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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



imposes on laborers in order to make the brother- 

 hood of all men a reality." In all the congresses 

 of the International, at Geneva, the Hague, and 

 Brussels, down to the meeting of the Interna- 

 tionalists at New York, in 1877, and the Ghent 

 Congress of September, Germany has given the 

 impulse. The Katheder-Socialisten of the Ger- 

 man universities have doubtless contributed to 

 lend the movement fashion and direction ; but 

 Herr Bamberger, who is inclined to attach su- 

 preme importance to university influences, exag- 

 gerates the share the professors have had in de- 

 veloping this alarming growth of modern Ger- 

 many. Germans, perhaps from the long disor- 

 ganization of political and national life, have 

 always been addicted to social and trade con- 

 federacies. These have supplied the want cre- 

 ated by the disruption of national unity. The 

 same tendency which made men combine for 

 the overriding of the labyrinthine maze of prin- 

 cipalities and grand-duchies that separated Ger- 

 man from German, influenced the German work- 

 men to seek a bond of union. The Social Demo- 

 crats have shown most strength in a region, like 

 Saxony, where Parficularismus is dominant. The 

 results of the war between Prussia and Austria, 

 and the yet greater conflict between Germany 

 and France, had an effect as important, though 

 indirect, on the relations of German industry as 

 on the political fortunes of Germany. The aris- 

 tocratic and bureaucratic constitution of German 

 states left, and indeed continues to leave, to the 

 workman less interest in the national fortunes 

 than in England or France; but he was stirred, 

 nevertheless, by the impulse toward national 

 unity those wars inaugurated and consolidated, 

 to cement the league of workmen throughout 

 the empire. The French milliards operated in the 

 same direction by causing such a competition for 

 labor as made the laborer able to fix his own 

 price. Seeing the force the state had wielded in 

 the contest of which the milliards were a material 

 result, and feeling the hand of the state heavy on 

 the whole machinery of education and society, the 

 workman was easily led to look forward to pre- 

 dominance in the state as the ready machinery 

 for accomplishing his aims. The same kind of 

 sentiment which prompts Prince Bismarck to 

 seek to make the state proprietor virtually of 

 German railways inspires the German workman 

 to hope to make the state his instrument for 

 crushing the inequality of classes. The national 

 characteristic of a habit of reducing everything 

 to a formula has rendered the German workman 

 more receptive of a creed and more tenacious of 



theoretical principles than his brethren elsewhere. 

 The professors found apt pupils in men of the 

 keen and even trained intellect of Liebknecht, 

 or of Most, the bookbinder, whom Herr Bamber- 

 ger declares to be as learned in Roman history 

 as Mommsen himself. But the professors did not 

 teach the workman to believe he had a right to 

 supremacy; they only showed him how to ex- 

 press his claims dogmatically. 



The scientific or quasi-scientific form which 

 Socialist views have assumed in Germany and 

 the German cantons of Switzerland has, however, 

 given Socialism a power it has had nowhere else, 

 not even among the French Communists. Ger- 

 man Socialists have constituted themselves a com- 

 plete nation, with a literature, ambition, and 

 leaders, all its own. Though at bottom remain- 

 ing very German indeed, they have politically so 

 thrown off their German nationality as to be able 

 without difficulty to admit workmen of any other 

 nationality. Any and all can be affiliated to the 

 German fraternity on the one condition that they 

 swear war against capitalists, and pledge them- 

 selves to work for the placing of all capital in the 

 hands of the state. The basis of the Socialist 

 faith seems at first sight simple enough. It is 

 just this, that " property is theft." No compro- 

 mise with the middle or upper classes in existing 

 society is admitted as lawful. An article of the 

 official programme for the guidance of the delib- 

 erations of the Socialist Congress at Gotha laid 

 it down that the emancipation of labor must be 

 effected by the laboring-class alone. That is the 

 one and only class which can be allowed to have 

 a title to exist on the earth as a class. This is 

 the retort to the philanthropical persons who 

 have preached in Germany, as in England, Chris- 

 tian Socialism, by which the rich and well-to-do 

 should share their wealth voluntarily with the 

 poor, and embrace principles of Communism from 

 motives of duty and charity. None, according to 

 the gospel of labor as inspired by Karl Marx, and 

 preached by Engels and Liebknecht, have a right 

 to live except by their own personal work. It is 

 not enough that others have labored for them ; 

 the only being that can show a good title to the 

 fee simple of capital is the state. The soil, cat- 

 tle, machinery, and fuel, with other things of the 

 same nature, are the instruments of labor. They 

 constitute capital, and, as capital consists of the 

 instruments of labor, the state is entitled to hold 

 it as trustee for the laborer. The Congrh Socia- 

 lislc Universe!, which met at Ghent in September, 

 1877, passed by a majority of sixteen to thirteen 

 votes a resolution which had been moved bv sev- 



