In their farewell statement in No. 105 (31 August 1890) the retiring editors of the “Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung” say that petty-bourgeois parliamentary socialism is now in a majority in Germany. But majorities often very quickly become minorities,

“and so the retiring editors of the ‘Sächs. Arb.-Ztg.’
together with Friedrich Engels
hope that, just as Lassalle’s naive state socialism was once overcome, so too will the success-hungry parliamentary trend in present-day Social-Democracy soon be overcome by the sound sense of the German workers”.

Had I still to bear in mind that Bebel and Liebknecht lived far apart and needed time to come to an understanding? But when he spoke, he said the right thing, the only appropriate thing for the situation. The events in Hamburg have amply proved him right.

Individual members of the parliamentary group or the Party Executive have certainly committed gaucheries in the debate. That happens always and everywhere and is to the discredit of the individual, not of the whole. In its draft constitution the parliamentary group has been guilty of a few infringements of the democratic code of etiquette. However, it is only a draft, which the Party Congress is free to accept, reject or amend. The London Conference of the International in 1871 likewise committed such formal sins, and the Bakuninist gentlemen at once seized upon them in order to make them a formal handle for their attacks upon the General Council. Nevertheless everybody knows today that real democracy resided in the General Council and not in the council of the Bakuninists, who had constructed a whole secret apparatus of conspiracy in order to make the International subservient to themselves.

At the time of the steamship subsidy, when the parliamentary group of the day did not itself for a moment know what it wanted, and tried to make the editorial board of the “Sozialdemokrat” the scapegoat for its own perplexity, I stood most resolutely on the side of the editorial board against the parliamentary group. I should do the same today if the parliamentary group or the Party Executive were really to commit acts seriously endangering the Party. But there is no question of anything of that kind today; the |Here the manuscript breaks off|