Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/720

 ,698 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL sought to crush the heads of the revolutionary Hydra. In the summer of 1874 commenced a period of severe judicial and administrive persecution of Social Democracy, inaugurated by Herr Tessendorf, the newly elected public prosecutor in the Berlin Court of Justice. Herr Tessendorf exhumed the statutes dating from the period of Prussian reaction, prohibiting the affiliation of political societies, and by their instr_nmentality carried out the legal suppression of the 'General German Labour Union' and the 'Social Democratic Labour-party.' Thus collapsed the existing organization of Social Democracy. Now it was essentially a question of organization on which the contest between the two sections turned. The Lassallites were for.the most rigid centralization, following the dying words of the ' Master,' ' The Union must hold fast to organization! That will lead the working classes to victory!' The Marxists under Liebknecht's regis were for decentralization. And this contest had through Herr Tessendorf lost its cas belli. All that remained to be done was to muster the working-men of Germany in single, externally disconnected unions, around the common banner of the emancipation of the proletariate. The impulse of self-preservation now bade both sections bury the hatchet which they had wielded against each other, and con- centrate their whole strength on the struggle with their common enemy, the existing government. Tlis alliance was concluded at the Congress which met at Gotha, May 22nd till 27th, 1875. On that occasion, however, the situation developed in a way often presented by the political dramas of the world's history. The more radical party won the upper hand of the moderates, in this instance not without justification, since the Eisenach section certainly possessed by far the higher capacities, and might perhaps claim as well a more logical sequence in its principles as con- trasted with the somewhat antiquated programme of the Lsssallites. The new Gotha programme bore almost exclusively the Com- munistic stamp of the Marxist doctrine, and only a few insignifi- cant points were conceded to the Lassallites. By far the most important item in this programme is the first, which incorporates the fundamental theoretic principle of modern Social Democracy. Heading it is the following sentence: 'Labour is the source of all wealth and of all culture,' which amounts to a popular rendering of the underlying principles in Marx's system. The subsequent conclusions, nevertheless, do not wholly reflect the spirit of the theory of the great Socialist thinker, though it may be that precisely on that account they are