Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/716

694 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL labour and prohibition of child-labour, such were the catch- words for immediate social a?tation, and these again were draw-a from the doctrines of Marx, which the ' Master' himself had just set up on a deep and elaborate foundation, scientific, historical and practical, in his broadly-planned work, Capital (1867), while they hopelessly contradicted none the less the special and prin- cipal import of his pessimistic doctrine of the perpetual destitu- tion of the masses under the rule of capitalism. Further, the Eisenach programme demanded the abolition of all indirect taxes .and the establishment of a single, direct and graduated tax on incomes 'and legacies, postulates which hence- forth embody the whole 'science of finance' for Social Democracy, and claim therewith to untie in the simplest fashion the Gordian knot which that complicated science presents for specialists. Finally, by way of bait, or concession, if the term be preferable, to the Lassallites, there followed the claim on State encourage- ment of Unionism (Ge?ossenschaftswesen) as well as on State- credit for free productive unions (Prod?ktivgenossenschafte?) guaranteed on Democratic principles. The Marxists had added this last clause as a trump-card against the Lassallites, to signify that the German working-man was to realize the futility of expecting from the government as at ?resent o?stituted that im- partial and disinterested support for the associations, which out of all forms of class-rule (Klassen-Staat) ? democratic r?ime . alone would be at all likely to give. To their economic demands the Eisenach programme added the old petitions of German political radicalism cqu?l and direct manhood suffrage from twenty years of age; direct legislation by the nation; abrogation of all privileges of rank, property, birth and creed; national militia; gratuitous instruction in all public educational institutions; gratuitous administration of justice; absolute liberty of the press and of assembly; and separation of the Church from school and State. Such are the contents of the official Eisenach programme. The organizatio? of the new Social Democratic party was effected by special regulations. These were constructed so as to leave more scope to individual initiative than the strictly central- ized union of the Lassall?tes had done, in order, as Bebel expressed it, that 'the belief by authority, blind obedience and hero-worship,' prevailing amongst the latter, should not spread. A newspaper entitled the Volksstaat was published in Leipzig, under the editorship of Liebknecht, as the party organ. The supervision of the maintenance of its principles and the general