II. Political Demands

The political demands of the draft have one great fault. What really ought to have been said is not in it. If all these ten demands were granted, we should indeed have various additional means of carrying through the main political thing, but by no means the main thing itself. In the measure of the rights it assigns to the people and to their representatives, the Imperial Constitution is a pure copy of the Prussian Constitution of 1850, a constitution in which the most extreme reaction is cast into paragraphs, in which the government possesses all real power and the chambers have not even the right to refuse taxes; a constitution which proved, in the period of the conflict, that the government could do with it whatever it liked. The rights of the Reichstag are exactly the same as those of the Prussian Chamber, and that is why Liebknecht called this Reichstag the fig-leaf of absolutism. To want to carry through the “transformation of all the means of labour into common property” on the basis of this constitution and of the system of petty states it sanctions, on the basis of a “federation” between Prussia and Reuss-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein, of which the one has as many square miles as the other has square inches—that is plainly absurd.

To touch on this is dangerous, however. And yet the thing must be tackled one way or another. How necessary that is, is shown precisely now by the opportunism that is gaining ground in a large part of the Social-Democratic press. Out of fear of a renewal of the Anti-Socialist Law, out of the memory of all sorts of rash utterances let fall while that law was in force, the present legal situation in Germany is now suddenly supposed to be enough for the party to carry through all its demands by peaceful means. People talk themselves and the party into believing that “present-day society is growing into socialism”, without asking themselves whether in doing so it does not just as necessarily grow out of its old social constitution, and have to burst this old shell just as violently as the crab bursts its own; as if in Germany it had not, in addition, to burst the fetters of the political order, which is still half absolutist and, on top of that, unspeakably confused. One can imagine that the old society may grow peacefully into the new in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate all power in themselves, where one can do constitutionally whatever one likes as soon as one has the majority of the people behind one: in democratic republics such as France and America, in monarchies such as England, where the impending buying-out of the dynasty is discussed in the press every day and where this dynasty is powerless against the will of the people. But in Germany, where the government is almost all-powerful and the Reichstag and all the other representative bodies are without real power, to proclaim such a thing in Germany, and moreover without any need, is to take the fig-leaf off absolutism and tie it in front of one’s own nakedness.

Such a policy can in the long run only lead one’s own party astray. General, abstract political questions are pushed into the foreground, and thereby the immediate concrete questions are covered up, the questions which put themselves on the order of the day at the first great events, at the first political crisis. What can come of it but that the party is suddenly at a loss at the decisive moment, that on the most decisive points there is unclarity and disunity, because these points have never been discussed? Is it to go again as it went in its time with protective tariffs, which were then declared a question concerning only the bourgeoisie and not touching the workers in the least, on which everyone could therefore vote as he liked; whereas now more than one falls into the opposite extreme and, in opposition to the bourgeois who have turned protectionist, serves up afresh the economic distortions of Cobden and Bright and preaches them as the purest socialism—the purest Manchesterism?

This forgetting of the great main points of view for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling and striving for the success of the moment without regard to the later consequences, this sacrificing of the future of the movement for the sake of its present, may be “honestly” meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and “honest” opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all. Which, then, are these ticklish but very essential points?

Firstly. If anything is certain, it is that our party and the working class can come to power only under the form of the democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the great French Revolution has already shown. It is surely unthinkable that our best men should become ministers under an emperor, like Miquel.

Now it appears that legally one cannot put the demand for the republic directly into the programme, although that was as permissible even under Louis Philippe in France as it is now in Italy. But the fact that one may not even put forward an openly republican party programme in Germany proves how colossal is the illusion that one could set up the republic there in a cosy, peaceful way, and not only the republic but communist society.

However, one can, if need be, edge past the republic. But what in my view should go in, and can go in, is the demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of the representatives of the people. And that would do for the time being, if one cannot go further.

Secondly. The reconstitution of Germany. On the one hand the system of petty states must be done away with—just try to revolutionise society while there are Bavarian and Württemberg reserved rights, and while the map of Thuringia, for example, presents its present pitiful picture! On the other hand Prussia must cease to exist, must be dissolved into self-governing provinces, so that specific Prussianism ceases to weigh on Germany. The petty states and specific Prussianism are the two sides of the antagonism in which Germany is now held captive, and in which each side must always serve the other as its excuse and its reason for existing. What is to take their place? In my view the proletariat can only use the form of the one and indivisible republic. On the gigantic territory of the United States the federal republic is still, on the whole, a necessity, although in the East it is already becoming a hindrance. It would be a step forward in England, where four nations live on the two islands and, in spite of one parliament, three different systems of law already exist side by side. In little Switzerland it has long since become a hindrance, tolerable only because Switzerland is content to be a purely passive member of the European system of states. For Germany a federalist Swissification would be an enormous step backward. Two points distinguish a federal state from a unitary state: that each federated state, each canton, has its own civil and criminal legislation and its own judicial system; and then, that beside a popular chamber there exists a chamber of the states, in which each canton, large or small, votes as such. The first we have happily overcome, and we shall not be so childish as to bring it back; the second we have in the Bundesrat, and can do very well without it, as indeed our “federal state” already forms, in general, the transition to the unitary state. And it is not for us to undo the revolution from above made in 1866 and 1870, but to give it its necessary completion and improvement through a movement from below.

So, a unitary republic. But not in the sense of the present French one, which is nothing but the Empire founded in 1798 without the emperor. From 1792 to 1798 every French department, every commune, possessed complete self-government on the American model, and that is what we too must have. How self-government is to be organised, and how one can manage without a bureaucracy, has been shown us by America and the first French Republic, and is shown still today by Australia, Canada and the other English colonies. And such provincial and communal self-government is far freer than, for example, Swiss federalism, in which the canton is indeed very independent with regard to the federation, but also with regard to the district and the commune. The cantonal governments appoint district governors and prefects, things unknown in the countries of English speech, and which in future we shall just as politely decline to have as the Prussian Landräte and Regierungsräte.

Of all these things not much may go into the programme. I mention them chiefly to characterise conditions in Germany, where it is not possible to say such things, and at the same time the self-deception that would carry such conditions over into communist society by legal means. And further, to remind the Party Executive that there are other political questions of importance besides direct legislation by the people and free administration of justice, without which we shall get on in the end as well. In the general uncertainty these questions may become burning from one day to the next, and what then, if we have not discussed them and come to an understanding about them?

But what can go into the programme, and can serve at least indirectly as a hint of what may not be said, is the demand:

“Complete self-government in province, district and commune by officials elected by universal suffrage. Abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state.”

Whether it is possible to formulate other programme demands with regard to the points just discussed, I cannot judge so well from here as you can there. But it would be desirable for these questions to be debated within the party before it is too late.