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Updated: June 6, 2025
No wonder that the period of military service was extremely favourable to the spread of social-democracy! Such sensational object-lessons were not necessary; the circumstances of every-day life all pointed towards socialism. Wolf understood the part that Weise played in the battery. It was always the same. Each batch of recruits was a mixture of men from towns and men from the country.
The sun was beginning to set when a sub-officer, the one of the Social-Democracy, came running in search of the Commandant. Desnoyers could not understand what was the matter because they were speaking in German, but following the direction of the messenger's continual pointing, he saw beyond the iron gates a group of country people and some soldiers with guns.
Even socialism was brought under the philosophical probe and criticized like other doctrines for its weaknesses and errors; and when, in France, George Sorel went beyond the fallacies of the materialistic theories of the Marxist social-democracy to his theory of syndicalism, our young Italian socialists turned to him.
Of course it continued to grow and to increase every year, because the army, under its present conditions simply constituted a school of Social-Democracy.
Von Puttkamer himself reported to the Reichstag in 1882, "It is undoubted that it has not been possible by means of the law of October, 1878, to wipe social-democracy from the face of the earth or even to shake it to the center." Indeed, Liebknecht was bold enough to say in 1884: "You have not succeeded in destroying our organization, and I am convinced that you will never succeed.
We are going to drink champagne gratis! The pietistic burgher, ready to do anything to attain a new honor, and the aristocracy which has given the world the greatest scandals of recent years, are also shouting, 'Nach Paris! To them Paris is the Babylon of the deadly sin, the city of the Moulin Rouge and the restaurants of Montmartre, the only places that they know. . . . And my comrades of the Social-Democracy, they are also cheering, but to another tune.
Because in Germany the mad plans of those men are wrecked on the compact organization of social-democracy, because the German proletariat, in view of the fruitlessness of your socialist law, has not abandoned hope of attaining its ends peacefully by means of socialistic propaganda and agitation. If and I have said this before if your law were not pro nihilo, it would be pro nihilismo.
But even this speech was by no means free from the most marked hostility to Socialism. "To portray the Social-Democracy as a mere disease is not correct," said he; "it is to be cast aside in so far as it fights the monarchy and the political order. But, on the other hand, it is a tremendous movement for the uplift of the fourth estate, and therefore it deserves recognition."
The speaker was a Socialist. He did not hesitate to admit his co-operation in certain acts of his party that had brought persecutions and set-backs to his career. But the Social-Democracy was now being accepted by the Emperor and flattered by the most reactionary Junkers. All were now one.
Democracy, even Social-Democracy, though as hostile to British Junkers as to German ones, and under no illusion as to the obsolescence and colossal stupidity of modern war, need not lack enthusiasm for the combat, which may serve their own ends better than those of their political opponents.
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