Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/715

 EVOLUTION OF SOCIALIST PROGRAMME IN GERMANY 693 Lassalle's effective agitation had made current, and which were still deeply rooted in the working-classes, in order to prevent the impossibility of a subsequent reconciliation, or amalgamation with that mighty remnant of the Lassallites, the ' General German Labour Union.' The Eisenach Programme in important features approximates both formally and materially to that of the ' International,' and over and above this declares expressly that the Social Democratic Labour Party--as far as the laws of the Union admit of it considers itself a branch of the International. It reproduces the bare sketch of fundamental ideas contained in that pro- gramme, and only throws the ideal aim into somewhat sharper relief. Nothing but the free national constitution of the future, we read, can supersede the wa/-system of the preceding economy by an industrial comradeship (genossenschaftliche A rbeit), which guarantees to every worker the full produce of his work. Here for the first time the German Labour party discloses to some extent the Socialistic ature of its final aim, according to which the income of each person in the Coming State is to con- tain not more and not less than the whole produce of his labour. Now this in the nature of things can mean nothing else than each person deriving an income equal to the labour-value of his product, discounting the value of the capital to be replaced together with a corresponding share towards the general expenses of social administration. Beyond this the Eisenach programme can hardly be said to give a distinct outline of he State of the Future, let alone a finished and living pictre. The actual nature of the social Ideal, the organization of production and consumption, the specific modes of industrial 'comradeship,' remain hieroglyphic as before. That this is done deliberately and on principle points once more to the dominating influence of the Marxist theory, which leaves the disposition and specific forms of the Commun- istic society to the nattral, i.e. the inevitable, social evolution of the future, and therefore consistently and strictly refuses to enter into any details of constructive policy. On the other hand the immediate aims and e. fforts of the pa.rty are provided for by the Eisenach Congress n an exhaustive social and political programme, not amounting, it is true, to a system, but consisting rather in a mosaic of proposals, borrowed partly from the principles of political radicalism, partly from doctrines of social reform. Abolition of the Anti-combination law, establishment of a normal working-day, restriction of female