retreating--perhaps insensibly--in the socialistic mind into an
eschatological decoration, into a kind of future Advent which is to come
and to be believed in; but the practical concerns of the present must be
more and more treated in their own practical way.
Since the Congress, the party has issued a manifesto to the peasantry,
in which, after promising a new and happy day that is coming for them,
which is to restore to them the beautiful earth and the poetry of life,
they declare against the patriarchal system, and the increase of brandy
distilling; and then, confessing that few socialists know anything about
agricultural questions, invite information and discussion for the
enlightenment of the party. Here again they forget that they have a
theory which is as applicable to agriculture as to manufactures, and
they want to make practical investigations with a view to practical
solutions.
Of course the movement will always generate revolutionary elements as
occasions arise, and these sometimes of the wildest character. Most and
Hasselman, and their following, who were expelled at the Congress of
Wyden in 1880, were anarchists of a violent type, and Mosts and
Hasselmans may arise again. But at present anarchism hardly exists in
Germany, and the Social Democratic party is peacefully trying to make
people as comfortable as possible till the fulness of time arrives.
It may be added that the present income of the party, as stated at the
last Congress, is £19,525, and that since February, 1890, they have
established nineteen daily newspapers and forty weekly, with a total
circulation of 254,000.
The socialist movement in other countries may be disposed of much more
briefly, for in no other country has it worn anything like the same
importance, except in Russia, and of the Russian agitation I shall treat
more fully in a subsequent chapter on "Russian Nihilism." I may observe
here, however, that the Russian agitation has not been without its
influence on the nations of Western Europe. It was Bakunin who first
kindled the socialist movements of Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Holland,
and the anarchist fermentations of the last six years have been due in
no inconsiderable measure to the new leaven of Russian ideas introduced
by men like Prince Krapotkin and the two hundred other Russian refugees
that are scattered abroad in the free countries of Europe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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