Chapter III: The Antecedents of the Social Movement

"The great, dumb, deep-buried class lies like an Enceladus, who
in his pain, if he will complain of it, has to produce
earthquakes."--THOMAS CARLYLE, "Chartism," ix. (_Essays._
Edition, Chapman and Hall, vi., 169).

The question which now rests upon the lips of you all, since I have indicated the lines of thought of the first socialists, is this: When such noble minds drew the plan of a new and better world for their suffering brethren, where was the proletariat itself, and what did it do? What are the beginnings of the social movement which is carried on by the masses?

The answer must be that long, very long, after much had been thought and written concerning the condition and future of the proletariat this element of the population yet remained completely untouched by these new ideas, knew nothing of them, cared nothing for them; it permitted itself to be controlled by other forces, other motives. The systems of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, have had little or no influence with the masses.

As we turn to the proletariat itself and ask after its fate,--perhaps up to the middle of our century,--we find a precursor of the social movement which everywhere--that is, in all lands controlled by the capitalistic economy--exhibits the same marks and is uniformly characterised in the following way: where the movement of the masses stands out clearly and conscious of its aim, it is not proletarian; where it is proletarian, it is not clear and conscious of its aim. That means, in the conscious movement in which the proletariat is found engaged, middle-class elements direct as to the object sought: where the proletariat undertakes to be independent, it shows all the immaturity of the formative stages of a social class, mere instincts, no clearly defined postulates and aims.

Those historic occurrences in which the proletariat played a role, although they were not proletarian movements, are the well-known revolutions which we connect with the years 1789, 1793, 1830, 1832, 1848--for I must go back into the previous century for the inner connection. We have here movements which are essentially middle-class; in them political liberties are sought, and, so far as the proletarian elements are concerned, the masses fight the battles of the middle classes, like the common soldiers who fought in feudal armies. This fact, that we here have to do with purely middle-class movements, has so often been mistaken by many celebrated historians, the terms "communism" and "socialism" have been so constantly applied to those agitations, that it is well worth our while to show the incorrectness of this assumption. For this purpose, we must look separately at those movements which are connected with the years thus specified, since each one has its own characteristics.

If we present to ourselves first the real meaning of the movements of 1789 and 1793, the great French Revolution, it is clear even to those of limited vision that the revolution of 1789 was purely a middle-class movement, and indeed carried on by the higher part of the middle-class. It is the struggle of the upper middle-class for the recognition of its rights, and for relief from the privileges of the ruling class of society--from the fetters in which it had been held by feudal powers. It expresses this struggle in demands for equality and freedom, but it really means from the very start a limited equality and freedom. Look at the first, trenchant, we may call them social, laws which were passed by the new regime of France. They are by no means of a popular character, or partial to the working-man; we see at the first look that they were not made by the masses for the masses, but by an aristocratic middle-class, which places itself in sharp opposition to the rabble. Thus the well-known _Loi martiale_ of October 20, 1789, a riot act, gives expression to this distinction as it speaks of the "_bons citoyens_" who must be protected by stern police regulation against the attacks of the _gens mal intentionés_; "when the mob does not disperse on warning, then the armed forces shall fire." They would so control the caprices of the masses that not a second time should a dagger find its way into the breast of an honourable baker, when the populace without authority would appropriate to itself the bread in the bakeries.

I think of a second important law, born out of the doctrinaire middle-class spirit of these first years; the "Coalitions Law" of June 17, 1791. It punishes every combination of tradesworkers for the furtherance of their "alleged" common interests, as an attempt upon the freedom and rights of man, by a fine of five hundred livres and the loss of citizenship for a year. This applies equally to the employer and the working-man, we may better say the master and the journeyman; but we all know what crying injustice this equality has produced.

Then comes the first consolidation of the new society, the Constitution of November 3, 1791, which, through the introduction, of limited franchise, brings to sharp and clear expression the separation between a ruling class of those well-to-do and a ruled class of the "have-nothings." There are now "full citizens" and citizens of the second class.

Thus it is clear that the revolution of 1789 was not at all a proletarian movement. There may seem to be some doubt concerning the agitation of 1793, for it is this, before all others, which our great historians, as Sybel, like to specify as "communistic." The men of Montaigne are, in their eyes, the predecessors of the social democracy; and, indeed, quite lately in a small book published by the Berlin Professor H. Delbrueck in the Goettingen library for working-men, exactly this assertion is presented--that the leaders of this social movement were true social democrats, and that in fact the social democracy has developed no new thoughts since Saint Just and Robespierre. I cannot recognise this assertion as correct. Let us test it.

I assert that even the movement of 1793 was essentially non-proletarian. We grant that in it an undercurrent of democracy breaks forth, which the French Revolution always had; and it is this which has misled many. This was there from the beginning. It expressed itself already in 1789, in the elections to the States-General, and comes finally in 1793 to its full development.

As you read through the _Cahiers_ with their _Doléances_ of the year 1789, those "papers of grievances" which the electors, especially those of Paris and Lyons, were accustomed to hand to their representatives, you find therein already a peculiar tone which does not harmonise with the honeyed expressions of the men of the "tennis court." These demands were connected with the ruling hard times, for the winter of 1789 had been severe; and they complained because misery could not be lessened by a free constitution. "The voice of freedom means nothing to the heart of a miserable man who is dying of hunger." Already they demanded bread taxes and employment, the overthrow of Sunday rest and of feast-days. Everyone knows how this cry arises again and again in the speeches and writings of Marat. The _Ami du Peuple_ declaims against the "aristocrats," and desires to serve the "people." They found out that, for the great masses of the "poor," freedom and equality availed nothing; and Marat thus concludes: "Equality of rights leads to equality of enjoyment, and only upon this basis can the idea rest quietly." Then come the taxes; the "maximum" comes. But I ask you, does that make this movement a proletarian and social one? Can it be that at all? Let us look merely at its supporters! The chief centres of democratic undercurrent are, as has been said, Lyons and Paris. In Lyons we find, indeed, a proletariat, that of the silk industry. We have the statistics of the year 1789; at that time there were, in the Lyons silk industry, 410 _maîtres marchands fabricants_, 4402 _maîtres ouvriers_, 1796 _compagnons_, and about 40,000 other workers of both sexes. We must allow that here, without doubt, there are indeed strong proletarian interests and instincts; yet they are veiled by the peculiar character of the Lyons silk industry. It had at that time, and has even to-day, a strong hold upon the lower middle-class, and to a degree upon the upper middle-class, for two reasons. One, due to its peculiar organisation, the fact that this work was not carried on in large manufactories but in small workshops under the direction of independent masters, and that this created a class of independent men, between the capitalist and the worker, hard to move to concerted action with the proletariat. A second reason is this, that the Lyons silk industry is a manufacture of an article of luxury. Such industries are in their very nature, even in the earlier times, anti-revolutionary; the men of Montaigne would not use silk stockings. For this reason we find Lyons, naturally, after the first enthusiasm is over, by the side of the _Vendée_ at the head of the counter-revolution, even at the beginning of the year 1790. In general, as Lyons becomes anti-revolutionary the faubourgs of Paris come to the foreground; out of them new masses spring forward, the Sans-culottes. But what kind of people are they? Certainly there are wage-workers among them. But the majority were of a better class; there are traces of the trades out of which they had come or to which they yet belonged. The real mass of the Sans-culottes was not made out of wage-workers. It was rather the Parisian lower middle-class; it was, first, the guild-excluded master mechanics who dwelt in the Faubourg St. Antoine and Du Temple; secondly, the journeymen; thirdly, that element which the French call _la boutique_, retailers, tavern-keepers, etc., an important category. These, then, are the great hordes who clustered around Danton, Robespierre, and Marat. And what of these leaders themselves? Of what spirit are they children? They are, essentially, of the lower middle-class by birth. They are extreme radicals, extreme individualists. They are in their ideals and aims entirely unsocial and unproletarian according to our ideas to-day. The Constitution of 1793, in Article II., proclaims as _Droits de l'Homme: Egalité, Liberté, Surété, Propriété_. That is not proletarian and is not socialistic; thus all the assertions of a communistic movement at that time are thrown out. I have dwelt thus long on this revolution of 1793 in order to show how premature it is to speak of social democrats and of a social or proletarian movement wherever there is any outcry and disturbance.

I can but briefly touch upon other movements of this early history. The insurrection of Babeuf, 1796, bore certainly the communistic stamp; but, as we now know, it was without any response from the masses, who were finally tired of revolution.

Conspicuously of the upper middle-class were the July revolution of 1830 in France and the agitation of 1848 in Germany. In both cases we see citizenship in strife with feudal forces. Less clearly appears the civic character of the revolution of 1832 in England, and of the February revolution of 1848 in France, because these agitations were directed against forms of government sustained by citizens themselves. Yet even these movements, of 1832 in England and the February revolution in France, are not proletarian; they are rather the struggle of a part of the middle-class, the radicals, against another part, the _Haute finance_. This very opposition is now to be found again in Italy in the struggle of the North Italian industries against the rotten, half-feudal _Haute finance_ which Crispi represents.

These are the agitations of our century which have been definite and conscious of their aim. In all of them the proletariat has been involved, behind all the barricades from 1789 to 1848 lie proletarian bodies; but of all those movements of which I have thus told you, not a single one is proletarian, or in our sense a social movement.

Where now the proletariat fights for itself and represents its own interests we discern at first mere muttered, inarticulate sounds; and it takes long for these tones to rise to cries, for these cries to grow to general demands, and to become crystallised into programmes. The first proletarian agitations--movements of the unhappy, deeply buried mass--are, according to Carlyle's word, like the movements of Enceladus, who as he quivers in his pain causes an earthquake. These are movements of an entirely instinctive kind, claiming that which lies next, and attacking that which seems to them evidently to stand in the way. These are deeds which originally and largely assume the form of robbery and plunder. They have as their object to injure in some way the enemy in his power of possession. In England towards the close of the preceding and the beginning of the present century there was much destruction and plundering of manufactories. In the year 1812 the demolition of factories was punished in England with death, the best proof of the frequency of the fact. In other lands we have similar occurrences. I think of the factory-burning in Uster in Switzerland in the year 1832, of the weavers' riots in Germany in 1840, of the Lyons silk-weavers' insurrection in France in 1831. This last distinguishes itself from previous events of a similar character by the fact that it assumes as its great motive the motto which indeed we can think of as written over the portal of the proletarian movement: _Vivre en travaillant, ou mourir en combattant!_ That is the first timid formulation of proletarian struggle, because the battle-cry is negatively and positively an expression of true proletarian-socialistic effort: negatively--no one shall live who does not work; positively--those who work shall be able to live. Thus this is the first development of proletarian agitation: attack upon the external and visible forms in which the opponent is incorporated--upon the manufactories and machines because in their coming lies competition with hand-work, upon the dwellings of the employers which appear as the citadels of the new dictators.

It is a step in advance when, in place of the immediate and visible object, there come into view the principles which lie behind these things, upon which the capitalistic system of economy rests--free competition in production. It is therefore advance in proletarian agitation as this begins to direct itself to the abolition of modern institutions. Thus the proletariat in England, towards the end of the previous and the beginning of the present century, struggled long for a revival of the Elizabethan trade law. This had specified that every master should have only one apprentice for three workmen. The time of apprenticeship should also be limited to seven years, the wages should be settled by a justice of the peace. This is an instinctive clutching after a protective barrier which seems to be disappearing. Even this is not at first clear; but essentially we find this trait common to all the antecedents of proletarianism, that the movements hold fast to what was in the good old times. Thus, for example, in Germany, the working-man's agitation of 1848 was largely an attempt to reintroduce the old guild system. But it all belongs to the antecedent history of the social movement, because there was no definite aim before the proletariat.

Also to this antecedent history belongs that great and well known movement, frequently specified as the first typical, socialistic-proletarian agitation; I mean the Chartist movement in England in 1837-1848. This differs from the brief outbreakings of the masses which we have just now specified in that it was carried on systematically for more than a decade, and it seems to us like a well organised movement. Without doubt it is a true proletarian agitation: if you wish so to call it, the first organised proletarian movement. It is proletarian because the great masses of the Chartists were of the labouring class; also, because its demands grew immediately out of the condition of the proletariat, and it exerted itself immediately for a material betterment of the oppressed factory-hands. Thus at that time the maximum day's work was presented as a demand; also, let me remind you of the celebrated phrase of the Rev. Mr. Stephens, who cried out to the masses: "The question which concerns us here is only one of knife and fork!" The Chartist movement is also proletarian because in it the antagonism between labour and capital arises often and sharply. The "government," the "ruling class," is identified with the capitalist. This finds expression in a genuine hate against employers which at that time possessed the masses and became a battle-cry. O'Connor's word, "Down with the wretches who drink the blood of our children, take pleasure in the misery of our wives, and become satiated by our sweat!" reminds us of the phraseology of the proletarian assemblages of the present day. Further, the demand for the right to work is thoroughly proletarian; so also the right to a full profit from the work, to the "increase" which flows into the pockets of the employer. A symptom of the proletarian character of the Chartist movement is seen in its growing indifference to political questions that do not immediately concern it; as, for example, concerning the abolition of the corn tax. It is interesting to see how gradually the Chartist movement became indifferent towards the most pressing interests of the middle-class; these, though originally included, were finally and completely thrown overboard. Also, in the form of the struggle we find the proletarian character. Thus, at that time the general strike appears as a means of warfare, an idea that can rise only in a true proletarian movement. So without doubt, for these and other reasons, we have in Chartism a proletarian agitation. But I place it in the antecedent history, because I miss in it the clear programme of the proletarian-social movement, a clearly defined aim towards which it works. The only programme of the Chartist movement is the charter, which contains no true socialistic postulates, but only a collection of parliamentary reforms. It is nothing other than a platform upon which a man stands because he knows nothing better; a programme that had been taken up by the radical middle-class democracy. It is O'Connell who transferred it to the proletariat: "universal suffrage, secret ballot, equal representation, payment for members of parliaments, no property qualifications for representatives, annual parliaments." Therefore, though the kernel of the Chartist movement seems to be proletarian and though the spirit which rules it is proletarian, it must be distinguished from later definite proletarian socialistic movements on account of the uncertainty of its platform. I speak thus emphatically, because frequently, even by such a distinguished student of English history as Brentano, the Chartist is classed with the German social democrat. This conception holds too largely to the external form, which has similarity in both cases so far as these movements aspire after political power; but it is the inner character which is the determining feature of a social movement.

What characterises the antecedent history of the social movement everywhere is, as I have already said, its invariable similarity. Those agitations and exertions which I have specified as characteristic of the earlier history are invariably similar in every land, wherever we can speak of a social movement. But on the very threshold, in the passage from antecedent to present history, the differences in the social movements begin to become apparent. Unity at the beginning; diversity as the movement develops.

I distinguish three types; and for greater simplicity I call them the English, the French, and the German type. Under the English type of the working-man's movement I understand that agitation which has essentially an un-political, purely trade character. As the type of the French movement let me specify that which I call "revolutionism" or "Putschism," a kind of conspiracy coupled with street fights. And as the German type I would specify the lawful parliamentary-political working-man's agitation.

These are the three different forms in which the social movement now grows. In them all the living germs, which in general the social movement contains, unfold themselves to independent life, develop the peculiar and differing principles of this agitation. We shall see later that, after the different nations have developed their peculiarities, the social movement has a tendency again to greater uniformity.

* * * * *

Before we attempt to make clear these differences of national characteristics, it is perhaps well to settle a point which is decisive for a right understanding of the matter in general. I mean the main position which we as scientific observers should assume concerning this diversity of social movement. It is usual, as the variations of the movement are presented, to make a distinction between that which is called the healthy and normal on the one side, and the morbid movement on the other. Further, this distinction is usually identified with the difference between the movement in England and that upon the Continent. The English agitation, which is essentially a trade-union movement, they like to speak of as normal and proper; the Continental, which is rather political, as abnormal and improper. How shall we stand on this question? I believe that, in this discrimination and judgment, there is a twofold error, one of method and one of fact. When science pronounces any such judgment, entering into the realm of human history, that is in my opinion an overstepping of the bounds which a scientific man should place about himself. There is presented as objective knowledge a something that is purely subjective and merely the strong private opinion of an interested person--quite regardless of the fact that, as Hegel once expressed it, science always comes too late to teach a man how the world should be. So there lies here what I call a mistake of method. But this manner of looking at the matter involves also a mistake of fact, in that what it specifies as the normal tendency is the most abnormal that has ever existed, because the English social agitation could have become what it is only through a succession of unusual circumstances. For if we take the normal progress of modern capitalistic development as the objective standard of measurement, and in fact that is the only one which is of avail, then we would have much more right to say that the Continental movement is the normal, and the English the abnormal. I think, however, that it is more scientific to put aside the distinction between the normal and the abnormal, and to attempt rather to trace the causes for the different phases of the social movement in different lands. That at least shall be my attempt in what follows--to call attention to the variations of social movement, and to explain the reason for these variations in certain lands.

But what does it mean to "explain" these matters? Here also there is needed a word of definition, because in this, alas how often, we fail. Of course at this point we can say but little. To "explain" social occurrences means, naturally, to uncover the sources out of which they have sprung. It becomes necessary to trace these sources. And here we must not allow ourselves to become unrealistic, as is too often the case. I call any explanation of a social phenomenon unrealistic, which derives the fact superficially from the idealistic and altruistic motives of the persons involved, and which underestimates as impelling forces the preponderant interests of economic life, and which believes in miracles in the social world.

Thus, to make my point clear by an illustration, I hold that the usual explanation of the social development in England is unrealistic, that it cannot claim reality. According to this outline, matters in England have developed somewhat as follows: after the proletariat for some decades, and finally in the Chartist movement, had conducted itself in an unruly way in struggling for its interests, about the middle of this century it suddenly became polite, reconciled itself to the dominant economic order, and made peace with employers, who at the same time had become better men. All this occurred because a new spirit had come into man, a revolution of thought had occurred, a change from the individualistic and utilitarian view of things to a social conception of society and of the position and obligation of the individuals in it. The promoters and teachers of this new spirit are supposed to be, before all, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and the Christian socialists Maurice, Kingsley, Ludlow, and others. Carlyle's teaching culminates in sentences like these: The evils which have broken out over Europe--the French Revolution!--Chartism!--rest upon this, that the spirit of evil rules; mammonism, selfishness, forgetfulness of obligation. This spirit must be reformed; faith instead of scepticism, idealism instead of mammonism, self-sacrifice instead of selfishness, and social spirit instead of individualism must again come into the heart of man. The individual must not be the central point, as is the case in the eudemonistic-utilitarian philosophy; but social aims, objective work, ideals, shall direct the activity of man. From this conception of the fulfilment of social obligation the relation between the proletariat and the capitalist becomes ennobled and its harshness is relieved; the employer must become humanised, learn to rule truly; the workman must become manageable, learn to serve truly. Quite similarly reason the so-called Christian socialists, save that they would derive the "new social spirit" from the teachings of Christianity.

These teachings are said to bring forth fruit. That social spirit--who would have thought it!--does in fact, they say, enter into the hearts of men; the social conflict is hereby removed from the world; in place of hate and mistrust enter love and confidence. The "social question" is solved; at least we are upon the way to "social peace," capitalism is saved, socialism is sloughed off.

I shall investigate later the extent to which the social facts, here asserted, can claim reality; but assuming this--that pure harmony rules in Albion--can such a hyper-idealistic explanation satisfy us? Must we not introduce some more substantial causes than merely the results of Carlyle's sermons?

Absolute proof of the one or the other conception, naturally, cannot be had, because it is the critic's philosophy, his estimate of man, that finally decides; Wallenstein the realist and Max the idealist can never fully convince one another. Anyone can, through a massing of reasons and proofs, make the truth of his assertion concerning certain evident facts at least plausible.

I, for my part, am sceptical concerning all optimistic explanations of history, and believe rather with Wallenstein than with Max. And as now, forced by this ill-favoured mistrust, I look more closely at the development in England of the matter that lies before us, I get a picture essentially different from that which I have sketched for you as the prevailing conception. Before all, I find but little of that renowned "social spirit," which is said to have accomplished such wonders. In the institutions which are characteristic of proletarian development in England, trade-unions and brotherhoods, rules, so far as I can see, a healthy spirit of selfishness. Perhaps there is no social creation which is built more brutally upon selfishness than the trade-union--necessarily so. And as I read the troubled outpourings of the Christian socialists over the complete failure of their exertions, I can bring them easily into harmony with other observations. But even allowing that there is a certain effectiveness of the "social spirit," that it does exist, shall I believe that it is able to remove mountains? Or shall I not venture to assume that the economic and political development, controlled by selfishness, has strongly helped, has created the conditions in which the social spirit could work?

All this I present in a kindly spirit. My conclusion is that I cannot possibly be satisfied with Carlyle and his "social spirit," but must seek a realistic explanation, for England as for other lands. And this is indeed not difficult. Let us see how the national peculiarities of the social movement, considering the actual facts of history, can be understood as the necessary results of specific lines of development.