The German Statistical Bureau has published interesting data on the elections to parliament (Reichstag) in 1912. The comparison of the strength of various parties in the countryside and in the city is particularly instructive.

German statistics classifies as rural settlements all those having up to 2,000 inhabitants, similar to the statistics of most European states and in contrast to Russia, where the senseless, police-bureaucratic, arbitrary distinction between those settlements which are "named" cities persists to this day, regardless of the number of inhabitants.

German statistics classes as small towns settlements having from 2 to 10 thousand inhabitants, and as larger cities settlements with 10,000 inhabitants and more.

It turns out that there is observed a strikingly regular correspondence between the progressiveness of a given party (in the broadest economic and political sense of the concept: "progressiveness") and the increase in the strength of that party in the cities and in general in the larger settlements.

Four groups of political parties in Germany stand out clearly:

1) Social-Democrats – the only fully progressive and in the best sense "popular," mass party of wage workers;

2) the "Progressive People's Party" – a petty-bourgeois democratic party, something like our Trudoviki (only in the setting not of a feudal, but of a fully bourgeois society);

3) the "National-Liberals" – the party of the great bourgeoisie, the German October-Cadet party;

4) all conservative parties, of reactionary landlords, clericals, reactionary petty bourgeoisie and peasants (anti-Semites, the "Centre," i.e., Catholics, proper Conservatives, Poles, etc.).

The share of votes (in percentages) received by the parties:

Universal suffrage exists in Germany. The table presented clearly shows that the German countryside, German peasantry (as with the peasantry of all European, constitutional, civilized countries) remains almost entirely enslaved, spiritually and politically, by landlords and priests.

In German villages almost 3/5 of the votes (58.6%) are cast for conservative, that is, landlord and priestly, parties! The peasant was everywhere revolutionary in Europe when he fought against feudalists, serfs, and landlords. Having achieved freedom and a portion of land, the peasant, as a general rule, made peace with landlords and priests, becoming a reactionary.

But the development of capitalism begins, in turn, to tear the peasant from the arms of reaction and leads him behind the Social-Democrats. In Germany the S.D.'s collected in the countryside in 1912 already almost one-fifth (19.0%) of all rural votes.

The political condition of the contemporary German countryside, therefore, is as follows. One-fifth follows the Social-Democrats, one-fifth follows the more or less "liberal" bourgeoisie, three-fifths follows the landlords and priests. There remains much work to be done on the political enlightenment of the countryside. Capitalism, ruining small peasantry and increasingly crushing it, beats out, one might say, by force from people's heads reactionary prejudices.

In small towns the picture is already different: the Social-Democrats have already overtaken the liberal bourgeoisie (35.8% of votes against 27%), but have not yet quite caught up with the conservatives, who have 36.4% of votes. Small towns are the chief stronghold of petty bourgeoisie, chiefly commercial and industrial. The petty bourgeoisie wavers most of all, not giving a stable majority to either conservatives, or socialists, or liberal bourgeoisie.

In large cities – the victory of Social-Democracy. It leads behind it half the population (49.3% of votes), – as much as conservatives and liberals together (15.6 + 13.8 + 20 = 49.4%). Conservatives here lead behind them only one-fifth of the population, liberal bourgeois – three-tenths, Social-Democrats – half. If one were to take the largest cities, an incomparably more complete predominance of Social-Democracy would be obtained.

It is known that cities in all contemporary states and even in Russia grow much faster than the countryside, that cities represent the centers of the economic, political, and spiritual life of the people and are the chief drivers of progress. The predominance of Social-Democracy in cities brightly depicts the significance of this party as the party of the advanced popular masses.

In Germany in 1912 out of 65 million population only 25.9 million lived in the countryside, 12.3 million in small towns and 26.8 million in larger cities. In recent decades, when Germany became a fully capitalist state, relatively free, with a firm constitution and universal suffrage, the urban population grows especially rapidly in comparison with the rural. In 1882 out of 45 million, 18.9 million lived in cities, i.e., 41.8%; in 1895 out of 52 million – 26, i.e., 49.8%; in 1907 out of 62 million – 36, i.e., 58.1%. And the population of the largest cities, having 100,000 and more inhabitants, comprised in these years – 3–7–12 million, i.e., 7.4% – 13.6% – 19.1% of the total population. Over 25 years the entire population increased by 36.5%, the population of cities by 89.6%, and the population of the largest cities by 254.4%.

It is interesting, finally, to note that purely bourgeois parties in contemporary bourgeois Germany have a minority of the population behind them. Throughout Germany in 1912 the S.D.'s received more than a third of the total votes cast (34.8%), the conservatives (i.e., chiefly landlords and priests) somewhat less than two-fifths (38.3%), while all liberal-bourgeois parties received only one-quarter of the votes (25.9%).

How is this to be explained? Why in bourgeois Germany, in the country of especially rapidly developing capitalism, more than 60 years after the revolution (the bourgeois revolution of 1848) do landlord and clerical, and not purely bourgeois political parties predominate?

K. Marx himself pointed out the chief reason for explaining this phenomenon already in 1848: the German bourgeoisie, frightened by the independence of the proletariat, seeing that democratic institutions are used by workers for themselves and against capitalists, turned away from democracy, shamefully betrayed the freedom which it had previously defended, and turned toward servility before landlords and clericals{108}. It is known that the Russian bourgeoisie since 1905 develops these servile political strivings and servile political ideas even more assiduously than the German.

*Rabochaya Pravda* No. 3, July 16, 1913. Signed: V. I.

Printed from the text of the newspaper *Rabochaya Pravda*