for the opposite extreme. Whether a trade union or a work- men^ co-operative store is or is not socialistic, does not depend on its form but on its char- acter— on the spirit that permeates it. They are not socialism, but as organisations of workmen they bear in themselves enough of the element of socialism to develop into worthy and indispensable levers for the socialist emancipation. They will certainly best dis- charge their economic tasks if they are left completely to themselves in their organisation and government. But as the aversion and even enmity which many socialists formerly felt against the trade union movement has gradu- ally changed into friendly neutrality and then into the feeling of belonging together, so will it happen with the stores — so has it already happened in some measure.
Those elements, which are enemies not only of the revolutionary, but of every emancipation movement of the workers, by their campaign against the workmen's co-operative stores have obliged the social democracy to step in to support them. Experience has also shown that such fears, as that the co-operative movement would take away intellectual and other forces from the political movement of the workers, were utterly unfounded. In certain places that may be the case temporarily, but in the long run exactly the opposite takes place. Social democracy can look on confidently at the founding of working men's co-operative stores where the economic and legal pre- liminary conditions are found, and it will do well to give it its full good-will and to help it as much as possible.
Only from one point of view could the work- men's co-operative store appear something doubtful in principle — namely, as the good which is in the way of the better, the better being the organisation of the purchase and the distribution of commodities through the munici- pality, as is designed in nearly all socialist systems. But first of all the democratic store, in order to embrace all members of the place in which it is located, needs no alteration in principle, but only a broadening of its con- stitution, which throughout is in unison with its natural tendencies (in some smaller places co-operative stores are already not far from counting all the inhabitants of the place as their members). Secondly, the realisation of this thought still lies such a long way off, and assumes so many political and economic changes and intermediate steps in evolution, that it would be mad to reject with regard to it all the advantages which the workers can draw to-day from the co-operative store. As far as the district council or parish is concerned we can only through it to-day provide clearly defined, general needs.
With that we come now to the borough or municipal policy of social democracy. This also for a long time was the step-child of the socialist movement. It is, for example, not very long ago that in a foreign socialist paper (which has since disappeared), edited by very intellectual folk, the following idea was rejected with scorn as belonging to the petit bourgeois, namely, the using of municipalities as the lever of the socialist work of reform without, on that account, neglecting parliamentary action, and the beginning through the municipality of the realisation of socialist demands. The irony of fate has willed it that the chief editor of that paper was only able to get into the Parliament of his country on a wave of muni- cipal socialism. Similarly in England, social democracy found in the municipalities a rich i go i go field of fruitful activity before it succeeded in sending its own representatives to Parliament. In Germany the development was different. Here social democracy had long obtained Parliamentary civil rights before it gained a footing to any extent worth mentioning in the representative bodies of the communes. With its growing extension its success also increased in the elections for local bodies, so that the need for working out a socialist municipal programme has been shown more and more, and such has already been drawn up in indi- vidual states or provinces. What does social democracy want for the municipality, and what does it expect from the municipality?
With regard to this the Erfurt programme says only " Self-government of the people in empire, state, province, and municipality; election of officials by the people/ ' and demands for all elections the direct right to vote for all adults. It makes no declaration as to the legal relation of the enumerated governing bodies to one another. As shown farther back, I main- tain that the law or the decree of the nation has to come from the highest legal authority of the community — the state. But that does not mean that the division line between the rights and powers of the state and the muni- cipality should always be the same as to-day.
To-day, for example, the municipal right of expropriation is very limited, so that a whole series of measures of an economic-political character would find in the opposition, or exaggerated demands, of town landlords IQI a positively insurmountable barrier. An extension of the law of expropriation should accordingly be one of the next demands of municipal socialism. It is not, however, necessary to demand an absolutely unlimited law of expropriation. The municipality would always be bound to keep to the regulations of the common law which protect the individual against the arbitrary action of accidental majorities. Rights of property which the com- mon law allows must be inviolable in every community so long as, and in the measure in which, the common law allows them. To take away lawful property otherwise than by com- pensation, is confiscation, which can only be justified in cases of extreme pressure of circum- stances— war, epidemics.* * I gave expression to this idea very energetically some years ago in my summary of Lassalle 's System of Acquired Rights, which work is itself, as Lassalle writes, dedicated to the object of reconciling revolutionary law with positive law. Braving the danger of being charged with thinking as a philistine, I have no hesita- tion in declaring that to me the thought or proposal of an expropriation, which would only be robbery dressed up in a legal form, appears wholly objectionable — not to speak of an expropriation according to the prescription of Bareres — and, quite apart from the fact that such an expropriation would be objectionable on purely economic or utilitarian grounds. " Whatever far-reaching encroach- ments on the domain of the privileges of property pre- vailing hitherto one may assume in this respect, in the period of transition to a socialist state of society, they cannot be those of a senseless operating brutal force, but they must be the expression of an idea of law, even if it be new and asserts itself with elementary force " (Com- plete Edition of Lassalle's Works, vol. iii., p. 791). The form of the expropriation of the expropriators corres- ponding most nearly to the socialistic conception of law and rights is that of a replacement by the activities of