Jones G.S., Claeys G. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought

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Vernon L. Lidtke

the Lassalleans, who were not particularly sympathetic to feminist causes,

opposed female employment because of the ‘iron law of wages’ – increasing

the supply of labour with women would drive down wages – and argued

that the improvement of the male working class was a precondition for

bettering the condition of women. Even the Eisenachers allowed for female

employment chieﬂy because women in need, especially those who were

single, might otherwise turn to prostitution to earn a living. Bebel’s think-

ing on women’s issues then progressed far beyond both the views of most

socialists and the demands of bourgeois feminists. In a short pamphlet, writ-

ten while incarcerated in the 1870s, he detailed the injustices suffered by

women in most aspects of their lives. Then, in successive editions of Wom en

and Socialism he elaborated on these themes, and his arguments exerted a

broad inﬂuence in the socialist movement. After the fall of the anti-socialist

law, the Erfurt Programme of 1891 incorporated many of the changes in

thinking about the position of women, calling broadly for equality with

men, women’s suffrage and equal access to education. At about the same

time, a dynamic socialist feminist movement emerged that pressured the

male-dominated Social Democratic Party to put women’s rights high on its

agenda. However, the reigning theory even among socialist women subor-

dinated feminism to the emphasis in orthodox Marxism on the dominant

role of social class and the class struggle. This view, expressed repeatedly

and forcefully by Clara Zetkin, their most prominent leader, contended that

genuine female liberation could only be achieved as part of the emanci-

pation of the whole working class. Class came before gender (Allen 1991,

pp. 95–104; Quataert 1979,pp.90–117).

4 State socialism

Social democratic discourse seldom felt a need to engage directly with con-

servative German political thought, except for brief polemical denunciations

and the fact that socialist Reichstag deputies routinely lashed out at the con-

servative parties on speciﬁc issues. However, a conservative doctrine of state

socialism appealed to some members of the labour movement and thereby

aroused serious debate. What came to be called ‘state socialism’ grew par-

ticularly strong in the 1870sand1880s. In this speciﬁc form, state socialism

recognised the ‘social question’ as the main problem confronting German

society and advocated that the state should take strong action to improve the

condition of workers and the poor. State socialists were often sharp critics

of capitalism and liberalism, which they linked together, and they looked

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to the state, especially on the national level, to intervene decisively in the

economic realm. In politics, state socialists favoured monarchy and tradi-

tional religion, disapproved of democratic and liberal principles, and hoped

to persuade workers to be loyal to the existing system. The strength of state

socialism lay in the fact that its advocates included a number of learned and

talented intellectuals – often trained in economics and social science – who

explained their vision in numerous publications. These included Johann

Karl Rodbertus, Hermann Wagener, Albert Sch

afﬂe, Rudolf Meyer and

Adolf Wagner, as well as two Protestant pastors, Rudolf Todt and Adolf

ocker, the latter a chaplain at the Hohenzollern court. State socialists

aimed to inﬂuence the state directly and made few efforts to institutionalise

their movement, though for a few years they did publish a newspaper, Der

Staatssozialist.OnlyAdolfSt

ocker, later joined by Rudolf Meyer, formed a

political party – the Christian Social Party – which for a few years in the

early 1880s attempted, with only minor success, to attract w orkers away

from social democracy.

Had state socialism remained primarily a theoretical system, only a few

socialist intellectuals would have been interested. State socialism became

a pressing issue by 1881 when Bismarck initiated the national programme

for accident, sickness and invalidity insurance. In this context, a number

of intellectuals associated with social democracy showed a growing fascina-

tion with the ideas of Rodbertus, who had died in 1875, and whose cause

was advanced at the time by other state socialists like Adolf Wagner and

Rudolf Meyer. The fact that Ferdinand Lassalle had an extensive corres-

pondence with Rodbertus, which Adolf Wagner edited (1878), appeared

to give Rodbertus special credibility as a theorist of socialism. Moreover,

Rodbertus enjoyed considerable respect as an economist, though he pub-

lished his ideas chieﬂy in scattered essays and failed to bring together his

theories in a comprehensive treatment. Thoroughly grounded in the works

of the classical economists, Rodbertus accepted the labour theory of value

as the foundation for much of his thinking. The state, he ﬁrmly believed,

should intervene with measures that would improve conditions by regu-

lating wages and hours. In his analysis, capitalism was just one phase of

long-range economic development, and would necessarily be followed by

socialism. But he wanted above all to preser ve the monarchy and to avoid

violent revolution. By moving the economy in the direction of state social-

ism, he believed, revolution and serious social upheaval would be avoided.

As Rodbertus summarised his view in 1872, he stood for a ‘German social-

conservative party’, whose principles could be summarised in three words:

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‘monarchical, national, social’ (Rodbertus-Jagetzow 1880, i,p.178;Lidtke

1964; Lindenfeld 1997, 151;Meyer1882, i,pp.57–72).

The intense debate among Social Democrats, including a vigorous inter-

vention by Engels, revealed that some were willing to compromise their

democratic principles in the interest of social reforms. A small group of intel-

lectuals, for example, Moritz Wirth, Georg Adler, Max Quarck, Hermann

Bahr and Max Schippel, who were close to social democracy, expressed

their fascination with Rodbertus. They ranked him as a major theorist, but

did not believe that he alone had all the answers. Carl August Schramm,

who had been a member of the Social Democratic Party for several year s,

published a small book, Rodbertus, Marx, Lassalle (1885) t hat aroused the

intense hostility of Engels, Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein. According to

Schramm, Rodbertus, Marx and Lassalle were the founders of modern

socialism, but Lassalle was the ‘greatest’ of the three. Schramm rejected

Marx’s ideas and used Rodbertus as a source for counter-arguments. ‘It

is my deepest conviction’, he wrote, ‘that the social question will not be

solved only by legal acts from above, as Rodbertus believes, or by violence

from below, as preached by Marx, but through a long and irresistible for-

ward development’ (Schramm 1885,p.83). The wave of enthusiasm for

Rodbertus, it is fair to conclude, was driven only partially by high esteem

for his ideas, but also by those who looked with anxiety on the growing

inﬂuence of Marxism and wanted to ﬁnd theoretical obstacles to hinder its

advance.

5 Parliamentary participation

The issue of parliamentarism in socialist thought had three distinct dimen-

sions. In the ﬁrst place, it was the practical question of how the party

should relate to the existing German parliaments. What were the beneﬁts

of entering elections and participating in parliamentary activity? The second

dimension posed the question whether socialists would be able to use par-

liament to take political power and build a socialist society. The third raised

the broader theoretical question, whether representative bodies, including

the Reichstag, would be retained in a socialist society.

The practical issues concerning parliamentarism began in earnest in 1867

when the constitution of the North German Confederation speciﬁed that

elections to its parliament were to be based on universal manhood suffrage.

Suddenly, leaders of working-class organisations had a realistic opportunity

to win seats in the Reichstag and play a public role at the national level.

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In f act, Bebel, as a candidate for the Saxon Volkspartei, won a seat to

the constituent assembly, but he and Liebknecht contemptuously rejected

the new Confederation chieﬂy because they opposed German uniﬁcation

under Prussian leader ship. Although both won seats, again as candidates

of the Saxon Volkspartei (1867), for the ﬁrst regular session of the new

Reichstag, they believed that socialists should use their positions primarily

as a forum for criticism, not for positive legislative participation. Liebknecht

in particular launched vehement attacks against the parliament and in 1869

declared as an absolute principle that socialism and parliamentarism were

completely incompatible. If elected to the Reichstag, he believed that a

socialist deputy should make a series of vigorous protests and then leave the

building to go to the working class. On this occasion, Liebknecht linked his

denunciation of parliamentary action with a rhetorical declaration in favour

of violent revolution, asserting that ‘socialism is no long a question of theory,

but simply a question of power, which, like any other question of power,

cannot be decided in parliament, but only in the streets, on the battle-

ﬁeld’ (Liebknecht 1959,pp.26–8). Liebknecht’s hard line seemed excessive

to Bebel who believed that for tactical purposes, at a minimum, socialists

should exploit the Reichstag in every way possible; and even Liebknecht

never consistently followed his own advice.

A pattern emerged after 1875 that lasted to the end of the century: on

the one hand the socialists exploited the Reichstag for agitational pur-

poses, but on the other they deliberated seriously and sometimes entered

legislative proposals. Some socialists, again especially Liebknecht, contin-

ued to rail against the Reichstag as a sham and to emphasise that the

party’s deputies should exploit it tactically for criticism. However, by early

in 1878, just before the anti-socialist legislation was passed, the socialist

deputies introduced a substantial number of bills, and not just for agitational

purposes. Contrasting attitudes were now evident between moderates and

radicals in the par ty. Moderates did not participate in the rhetoric of anti-

parliamentarism, but desired to engage in positive legislative activity to the

extent that was possible. The radicals, who were more successful in shaping

the public image of social democracy, developed a less consistent posture.

They continued to complain that the Reichstag was a sham and to contend

that no substantial gains for workers could be won by participating in it,

but some of them perfected parliamentary politics to a high degree. This

was especially true of August Bebel.

During the twelve years of the anti-socialist law (1878–90) the issue

of parliamentary participation underwent a paradoxical development.

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Vernon L. Lidtke

Bismarck exploited two assassination attempts on the life of Emperor Wil-

helm I in 1877 and 1878 as justiﬁcation for demanding legislation to ban

the Social Democratic Party, though there was no evidence to prove that

the party was behind the attempts. It seems clear that Bismarck genuinely

believed, even feared, that the socialist labour movement would become

an inﬂuential political force and was determined to stop its growth as early

as possible by using a carrot-and-stick approach. The legislation banning

the party organisation and its afﬁliates passed in October 1878,butthe

law, owing to the constitutional conscience of numerous deputies, did not

prohibit persons who professed socialist beliefs from running for seats in

local and national elections. As a consequence, individual Social Democrats

were candidates for parliamentary seats, and those who won and entered the

Reichstag enjoyed a certain immunity as deputies and constituted an unof-

ﬁcial executive committee of the party. The outcome, paradoxically, was

not only that Bismarck’s stick turned out to be a fragile whip, but that the

existence of the Social Democratic Reichstag delegation actually helped

to preserve the viability of the socialist labour movement. On the other

side, Bismarck hoped to draw workers away from the Social Democrats

by sponsoring a broad programme of social welfare, which he did in the

1880s. However, Social Democratic deputies used the debates on the social

welfare legislation, and all other debates as well, as occasions to attack the

inadequacy of Bismarck’s programme and to expound their socialist prin-

ciples and goals. Since Reichstag debates were reported extensively in the

newspapers, the speeches of Social Democratic deputies reached a wide

audience and served a prominent agitational function. In practical terms,

therefore, during the anti-socialist law parliamentarism became more rather

than less signiﬁcant for the survival and growth of social democracy (Lidtke

1966,pp.70–105, 326–31).

6 The road to power

Social Democrats, especially those who claimed to follow Marx and Engels,

faced a signiﬁcant question: Could socialists use parliament to take political

power and build a socialist society? Or could they come to power only

through revolution? Their answer was supremely ambivalent, an ambiva-

lence that grew with the spread of Marxism. A striking expression of this

ambivalence was to be found in the preface to the published minutes of the

party’s congress in Copenhagen (March 1883). Written by radicals at the

congress, the statement claims that Marxism guided their reasoning:

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German socialism and social democracy 1860–1900

We are not a parliamentary party, we do not send our deputies to the various represen-

tative bodies to parley – but also we are not makers of revolutions [Revolutionsmacher].

German Social Democracy is proud that its attitude is always to follow the principles

of its great master Marx, who would have nothing either of parliamentarism or of the

making of revolutions [Revolutionsmacherei]. We are a revolutionary party, our aim is a

revolutionary one, and we permit ourselves no illusions about its accomplishment by

parliamentary means. But we also know that the manner in which it will be achieved

does not depend upon us, that we cannot make the conditions under which we ﬁght,

but that we have to study those conditions and we know that our task in conjunction

with this knowledge consists simply in acting in accord with what we know. (Lidtke

1966,p.153)

It is certainly a stunning statement: they sent deputies to parliament, but

were not a parliamentary party; they were revolutionaries, but did not

engage in revolution. Their task was to study conditions.

Marx and Engels had not been ambivalent when they wrote the Com-

munist Manifesto, but passionately called proletarians to revolution. Even

Lassalle, who also could lay some legitimate claim to being a revolutionary

in 1848–9, did not advise workers to use revolutionary force, but coun-

selled them to gain political power through the full use of the ballot and

parliament. By contrast, Marx and Engels spoke of ‘violent revolution’ that

would overthrow the bourgeoisie and of ‘sweeping away by force’ the old

relationships of production. They intended to incite fear, concluding that

‘the Communists...openly declare that their ends can be attained only

by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling

classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing

to lose but their chains. They have a world to win’ (Marx and Engels 1955,

i,pp.45, 54, 65). There is certainly no ambiguity in the Manifesto about the

need to use revolutionary force.

A political party, already under a legal ban, that hoped to avoid com-

plete suppression, could scarcely inscribe the rhetoric of the Manifesto in

its ofﬁcial programme without endangering its survival. The dilemma was

most troublesome for the radical wing of the party. One solution was to

remove violence and force from their deﬁnition of revolution. As early as

1871, Wilhelm Liebknecht set forth a view, not new with him, that stressed

the pervasiveness and gradualism of revolution. ‘All of human history’, he

said, ‘is a continuous revolution. History is the revolution in permanence –

it is becomingness, growth, change, progress – perpetual transformation,

because life is perpetual creation. As long as a human lives, he is a revo-

lutionary . . . The revolution, movement is life – the non-revolution, stasis

is death.’ This sounds mild, and it is, but Liebknecht wanted also to take

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his stand with revolution, so he simultaneously declared himself a revo-

lutionary, insisting that force would be used only if absolutely necessary

(Liebknecht 1883,pp.18–19). Others shared Liebknecht’s general attitude

towards revolution, but with variations. By the mid-1880s Bebel had stud-

ied Marx, especially his analysis of the internal contradictions of capitalism.

He therefore interpreted revolution within a highly deterministic frame-

work. He believed ﬁrmly that a revolution would take place at some time,

probably in the near future. It might even involve a violent struggle, but

not necessarily, and he minimised that possibility. More signiﬁcantly, he

emphasised that socialists could not, and would not, create the revolution.

It would come upon them when the social evils had become intolerable

and capitalism’s internal contradictions had totally undermined it (Bebel

1910,pp.363–6). He never professed to know what the revolution would

be like, but believed that Social Democrats had to be prepared so that they

could act at the appropriate time, but here too he had few, if any, ideas

about how to prepare for an active role. As a result, Bebel fell into a very

passive conception of revolution. In a letter to Engels in 1881 he wrote that

‘when things develop further, which is not to be doubted, I hold it possible

that in a certain moment the ruling classes will ﬁnd themselves in a kind of

hypnotic state and will let everything take its course almost without oppo-

sition’ (Bebel 1965,p.106). This was certainly Bebel’s hope, formulated

as a positive interpretation of revolution which he believed to be based on

Marxism. His inﬂuence on the political thinking of socialists can scarcely

be overestimated and he often repeated his passive view of revolution. In

the well-known Reichstag debate on the socialist state of the future (1893),

after outlining the inevitable collapse of capitalist society, he explained that

‘at present there is nothing more for us to do than to make sure that we

have enlightened the masses on the essence and nature of bourgeois society’

(Bebel 1893,p.12).

This passive conception of revolution was derived from an understanding

of the Marxist analysis of capitalism as put forward by experts, most notably

Kautsky. By the mid-1880s Kautsky was social democracy’s leading authority

on Marxist historical and economic theory and, as a proliﬁc writer and

editor of the movement’s theoretical journal, Die neue Zeit (founded 1883),

an intellectual mentor for younger members of the movement. Although

Kautsky often commented on political issues, political theory was only

of marginal interest to him. Gary Steenson does not exaggerate when

he says that at times Kautsky’s political views were ‘very simple and even

dogmatic. Politics for him [Kautsky] was the class struggle, and all states were

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German socialism and social democracy 1860–1900

class states which ruled for the dominant economic class’ (Steenson 1978,

p. 76).

Kautsky’s understanding of socialist theory, and of Marxism in particu-

lar, was informed in considerable part by his familiarity with the theories

of Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel, and to a lesser extent Thomas H.

Buckle. He read their works in his early twenties. Two broad ideas found

in Buckle appealed to the young Kautsky: the belief that by discovering

the laws according to which societies function, the study of history could

be transformed to resemble a natural science; and the hypothesis that the

widespread dissemination of knowledge, chieﬂy of natural science, was the

foundation and pre-condition for social and political (democratic) progress.

Kautsky understood Buckle to mean that the possibility of social improve-

ment, or revolution, rests upon the spread of a new idea, and the lesson

he drew was that propaganda was the most important task for socialists. At

about the same time, Kautsky was delving into the work of Ernst Haeckel,

an eminent zoolog ist in his own right and, in books like Die Nat

urliche

Sch

opfungsgeschichte (1867), Germany’s most prominent and proliﬁc advocate

of Darwin’s theories. Kautsky was also deeply impressed by Haeckel’s con-

cept of monism, which claimed to be a coherent world-view with a theory

which could overcome dualisms. When applied to the social world, monism

offered a means – on a theoretical level – for overcoming such dualisms as

the gap between capitalists and workers and rulers and the ruled. Kautsky

incorporated Haeckel’s monism into his own outlook (Holzheuer 1972,

pp. 14–19;Kautsky1960,pp.172–3, 224–5; Steenson 1978,pp.24–30).

But it was ideas drawn directly from Darwin that most thoroughly per-

meated Kautsky’s thinking throughout his most productive years. Although

he had learned about Darwin by reading authors like Haeckel, he ﬁrst read

The Descent of Man only after it appeared in German translation in 1875.

Immediately he set about incorporating Darwinian ideas into his think-

ing, adapting them in several instances to ﬁt into a framework of thought

inﬂuenced by general socialist principles as well as by notions taken from

Buckle and Haeckel. He drew heavily on Darwin’s conception of human-

ity as a social animal and of social instincts as the foundation of morality.

When aspects of evolutionary theory did not ﬁt easily with socialist prin-

ciples, Kautsky modiﬁed Darwin’s formulations. He shifted the concept of

the struggle for survival from a competition between individuals to one

between groups, for example, classes and nations. Darwin’s view of social

instincts became in Kautsky an argument for group solidarity. In adapting

Darwin’s idea of social instincts to his emerging socialist outlook, Kautsky

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contended that proletarians have communist instincts that form the basis

for class solidarity and are so strong that they guarantee working-class vic-

tory in the future. All of this, Kautsky believed, corresponded to the laws of

nature, the foundation on which to build a new social system and which the

socialist movement had to follow to reach its ultimate goal. This schematic

outline of Kautsky’s assimilation and adaptation of Darwinian thought gives

just a hint of the extent to which images and words drawn from biology and

the natural world are scattered throughout his writing and give a naturalistic

cast to much of his interpretation of Marxism. In contrast to his absorption

in Darwinian thought, Kautsky never immersed himself deeply in Hegelian

philosophy, the starting point for Marx, and his limited appreciation and

knowledge of Hegel also affected his approach to Marxism (Holzheuer 1972,

pp. 19–25;Kautsky1960,pp.379–81, 518–22;Pierson1993,pp.187–8).

Kautsky’s Darwinian orientation was present even as he consistently

emphasised Marxism as a system of economic determinism, but he also

argued for a multilayered understanding that included voluntarist elements.

He explained that ‘we [Social Democrats] do not mean that the social revo-

lution will be accomplished of itself, that the irresistible, inevitable course of

evolution will do the work without the assistance of man; nor . . . that noth-

ingislefttothosewhosuffer...butidlytofoldtheirarmsandpatientlyto

wait for its [capitalism’s] abolition’. The revolution could take various forms,

he explained: ‘It is by no means necessary that it be accompanied with vio-

lenceandbloodshed...Neitherisitnecessarythatthesocialrevolutionbe

decided in one blow; such probably was never the case. Revolutions prepare

themselves by years or decades of economic and political struggle’ (Kautsky

1910,pp.89–91;Pierson1993,pp.60–9, 231–5).

A deterministic or passive conception of revolution did not exclude the

possibility that peaceful parliamentary action could also be the road to

socialism. Party moderates, inclined to reformism, had been sympathetic to

this view from the early 1880s, but the radical wing tended to dismiss it as

an illusion, especially in view of the restricted powers of German repre-

sentative institutions. However, by the end of the 1880s, there were hints

that on this matter the attitudes of the Marxist-inﬂuenced leaders were also

shifting. Wilhelm Liebknecht, who earlier had expressed extreme contempt

for parliament, is a good example. By 1890 he appeared to have shifted his

ground substantially. Social democracy, he argued, had matured from a sect

to a party, and with that transformation came a changed perspective on

the means to achieve power and socialism. It was necessary to recognise

that revolutions require time, that they take place gradually, without people

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German socialism and social democracy 1860–1900

noticing what is actually going on ‘and the transition from this bourgeois

society to the socialist society’, he counselled, ‘will be realised just as organ-

ically, just as gradually, and just as irresistibly’. He concluded, therefore, that

it was possible that the road to socialism would be through parliamentary

reform, though he still maintained that no absolute answer could be given

(Liebknecht 1890,p.33).

Kautsky, more rigorous than the impulsive Liebknecht, actually came

to a similar conclusion around the same time. In explaining the Erfurt

programme of 1891, Kautsky would not ﬂatly say that socialists would

gain power through parliament, but he clearly believed that if the working

class, through the Social Democrats, showed strength, they could use par-

liament to gain control. Furthermore, proletarian participation improved

parliament. ‘Whenever the proletariat engages in parliamentary activity as a

self-conscious class, parliamentarism begins to change its character. It ceases

to be a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The very participation

of the proletariat proves to be the most effective means of shaking up the

hitherto indifferent divisions of the proletariat and giving them hope and

conﬁdence. It is the most powerful lever that can be utilised to raise the

proletariat out of its economic, social, and moral degradation.’ At this point

Kautsky began to sound like a genuine advocate of parliament as an instru-

ment for gaining power, as he stressed that ‘the proletariat has, therefore,

no reason to distrust parliamentary action; on the other hand it has every

reason to exert all of its energy to increase the power of parliaments in their

relation to other departments of government and to swell to the utmost its

own parliamentary representation’ (Kautsky 1910,pp.186–8).

A year later Kautsky appeared to be more impressed by the role that

parliament might play in the socialist drive to power, but now he gutted

it of its liberal and democratic qualities. He viewed parliamentary power

by socialists as a way to establish the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. He

speculated that a ‘genuine parliamentary regime can be just as good an

instrument for the dictatorship of the proletariat as it is an instrument for

the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ (Kautsky 1893,p.118).Thisisstriking!

It is one of the few instances in all of the political discourse of social

democracy in the nineteenth century that embraces the dictatorship of the

proletariat. Though sometimes mentioned in passing, the concept never

appears as an important feature of social democratic discourse. This is not

at all surprising. They could not fail to see that the idea of a dictatorship

of the proletariat clashed directly with their long-standing commitment to

democratic principles. They could attempt to water down the meaning

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