Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/719

 EVOLUTION OF SOCIALIST PROGRAMME IN GERMANY 697' and deception, but display greater intelligence for questions bearing more closely on their interests, e.., short hours, higher wages, removal of oppressive factory regulations, &c. But purely industrial organization offers the further advantage of being able to exercise an abiding pressure on legislation and government; hence this form of the labour-movement is also a political manifestation, though indirectly so. The establishment of the Free National Constitution (Volksstaat), i.e., the economic, social, political and religious independence of the working classes requires preparatory development and elaboration. In this way the actual efforts in trade-unionist organization mature the idea of emancipation in the labour-world, and for this reason these natural organizations must be ranked equally with purely political agitation, and not be considered as a reactionary forlna- tion nor as a tail of the political movement. 3.---THE PROGRAMME OF THE ' SOCIALIST GERRY.' (1875.) LABOUR PARTY IN The effective results of trade unionism were shown in the Imperial elections of the year 1874. Although the split of Social Democrats into the two camps of Lassallites and ' Eisenachers' not only continued but developed into as violent a feud between the two sections as any carried on against their common enemy, middle-classes society, yet for all that Socialism could at the time show a brilliant muster ... no less than 340,000 votes. The decoy cry. of the Lassallites and that of the Marxists had attracted equal numbers of these combatants to their standards. Since the armies were equally strong, neither of the two sectiona could hope to drive the other from the field. What then could be more natural than for the nine candidates, who through the voting of the labour-parties were admitted to the Reichstag, to conclude a truce which forbade either section directly to attack the other ? There was, however, no question of amalgamation, and. a motion to this end proposed at the next congress of the' General German Labour Union' was rejected by a large majority. But what all affinity in party-principles and all personal relations between the leaders had failed to accomplish, namely, the union of the two springs of Socialism into one common stream, whose mighty flood should burst the dam of the existing order of things,--this was now brought about by the government and the police, through the misdirected energy with which they