Page:Two Architects of New Europe – Masaryk and Beneš.pdf/6

32 gulf—to weld the nation together by "positive social reforms."

He disagreed with Marxism in many ways and together with the German Bernstein and the Russian TugnaTugan [sic]-Baranovskii he helped to point out numerous criticisms. To him economic conditions are in large part dependent on the moral ideals of mankind. Social justice, in his opinion, could come only by parallel reforms of morals and ideals. Economic reforms alone would not suffice. The Social Question concerned not the laboring class alone, but all classes, and they would have to experience a regeneration if it were to be solved. The Social Question, as he saw it, was an ethical one—it embraced the ethical relations of all individuals, classes and nations.

He did not argue for absolute equality, but rather for a conditioned, relative equality. Whether as individuals, or classes, or nations absolute equality was perhaps unattainable. But equal opportunity, abolition of exploitation of one kind or another, respect of the one for the other as human beings, all these he believed could be obtained. He argued:

With a healthy family and a healthy nation, as a satisfied individual in the great family of nations, he believed he had the lever of Archimedes to lift up humanity.

Since the breakdown of the Old Czech Party of Palacký and Rieger who followed the lead of the provincial nobility, and the rise of the Young Czech Party in the eighties, Masaryk and Kramář became the real political leaders of the Czech nation. At first they belonged to the same party and cooperated, but soon they parted company. We