Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/727

EVOLUTION OF SOCIALIST PROGRAMME IN GERMANY 7O5 Social Democracy, notwithstanding party politics were rarely touched upon at their meetings. That in this Sturm und Drang period of coercive legislation, all disquisitions on questions of programme would be left in the background needs no saying. The one resolution on procedure at the party-congress at Wyden (1880) was, that the aims of Com- munism be attained 'by every means,' and not only as hitherto, by every ' legal' means a natural corollary of a law which made a legal propaganda impossible. 5.--THE MEETING OF THE PARTY AT HALLE, AND THE PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF THE SOCIALISTIC PARTY. (October 1890.) Those adherents of the existing economic mechanism, who had voted for the Socialist law, had done so on the assumption that the conflagration fanned by the doctrines of Socialism in Germany was to be compared to a smouldering forest-fire, dangerous only if it were to eat its way continously, but bound to collapse harmlesly in smoke and ashes if hard and fast lines of trenches were dug against its spreading. This was to be effected by the Socialist law. The facts of this period however, show how little it has availed. ' No sooner had Social Democracy revived after the first blow than it marched forward on a steady career of victory till at the last Imperial elections, it received not less than one-fifth of the aggregrate number of recorded votes. Thus it became clearer 'from day to day, that the Exception Act was barren in permanently effective results, and therefore the less able to offer an equivalent in any way acceptable for that poisoning of political morality disclosed in the trials for con- spiracy as a sequel to the coercive r?gime. Perceiving this the Government decided to abstain from wielding the two-edged weapon. Immediately after the abolition of the Socialist law a congress of the Social Democratic party was summoned at Halle. There was not the leisure requisite for taking in hand a revision of programme, though correctior was found to be generally desirable. The party-council however, were commissioned to lay the draft of a revised programme before the next congress. The line of impending alterations was indicated then and there by Liebknecht. The denomination of the Social Ideal as a 'Free Polity' (Freier Staat) would in his opinion have to be No. 4. VOL. ? z Z