NOTEBOOK “ν” (“NU”)

ADLER, IMPERIALIST SOCIAL POLICY

Georg Adler, Imperialist Social Policy .— Disraeli, Napoleon III, Bismarck . A survey. Tübingen, 1897 (44 pp.). (Preface dated March 1897.)

((A reprint of articles from the magazine Die Zukunft)).

| | An instructive little book! After a short introduction on Chartism (phrases about “Chiliastic expectations” (2), about “illusions” (2) and their role in “mass move- ments”, etc.), Adler devotes a brief chapter to Carlyle and his “social-aristocratic doctrine” (criticism of capitalism, hatred of democracy, “appeal for feudal- isation of modern economic activity” (11), “the idea of a social aristocracy”). Then Chapter III: “Disraeli’s Social Policy.” A Jew, an adventurer, Disraeli began as a Radical, defected to the Tories, was heavily in debt, was laughed at on his maiden speech in Parliament (1838), but became Tory leader and Prime Minister in 1868. He propagated the ideas of the monarchy + a social aristocracy (in reality was playing on the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat). The electoral reform of 1867 (Carlyle furiously attacked it in his pamphlet: Shooting Niagara: and After? ), small concessions and advances to the labour movement, which had lost its revolutionary character, brilliant foreign and colonial policy in 1874-80. Overall result = “an impe- rial-socialist” (p. 22)—and passim “imperial- socialist policy”, etc. |
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| | For example: “ Imperial - socialism ” and other things, p. 44, p. 43, p. 35. | |
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Chapter IV, on Napoleon III. He too was an adventurer, a dreamer. The author of “The Extinction of Pauperism” (1844). Brilliant economic development,—brilliant foreign policy,—a furious struggle against political workers’ organisations while encouraging economic organisations ((p. 32)),—mutual aid societies (flirting with all classes). Lexis in his book on “French trade unions ” admits the undoubted improvement of the French workers’ position during 1850-70 and a measure of success of Napoleon III’s policy: “discipline and supervision of the workers, on the one hand, improvement of their material conditions, on the other—in his domestic policy Louis Napoleon never deviated from that idea” (Lexis quoted by Adler, p. 34).

Chapter V. “Bismarck’s Social Policy.”

Being a country of “schools and barracks”, Prussia naturally became a model of “imperialist social policy” (36): Bismarck’s campaign against free thought, his flirting with the workers, universal suffrage (to set the bourgeoisie and the proletariat at loggerheads), social legislation... social insurance (Adler extols it).

| In conclusion (p. 43), Adler says that this “must not” (!!ha-ha!!) be compared with the Caesarism of declining Rome, for support is given to people who work, not to good-for-nothing plebeians. Proudhon , he says, wrote (where?) (a quotation from Proudhon : “We do not receive a penny from abroad”, p. 43) that (Roman) Caesarism lived by plundering foreign nations, but this does not apply here. | |
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| ...“Imperial-socialism ... in its endur- ing traits ... was, objectively, a great step forward towards integrating the proletariat in modern society and its practical collaboration in the latter’s cultural tasks” (44). ((The roots of social- chauvinism!!))—hence “imperial-social- ism” was “an illusion of world-historical importance”, for it was useful, although it did not reconcile the proletariat, the enemy of Disraeli, Napoleon III and Bismarck. | |
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| Cf. Engels on Napoleon III versus Bismarck |
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| | “Bonapartism” | |
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((End of Adler’s pamphlet)).