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Franck, one of the Social Democracy's most shining lights and the man who was in line to be Bebel's successor, volunteered for military service. He was one of the first to fall fighting in September, somewhere in the West. The authorities might have known that Liebknecht was a hard man to keep quiet if he ever decided to speak out.
And, indeed, it may seem somewhat of a miracle that any large number of the German workers should have been willing to have listened to any other means of action. What indeed else was there to do? It is too long a story to go into the discussions over this question. Perhaps a principle of Bebel's gives the clearest explanation of the thought which eventually decided the tactics of the socialists.
In August Bebel's story of his life he speaks in high terms of the unselfish devotion and sterling character of Most in his early days.
The passage of Bebel's resolution, by a vote of 289 to 80, was an emphatic repudiation of reformism. In the minority, besides the South Germans, were to be found a considerable proportion of the delegates from a very few of the many important cities of North Germany, namely, Hanover, Dresden, Breslau, and Magdeburg, together with an insignificant minority from Berlin and Hamburg.
Bebel introduced a resolution in favor of the declaration of a general strike in the event of war being declared on Russia. But this resolution was not adopted; members of the trade-unions voted against it. This is a fact which you should not forget. Bebel had to beat a retreat and introduce another resolution. Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg were dissatisfied with Bebel's conduct.
Bebel's view was more revolutionary. For even conceding to capitalism the possibility of checking armaments and ending wars, and of establishing semidemocratic governments on the French or English models, he finds the remainder of the indictment against it quite sufficient to justify the most revolutionary policy. However, the main question was not really involved at this Congress.
In Germany especially, Marx's co-workers and successors developed marked hostility to "State Socialism" from the moment when it was taken up by Bismarck nearly a generation ago . August Bebel's hostility to the existing State goes so far that he predicts that it will expire "with the expiration of the ruling class," while Engels contended that the very phrase "the Socialist State" was valueless as a slogan in the present propaganda of Socialism, and scientifically ineffective.
They appreciated or sneered at the morning editorials, jumped from labor conditions in New Zealand to Henry James and Brander Matthews, passed on to the German designs in the Far East and the economic aspect of the Yellow Peril, wrangled over the German elections and Bebel's last speech, and settled down to local politics, the latest plans and scandals in the union labor party administration, and the wires that were pulled to bring about the Coast Seamen's strike.
In other words, he would make all other questions second to that of political power no economic reform whatever being a sufficient price to compensate for turning aside from the effort to obtain democratic government, i.e. more power. It appears that Bebel's position on this matter is really the more radical.
It has always included the abolition of this ancient evil in its program of social reconstruction, and since the publication of Bebel's great book, nearly thirty years ago, the leaders of the Socialist party have never ceased to discuss the economics of prostitution with its psychological and moral resultants.
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