of the French theatre to the tastes of the foreigners who flock to Paris in search of a somewhat gross kind of amusement. He truly observes that the vicissitudes of the theatre are little affected by philosophy, but by the purely economic question of the demand of people who go to theatres.

At length we come to the final essay of M. Charles Wagner on Le Matérialisme dans les Moeurs.' Under the name of practical materialism, M. Wagner attacks many objectionable features of modern civilisation-the glorification of wealth, the importance attached to appearances apart from real worth, l'arrivisme,' etc. But as he himself says with admirable candour, these things have no connexion with philosophic materialism. He wisely warns anti-materialists against 'la prière du pharisien.'

Here then we reach the end of this weighty onslaught on materialism, and what result do we find? About half the writers are irrelevant; of the remaining half several, and in particular M. Poincaré, indicate little more than a reluctance to accept scientific materialism. M. Bergson alone makes any show of real force. No new light is thrown on the relation of materialism to morals; yet we may fitly ask what is the moral effect, if any, of a belief in scientific materialism. Materialists are often looked upon by the ignorant as intellectual machines, devoid of feeling or sentiment. Yet the fact is that the whole gradual development of the psychology of feeling has come from the materialistic side it is the metaphysicians who have always exalted intellect at the expense of feeling. Few doctrines can be more false than the statement of Melchior de Vogüé: Le 'pessimisme est sorti du matérialisme'; for materialism is above all others the philosophy of hope and self-help. What can be more helplessly pessimistic than the metaphysicians' discussions as to the nature of the soul? It is through scientific materialism alone that the welfare of humanity can be achieved. But to the real philosopher it matters nothing whether scientific materialism is pessimistic or optimistic such questions only arouse emotional prejudice : he is concerned only to know that his philosophy is true.

HUGH S. ELLIOT,

SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY IN GERMANY

1. My Life. By AUGUST BEBEL. London: Unwin. 1913. 2. Geschichte der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie.

Von FRANZ

MEHRING. Stuttgart: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf. 1913.

3. Handbuch der Sozial-demokratischen Parteitage von 18631909. Von WILHELlm Schröder. München: G. Birt and

Co. 1910.

4. Protokoll des Parteitages 1910, 1911, 1912. Berlin. Buchhandlung Vorwärts. Paul Singer.

5. Unsere Ziele. Von A. BEBEL. Vorwärts. 1910.

6. Partei und Gewerkschaft.

Kaden and Co. 1912.

Berlin. Buchhandlung

Von AUGUST MAI. Dresden :

7. Geschichte der sozial-demokratischen Parteiorganisation in Deutschland. Von W. SCHRÖDER. Dresden: Kaden and Co.

1912.

8. Geschichte des Sozialismus in England. Von M. Von M. BEER. Stuttgart J. H. W. Dietz Nachf. 1913.

THE

'HE death of August Bebel, which occurred on August 12-13 in the present year, closes a chapter in the history of the Social-Democratic Party in Germany, and happens to coincide with the completion of fifty years from the date which the party regards as that of its birth. The occasion thus seems doubly opportune for a review of the movement and an examination of its present and prospective position. But the subject derives still more interest from the general state of agitation pervading the whole field of what, for want of a better word, we must call the labour movement, of which Social-Democracy or political Socialism is part. Now the German Social-Democratic Party is the oldest, the strongest, and, in a sense, the most successful of all political organisations of the kind. Germany has led the way in this field; the political Socialism of other countries is derived from German teaching and German example, though it has undergone various modifications prompted by national conditions. The root principles, the arguments, and the main items of every programme are taken

from the German original. To study this phase, therefore, of the labour movement and to estimate its significance we naturally turn to Germany, just as we do to England to study trade unionism.

It is, however, necessary for a full comprehension of the subject to insert here a qualification about the origin of political Socialism. Germany is not its original home. It made its appearance, and in an extremely active form, long before in England, if not in France, as Mr. Beer has convincingly shown in his scholarly and profoundly interesting history. Thirty years before the foundation of the Social-Democracy in Germany precisely similar elements were at work in England and produced the agitation which eventually became Chartism. The economic, social, moral, and political grounds were identical and the aims indistinguishable. The object of Chartism was to establish a social democracy in which political power would be in the hands of the working classes, who would use that power to revolutionise the economic system and transform it from the capitalistic to a socialistic order. This policy was based on the argument that Labour produces all wealth but is robbed by Capital through the latter's possession of land and the means of production, whereby it is enabled to seize, in the form of profit, the surplus value of the wealth produced above the cost of production, and to withhold from Labour all share except the bare means of subsistence in the form of wages; and, further, that this state of things must necessarily grow worse and worse. These propositions are the essentials of Marxian Socialism, but they were common property in England when Marx was a schoolboy at Trèves. Even the idea that the class war which will bring about the revolution is an inevitable phase in the evolution of society was then put forward. Nor can it be said that the social-democratic movement started in Germany by Lassalle in 1863 was based on any fuller, clearer or more coherent grasp of aims, methods, and principles. Quite the contrary. It took German Socialists many years to work out their ideas into a coherent scheme. and to formulate their policy and principles as clearly as had been done by Chartist and pre-Chartist writers in England during the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century.

Nevertheless it remains true that German Social-Democracy

is the mother of the modern political movement carried on in the name of Labour in all countries. Chartism went to pieces in England after 1848 and eventually died a natural death. The parallel but much cruder and weaker movement in France led by Louis Blanc suffered the same fate after the collapse of the national workshops experiment in the same year. In both countries a strong reaction followed. It was in the comparatively virgin soil of Germany and after a considerable interval that a shoot from the same stock took root and began to grow. Ferdinand Lassalle was the gardener. In 1863 he planted a sapling in ground which had been for some time preparing and called it the General German Workers' Association or Union. The Social-Democratic Party regards the formation of this society as its birth. Like the great majority of Socialist leaders, Lassalle did not belong to the class which Socialism claims specially to represent. He came of a well-to-do middle-class Jewish family, wherein he resembled his contemporaries Marx and Engels; but unlike them he was a politician, and one of meteoric brilliance. His genius had an influence on the direction which the movement took, but he lived too short a time after the foundation of the Association-little more than a year-to give it much personal guidance. In any case a political movement of the kind must have arisen even without his lead. Germany was the right soil; the national temperament leans towards politics, and the country was seething with progressive and revolutionary ideas.

Bebel, who became and remained the parliamentary leader and was the mainstay of the party from the outset of its parliamentary career, was a born politician. He came to Socialism through politics, not to politics through Socialism. He began as a Radical and anti-Socialist by taking part in local politics at Leipzig while still a workman; for Bebel was one of the very few really prominent Socialists who have been workmen. It is worth noting, however, that his career as a wage-earner was very short. He had already set up for himself at the beginning of 1864 before he took to Socialism. When he went to prison in 1872 he employed six workmen as well as apprentices, and after he came out in 1874 he became the owner of a steam-driven factory in partnership with a friend. The early difficulties he encountered

as a little master' in his business, which was making handles of horn for doors and windows, probably influenced his views, but his conversion to Socialism was mainly an educational process. His acquaintance with Liebknecht, an educated man who had consorted with Marx and Engels, hastened it; but as he said himself, he was well on the road' and would have arrived independently of Liebknecht. He took an active and leading part in promoting the development of workmen's improvement societies or associations in Saxony, and in 1867 was elected to the North German Reichstag as one of their representatives. Two years later these organisations constituted themselves into the Social Democratic 'Workmen's Party' at a congress held at Eisenach. They were opposed to the North German organisation founded by Lassalle, and the two carried on an embittered conflict until 1875, when they united at the Gotha congress under the name of the Socialist Workmen's Party * of Germany.'

In January 1871 the German Empire was established and in the following March the first elections took place. The number of Socialist votes cast was 124,655 representing 32 per cent. of the whole, and two Socialist members were elected, both for industrial constituencies in Saxony. One of them was Bebel; the other, a barrister, afterwards left the party and joined the Deutsche Volkspartei, one of the numerous Radical sections. The table on p. 439 shows the progress of the Socialists at subsequent elections.

In the course of little more than a generation the proportion of votes secured by Socialists has risen from 3 per cent. to 34 per cent. of the total and the number of members elected from 2 to 110. It is immense. More than one-third of the votes cast in 1912 went to Socialists, and if the representation were in strict numerical proportion they would have 138 members. The discrepancy, which varies in extent but always occurs, is a great grievance. It is due in part to the fact that the party runs candidates all over the Empire and many of them fail, so that the accumulated minority vote cast for them is much larger than in the case of other parties,

*Workmen's Party' is the literal rendering of Arbeiter-partei, but 'Labour Party' is the English equivalent according to common usage.