Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - No Compromises No Political Trading (1900).pdf/30

 revolution from above with the '48er revolution from below and put the unthinking masses in the delusion that Prussia, enlarged at the expense of Germany and turned into a landlord, police and soldier state, was the realization of German democracy. To-day we know how deep this delusion had taken root; it required decades of brutal misgovernment to root it out again.

But in one thing Bismarck miscalculated, viz.: in the strength of the revolutionary idea. What was possible in France after the battle of June, which drove the whole bourgeoisie into the wildest reactionism, was not possible in Germany where the power of the state was not so closely centralized and where, fed by the development of capitalism, a healthy workingmen's movement grew up which was determined to exploit the national and dynastic crises and struggles in the interest of the proletariat; to make socialism the decisive power in Germany and to help it onto victory and supremacy. The German proletariat had the advantage of being able to draw practical lessons from the labor movement in other countries which were (and are) ahead of Germany in political and economic development. It also had the extraordinary good fortune to be be led into the field of political action by its great teachers, Marx, Engels and Lassalle, right at the beginning of its career. It was thereby spared from the errors of pure and simple unionism on the one hand, and of aimless, planless, through and through bourgeois-anarchistic scheming and bawling for revolutions on the other hand. Though the German working class in 1867, when the universal franchise went into effect, was only to a very small extent filled with class consciousness, was nevertheless the only class, and the socialist party was the only party, which clearly saw the meaning of voting and