PRIMITIVE PROPERTY AND MODERX SOCIALISM. 



443 



promotes the same cause. The world of German 

 journalism is, Herr Bamberger informs us, in- 

 fested with Socialists. There is scarcely a Lib- 

 eral or Conservative organ of weight into which 

 a little adroitness could not succeed in introduc- 

 ing an occasional article of Socialist tendencies. 

 The founder of the official Norddeutsche AUge- 

 meine Zeitung rose, we are told, from the same 

 ranks as the leaders in the present crusade against 

 modern society, and never altogether forgot his 

 old love. Newspapers whose proprietors, sub- 

 scribers, and contributors, are all of the capital- 

 ist class, have in their editorial offices men who 

 incline to Socialism, and seize or make occa- 

 sions for advancing its cause. The German 

 magistracy contains numerous partisans of the 

 new faith, youthful judges who begin by declar- 

 ing the whole existing order of things bankrupt, 

 and study not how to protect property, but how 

 to defend those they call the weak against those 

 they call the strong. Ministers, Herr Bamberger 

 complains — hinting apparently at the late Prus- 

 sian Minister of -the Interior, Count Eulenberg — 

 thunder in Parliament against the spread of So- 

 cialism, when their offices are all the time filled 

 with budding secretaries who have drunk in So- 

 cialism with the milk of the high-school. From 

 their pens, as they draft a statute, fall naturally 

 the very battle-words of Socialism, such as " Aus- 

 beutung " and " Egoismus." But at the head 

 and front of the unconscious, but not the less 

 real, plotters against society, are the universities. 

 By tbem and the " Katheder-Socialismus " — which 

 we have seen M. de Laveleye naively condemning 

 — of their professors of political economy, the 

 recent impetus has been given to Socialist Democ- 

 racy. The working-classes were seen to be dis- 

 contented, and the desire arose to construct for- 

 mulae which would explain their inarticulate mur- 

 murs. The professors discovered that " the dis- 

 parity of means is greater than of old ; " " that 

 the masses are worse off than they once were ; " 

 " that property has developed a tendency to stick 

 to the hands of the rich and fructify there ; " 

 " that capital tyrannizes over labor." Here were 

 axioms ; the next step was to combine them into 

 a regular science. Once a science constructed, 

 the war of classes must be at an end ; for had 

 not "der Schullehrer die Schlacht von Sadowa 

 gewonnen ? " When the science of industry had 

 been constructed, it was supposed the German 

 mind, whether in employer or in employed, must 

 immediately proclaim a truce and accept its dog- 

 mas. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to pro- 

 pound a law of wages, which capitalist and la- 



borer shall accept, than to construct a science of 

 pure reason. University economists progressed 

 readily with their plans for marshaling workmen 

 in groups to resist the despotism of capital, with 

 their draft budgets, in which the inequality of 

 wealth should be redressed by a counter-ine- 

 quality of taxation, and their denunciations of 

 the wicked habit the capitalist indulges of profit- 

 ing by the turn of the market. But when science 

 had laid down the law it had no power at its 

 command to enforce it. So the professors had 

 to invoke the state to realize their axioms, just 

 as the Church in the middle ages, after dogma- 

 tizing against the heresy, handed the heretic over 

 to the state to burn him. German professors, 

 and German workmen, and Prince Bismarck, are 

 all at one in their devout faith in the power and 

 duty of the state to undertake the general man- 

 agement of society. Whether it be a gymnasium, 

 or a railway system, the state is looked to as its 

 natural administrator. The sudden growth of 

 joint-stock companies in Germany of recent years 

 has stimulated the faith in what Germans call 

 " Collectivwesen." It was supposed by theorists 

 that if an abstraction, like a joint-stock company, 

 could divide among its shareholders ten or twenty 

 per cent, where they formerly obtained a bare 

 four or five per cent., an infinitely superior ab- 

 straction, the state, if it dispossessed the private 

 capitalists, and became the universal employer, 

 could afford to pay bricklayers at the rate of five 

 thalers a day. Herr Bamberger pays this coun- 

 try the doubtful compliment of saying that the 

 fashion of studying English blue-books contrib- 

 uted to delude the German professors of social 

 economy into the belief that class-feuds could be 

 ended forever by discovering the true principle 

 on which wages should be earned and paid. Eng- 

 lish blue-books are remarkable repositories of 

 statistics ; but they are not commonly supposed, 

 at least in England itself, to encourage a belief 

 that if a social problem gets into a select com- 

 mittee, the practical solution is a matter of course. 

 We know not in what bine book Herr Bamberger 

 has found it propounded as an axiom that trades- 

 unions are an infallible specific against trade- 

 conflicts. 



German Socialism manifests the same prop- 

 agandist spirit as the French revolutionists of 

 last century. A special article in the official 

 programme of the Gotha Congress declares that 

 " the German labor party, while working within 

 the national framework, is conscious of the in- 

 ternational character of the labor-movement, and 

 determines to fulfill all duties which the same 



