Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/717

 EVOLUTION OF SOCIALIST PROGRAMME IN GERMANY 695 control of party-business were attended to by delegates, who, together with the place of meeting, were chosen annually. The delegates' committee, again, was supervised by a commission of control, sitting in another town. Over all stood the annually- summoned party-congress. As the editing of the party-journal was thus the one fixed point amongst all this shifting of leading elements, it necessarily furnished the focus in the otherwise wholly decentralized system. But the editors of the Volksstaat were given over body and soul to Marxist doctrines, and hence the entire new Labour party bore visibly the stamp of orthodox Marxism. Apart from the utterance in the manifesto on the separation of the Church from school and State, the attitude of the party towards 'relilion had not formed the subject of any resolution at Eisenach. This did not come to pass till 1872 at the Mainz Congress, on the occasion of a motion by the Munich ' comrades,' (Geosse) hat it be held the duty of every member to secede from the National Church. It was finally resolved, 'that members be recommended, inasmuch as by accepting the party-programme they have practically broken with every religious confession, to make formal withdrawal as well from religious fellowships (ki'chlichen Genossenschaften).' Neither had the Eisenach Congress passed any resolution concerning strikes or the founding of Trade U.nions,--and yet it was reserved jreciselt for the latter to constitute later on the real backboe of the Germa Labour jarty. The whole subsequent social movement cannot be generally understood unless the full meaning of their appearance be put in its proper light. Lassalle had coolly shrugged his shoulders at labour institutions .and trade unions; for him the iron law of wages stood firm as an infallible dogma; and, as a natural consequence, the importance of an organization after the pattern of the English trades' unions did not strike him. Karl Marx, on the other hand, had as early as the Forties discerned in the combination of labourers an effective means for strengthenin their power and corporate consciousness. The immediate incitement to a course of action in this direc- tion proceeded in 1868 from the Progressist party, whose leaders were just setting about to institute German trades' unions on the recognised English model. Thereupon the leaders of the 'General German Labour Union,' Dr. yon Schweitzer ad Fritzsche, the cigar-maker, proceeded also to found associations in the several trades, in order to out-do the hated middle-classes,.