Socialism and Democracy in EuropeOrth, Samuel Peter
History
Socialism and Democracy in Europe
Orth, Samuel Peter
Democracy; Socialism
The Socialist movement has accomplished three notable things. First,
it has spread democracy. The bourgeois revolutions established
democracy; Socialism extends it. We have seen how in Belgium it
compelled the governing powers to give labor the ballot; how in
Germany, hard set and dogmatic, it is shaping events that will surely
lead to ministerial responsibility and to universal suffrage; and how
in England it is resulting in universal manhood suffrage and probably
"votes for women." Socialism is spreading the obligations of
government upon all shoulders. It is not, however, democratizing the
machinery of administration. In France the centralized autocracy of
Napoleon's empire remains almost untouched. In England the ancient
traditions of administration are slow to change. In Germany the civil
service will be the last barrier to give way.
Secondly, Socialism has forced the labor question upon the lawmakers.
This is a great achievement. The neglected and forgotten portions of
the human family are now the objects of state solicitude. The record
of this revolution is written in the statute books. Turn the leaves of
the table of contents of a modern parliamentary journal, and compare
it with the same work of thirty years ago. Almost the entire time is
now taken up with questions that may be called humanitarian rather
than financial or political. Grave ministers of state make long
speeches on the death-rate of babies in the cities, on the cost of
living in factory towns, on the causes of that most heartbreaking of
modern woes, non-employment. Budgets are now concerned with the
feeding of school children as well as the building of warships, and
with the training of boys as well as the drilling of soldiers.
Nowhere has this radical change taken place without a labor party. The
laboring man forced the issue. He bent kings and cabinets and
parliaments to his demands. The time was ripe, society had reached
that stage of its development when it was ready to take up these
questions. But it did not do so of its own free will. When labor
parties sprang like magic into puissance, a decade ago, the social
conscience was ready to hear their plea. Bismarck foresaw their
demands. But he was too obsessed of feudalism to realize their
motives. Therefore his state socialism failed to silence the
Socialists. The workman had his heart in the cause, not merely his
tongue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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