The International Workingmen's Association, 1868

On the Dissolution of the Lassallean Workers' Association


"The government knows, and the bourgeoisie knows too, that the
whole German workers' movement today is only tolerated, only survives,
for as long as the government chooses. For as long as it serves
the government's purpose for this movement to exist and for the bourgeois
opposition to be faced with new, independent opponents, thus long will
it tolerate this movement. From the moment that this movement turns the
workers into an independent force, and thereby becomes a danger to the
government, there will be an abrupt end to it all. The whole manner in
which the men-of-Progress agitation in the press, associations and assemblies
has been put down, should serve as a warning to the workers. The same laws,
edicts and measures which were applied in that case, can be applied against
them at any time and deal a lethal blow to their agitation; and
they will be so applied as soon as this agitation becomes dangerous.
It is of the greatest importance that the workers should be clear about
this point, and do not fall prey to the same illusion as the bourgeoisie
in the New Era, when it was similarly only tolerated but imagined
it was already in the saddle. And if anyone should imagine the present
government would free the press, the right of association and the right
of assembly from their present fetters, he is clearly among those to whom
there is no point in talking. And unless there is freedom of the press,
the right of association and the right of assembly, no workers' movement
is possible."

These words may be found on pages 50 and 51 of a pamphlet,
Die preussische Militärfrage und die deutsche Arbeiterpartei,
by Frederick Engels, Hamburg, 1865. At that time the attempt was made to
bring the General Association of German Workers -- in its time the only
organised association of social-democratic workers in Germany -- under
the wing of the Bismarck ministry by presenting the workers with the prospect
of the government granting universal suffrage. "Universal, equal and direct
suffrage" was of course preached by Lassalle as the sole and infallible
means for the working class to win political power; is it any wonder that
under these circumstances such subordinate things as freedom of the press
and the right of association and assembly, which even the bourgeoisie stood
for, or at least claimed to stand for, should be looked down upon? If the
bourgeoisie took an interest in such things was that not a good reason
for the workers to steer clear of the agitation for them? This view was
opposed by the pamphlet mentioned above. The leaders of the General Association
of German Workers knew better, and the author only had the satisfaction
that the Lassalleans of his hometown Barmen declared him and his friends
outlawed and excommunicated.

And what is the state of affairs today? "Universal, direct and
equal suffrage" has existed for two years. Two parliaments have already
been voted in. The workers, instead of sitting at the helm of state and
decreeing "state aid" according to Lassalle's directions, manage with the
utmost difficulty to get half a dozen deputies elected into parliament.
Bismarck is Federal Chancellor and the General Association of German
Workers has been dissolved.

But why universal suffrage failed to bring the workers the promised
millennium, they were already able to find out from Engels. In the above
pamphlet it says on page 48:

"And regarding universal direct suffrage itself, one has only to go
to France to realise what tame elections it can give rise to, if one has
only a large and ignorant rural population, a well-organised bureaucracy,
a well-regimented press, associations sufficiently kept down by the police
and no political meetings at all. How many workers' representatives does
universal suffrage send to the French chamber, then? And yet the French
proletariat has the advantage over the German of far greater concentration
and longer experience of struggle and organisation.

"Which brings us to yet another point. In Germany the rural population
is twice the size of the urban population, i.e., 2/3 earn their living
from agriculture and 1/3 from industry. And since in Germany the
big landowner is the rule and the small peasant with his strips the exception,
put another way that means: if 1/3 of the workers are at the beck
and call of the capitalists, 2/3 are at the beck and call of the
feudal lords. Let those who never stop railing at the capitalists
but never utter a word in anger against the feudalists take that to heart!
The feudalists exploit twice as many workers in Germany as the bourgeoisie....
But that is by no means all. The patriarchal economic system on the old
feudal estates generates a hereditary dependence of the rural day labourer
or cottager on 'his lordship', which makes it far more difficult for the
agricultural proletarian to enter the urban workers' movement. The clergy,
the systematic obscurantism in the country, the bad schooling and the remoteness
of the people from the world at large do the rest. The agricultural proletariat
is the section of the working class which has most difficulty in understanding
its own interests and its own social situation and is the last to do so,
in other words, it is the section which remains the longest an unconscious
tool in the hands of the privileged class which is exploiting it. And which
class is that? Not the bourgeoisie, in Germany, but
the feudal aristocracy. Now even in France, where after all virtually
all the peasants are free and own their land, and where the feudal aristocracy
has long been deprived of all political power, universal suffrage has not
put workers into the Chamber but has almost totally excluded them from
it. What would be the consequence of universal suffrage in Germany, where
the feudal aristocracy is still a real social and political power and where
there are two agricultural day labourers for every industrial worker?
The battle against feudal and bureaucratic reaction -- for the two are
inseparable in our country -- is in Germany identical with the struggle
for the intellectual and political emancipation of the rural proletariat
-- and until such time as the rural proletariat is also swept along into
the movement, the urban proletariat cannot and will not achieve anything
at all in Germany and universal suffrage will not be a weapon for the proletariat
but a snare.

"Perhaps this exceptionally candid but necessary analysis will
encourage the feudalists to espouse the cause of universal direct suffrage.
So much the better."

The General Association of German Workers has been dissolved not merely
under the rule of universal suffrage but also precisely because
universal suffrage rules. Engels had predicted that it would be suppressed
as soon as it became dangerous. At its last general assembly the
Association had decided: 1. to work for full political liberty
and 2. to cooperate with the International Working Men's Association. These
two resolutions comprise a complete break with the entire past of the Association.
With them, it emerged from its previous sectarian position into the broad
field of the workers' movement. But in higher places they seem to have
imagined that this was to a certain extent a breach of agreement. At other
times it would not have mattered so much; but since the introduction of
universal suffrage, when they have to be careful to shield their rural
and provincial proletariat from such subversive tendencies! Universal suffrage
was the last nail in the coffin of the General Association of German Workers.

It does the Association credit that it foundered precisely on
this breach with narrow-minded Lassalleanism. Whatever may take its place
will consequently be built on a far more general, principled basis than
the few incessantly reiterated Lassallean phrases about state aid could
offer. The moment the members of the dissolved Association started thinking
instead of believing, the last obstacle in the way of an amalgamation of
all German social-democratic workers into one big party disappeared.

Postscript


In the article which appeared under the above heading
(in the previous issue), the following note should be added at the end
of the quotation from the pamphlet by Engels on universal suffrage:

At that time the "President of Mankind", Bernhard Becker,
bequeathed by Lassalle to the Association, was heaping the vilest insults
on "the Marx Party", i.e. Marx, Engels and Liebknecht. (This pretty
business is now being continued by Countess Hatzfeldt, the
"mother" of the Försterling-Mende caricature of the General Association
of German Workers.) Now, in his obscene screed Enthüllungen über
das tragische Lebensende Ferdinand Lassalle's, which lays bare his
own piteous soul and is only of interest because of the suppressed documents
it reproduces, the very same Becker bowdlerises Engels in the following
way:

"Yet, why is there no agitation for unconditional
freedom of association and assembly and freedom of the press?
Why do the workers not seek to remove the fetters placed on them in the
period of reaction?" (P. 133.) "...0nly by further development of the democratic
basis can Lassalleanism be renewed and fed over into pure socialism. To
this end it is necessary among other things that the interests of
the Junkers or wealthy landowners should no longer be spared
but that socialist theory should be supplemented and completed by applying
it to the great mass of agricultural labourers who in Prussia outnumber
by far the population of the towns." (P. 134.)

It can be seen that the author of the pamphlet (F. Engels) may be content
with its effect on his opponents.