That the Social-Democratic party of Germany was sure to obtain 
a startling success at the general election of 1890 could not be 
doubted by any one who had followed the political development of 
that country for the last decade. In 1878 the German Socialists 
were placed under rigorous coercion laws,” in virtue of which all 
their newspapers had been suppressed, their meetings stopped or 
dissolved, their organisation annihilated, their every attempt to 
re-form it punished as a “secret society”, sentences summing up to 
more than a thousand years’ imprisonment having thus been 
pronounced against members of the party. Nevertheless, they 
succeeded in smuggling into the country, and regularly distribut- 
ing every week some 10,000 copies of their organ printed abroad, 
the Sozialdemokrat, and thousands upon thousands of pamphlets; 
they succeeded in penetrating into the German Parliament (nine 
members)* and into innumerable town councils, amongst others 
that of Berlin. The growing strength of the party was evident even 
to its most embittered enemies. 

Yet such a success as they have scored on the 20th February 
must surprise even the most sanguine among themselves. Twenty- 
one seats conquered: that is to say, in twenty electoral districts they 
proved stronger than all other parties put together. Fifty-eight 
second ballots, that is to say, in 58 districts they are either the 
strongest, or the strongest but one, of all parties which have put 
forward candidates, and the fresh election will finally decide 
between the two candidates who had the greatest number, while 
neither had the absolute majority of votes. As to the total number 
of Socialist votes given, we can only make an approximate 
estimate. In 1871 they summed up not more than 102,000; in 

1877, 493,000; in 1884, 550,000; in 1887, 763,000; in 1890, they 
cannot be less than 1,250,000, and may be considerably more. The 
strength of the party has increased in three years by at least 
60-70 per cent. 

In 1887 there were but three parties with more than a million 
voters, the National Liberals, 1,678,000; the Centre or Catholic 
party, 1,516,000; and the Conservatives, 1,147,000.* This time the 
Centre will hold its own, the Conservatives have lost a good deal, 
and the National Liberals have lost enormously. Thus the Socialists 
will still be outnumbered by the Centre, but they will either fully 
come up to, or outnumber, the National Liberals as well as the 
Conservatives. 

This election establishes a complete revolution in the state of 
parties in Germany. It will indeed inaugurate a new epoch in the 
history of that country. It marks the beginning of the end of the 
Bismarck period. The situation, at the present moment, is as 
follows. 

With his rescripts on labour legislation and international labour 
conferences, young William broke loose from his mentor Bis- 
marck.” The latter thought it prudent to give his young master 
plenty of rope, and to wait quietly until William II, had got 
himself into a mess with his hobby of playing the working man’s 
friend: then would be the time for Bismarck to step in as the deus 
ex machina” This time Bismarck did not care much how the 
elections went; an unmanageable Reichstag, to be dissolved as soon 
as the young Emperor had found out his mistake, would be rather 
an advantage to Bismarck, and considerable Socialist success might 
help to prepare a good cry to go to the country with when the 
time for dissolution arrived. And the wily Chancellor, this time, 
has indeed got a Reichstag that nobody will be able to manage. 
William II, will very soon find out the impossibility, for a man in 
his position, and with the present state of mind of both the landed 
aristocracy and the middle class, of carrying out even a shadow of 
the objects alluded to in his rescripts, while the elections have 
already convinced him that the working class of Germany will take 
anything he may offer them as an instalment, but will not give up 
one jot of their principles and demands, nor relax in their 
opposition against a Government which cannot live but by gagging 
the working majority of the people. 

2 Literally: a god from a machine (by which in ancient theatre gods ap- 
peared in the air); a person or thing that comes in the nick of time to solve 
difficulty.— Ed. 

The Elections of 1890 in Germany 5 

Thus, before long there will be a conflict between Emperor and 
Parliament; the Socialists will be accused, by all rival parties, with 
being the cause of it all; the new election cry will be there, ready 
made; and then Bismarck, having given the necessary lesson to his 
lord and master, will step in and dissolve. 

But then he will find that things have changed. The Socialist 
workmen will be stronger and more determined than ever. The 
aristocracy Bismarck never could rely on; they always considered 
him as a traitor to true Conservatism, and will be ready to throw 
him overboard as soon as the Emperor chooses to drop him. The 
middle class were his mainstay, but they have lost confidence in 
him. The little family quarrel between Bismarck and the Emperor 
has come to be publicly known. It has proved that Bismarck is no 
longer all-powerful, and that the Emperor is not proof against 
dangerous crotchets. In which of the two, then, is the German 
middle class Philistine to trust? The wise man is becoming 
powerless, and the powerful man proves to be unwise. In fact, the 
confidence in the stability of the order of things established in 
1871, a confidence which, as regards the German middle class, was 
unshakeable while old William reigned, Bismarck governed, and 
Moltke was at the head of the army—that confidence is gone, and 
gone for ever. The growing load of taxation, the high price of 
living caused by ridiculous import duties on everything, food as 
well as manufactured goods, the unbearable burden of military 
service, the constant and ever-renewed fear of war, and that a war 
of European dimensions, when 4-5 millions of Germans would 
have to take up arms—all this has done its work in alienating 
from the Government the peasant, the small tradesman, the 
workman, in fact the whole nation, with the exception of the few 
who profit by the State-created monopolies. All this would be 
borne, as inevitable, so long as old William, Moltke, and Bismarck 
formed a ruling triumvirate which seemed invincible. But now old 
William is dead, Moltke is pensioned off, and Bismarck has to face 
a young Emperor whom he himself filled with an unbounded 
vanity, who is consequently considering himself a second Frederick 
the Great, and is, after all, but a conceited coxcomb, eager to 
shake off the yoke of his Chancellor, and, withal, a plaything in 
the hands of court intriguers. With such a state of things, the 
immense pressure upon the people no longer is patiently borne; 
the old faith in the stability of things is gone; resistance, which 
formerly appeared hopeless, now becomes a necessity; and thus, 
unmanageable as this Reichstag seems, maybe it will be far less so 
than the next. 

Thus Bismarck very likely is miscalculating his game. If he 
dissolve, even the spectre rouge, the anti-Socialist cry, may fail him. 
But then he has one undoubted quality: reckless energy. If it suits 
him, he may provoke riots and try what effect a little “bleeding” 
may have. But then he ought not to forget that at least one-half of 
the German Socialists have passed through the army. There they 
have learned the discipline which has enabled them so far to 
withstand all provocation to riot. But there they have also learnt 
something more. 

Written between February 21 and Reproduced from the Newcastle 
March 1, 1890 Daily Chronicle 

Chronicle, No. 9945, March 3, 1890 and, 
with minor alterations, in the Berliner 
Volksblatt, No. 81, April 6, 1890 

WHAT NOW? 

February 20, 1890 is the beginning of the end of the Bismarck 
era. The alliance between Junkers and money-bags for the 
exploitation of the mass of the German people—for the Cartel’ 
was this and nothing else—is bearing its fruit. The tax on spirits, 
the sugar premium, the corn and meat duties, which conjured 
millions from the people’s pockets into the pockets of the Junkers; 
the industrial protective tariffs, introduced just at the moment 
when German industry, by its own efforts and in free trade, had 
won for itself a position in the world market, introduced 
specifically and exclusively so that the manufacturer could sell at 
home at monopoly prices, and abroad at giveaway prices; the 
whole system of indirect taxation, which oppresses the poorer 
masses of the people and scarcely touches the rich; the tax 
burden, growing to the intolerable, to cover the cost of endlessly 
growing armaments; the increasingly imminent danger of world 
war, growing along with the armaments and threatening to “finish 
off” four to five million Germans, because the seizure of 
Alsace-Lorraine has driven France into the arms of Russia, and 
thus made Russia the arbiter of Europe; the unparalleled 
corruption of the press, through which the government systemati- 
cally swamped the people with alarmist lies each time the 
Reichstag was renewed; the police corruption aimed at bribing or 
forcing the wife to betray her husband, and the child its father; 
the system of agents provocateurs, as good as unknown in Germany 
until that time; police despotism far exceeding the period before 
1848; the shameless flouting of all justice by the German courts, 
with the noble Reich Court leading the way; the outlawing of the 
entire working class by the Anti-Socialist Law—all this has had its 

3* 

day, and a long day at that, thanks to the cowardice of the 
German philistine—but now it is coming to an end. The Cartel 
majority has been smashed, smashed irrevocably, so that only one 
thing can patch it up even for a single moment—a coup de force. 

What now? Botch together a new majority for the old system? 
Oh, there would be enthusiasm for this, and not only in the 
Government. Amongst the Freisinnige there are enough jitterers 
who would themselves play at the Cartel rather than let the 
wicked Social Democrats in—the dreams of suitability for govern- 
ment, buried together with Frederick III, are rapping once again 
on the coffin-lid. But the Government has no use for liberalism, 
and it is not yet ripe for an alliance with the Junkers from east of 
the Elbe, and they, after all, are the most important class in the 
Empire! 

And the Centre? In the Centre, too, there are Junkers en masse, 
Westphalian, Bavarian and so on, who burn with desire to sink 
into the arms of their brothers east of the Elbe, who voted with 
relish for the taxes favouring the Junkers; and in the Centre too 
there are enough bourgeois reactionaries who want to go even 
further back than the Government can—who, if they could, would 
impose upon us once more the entire Middle Ages complete with 
guilds. A specifically Catholic party, after all, like any specifically 
Christian party, can be nothing else but reactionary. So why not a 
new Cartel with the Centre? 

Simply because it is not Catholicism which actually holds the 
Centre together, but hatred of the Prussians. It is composed exclu- 
sively of elements hostile to the Prussians, which are strongest, of 
course, in the Catholic areas; Rhineland peasants, petty bourgeois 
and workers, South Germans, Hanoverian and Westphalian 
Catholics. Around the Centre are grouped the other bourgeois 
and peasant anti-Prussian elements: the Guelphs and other 
particularists, the Poles, the Alsatians.” The very day the Centre 
becomes the party of government, it will fall apart into a portion 
composed of Junkers, guildsmen and reactionaries and a portion 
consisting of peasants and democrats; and the gentlemen in the 
first portion know that they will not be able to show themselves to 
their electors again. Despite this, the attempt will be made, despite 
this the majority of the Centre will be ready for an accommoda- 
tion. And we can have no objection to this. This specifically 
anti-Prussian Catholic party was itself a product of the Bismarck 
era, the rule of what is specifically Prussian. If the latter should 
fall, it is only just that the former too should fall. 

We may therefore expect a momentary alliance of the Centre 

What Now? 9 

and the Government. But the Centre does not consist of National 
Liberals—on the contrary, it is the first party to emerge 
triumphant from the struggle against Bismarck, to send him to 
Canossa.'° It will thus certainly not be a Cartel, and Bismarck can 
only use a new Cartel. 

So what will happen? Dissolution. New elections. Appeal to the 
fear of a Social Democratic tidal wave? It is too late for this as 
well. If Bismarck wanted this, then he would not fall out with his 
new Emperor even for a moment, still less make a great fuss about 
this quarrel. 

As long as the old William was still alive, the invincibility of the 
Bismarck, Moltke, William triumvirate was unshakeably firm in the 
eyes of the German philistine. But now William is gone, Moltke 
has been made to go, and Bismarck vacillates as to whether he 
should be forced to go, or go by himself. And the young William 
who has replaced the old one has proved in the course of his quite 
short government, and particularly through his renowned de- 
crees,'' that respectable bourgeois philistines cannot possibly rely 
upon him, and also that he will not allow himself to be ordered 
about. The man in whom the philistines believed no longer has 
the power, and the philistines cannot believe in the man who has 
the power. The old confidence in the eternity of the inner order 
of the Empire founded in 1871 is gone, and no power on earth 
can restore it. The philistine, the last pillar of the old policy, has 
become shaky. How can dissolution help here? 

A coup d’état? But this releases not only the people, but also the 
princes of the Empire from their loyalty to the Imperial 
Constitution thus broken; this means the disintegration of the 
Empire. 

A war? Child’s play to launch one. But what would become of it 
once launched defies the imagination. Should Croesus cross the 
Halys'? or William cross the Rhine, he will destroy a great 
-empire—but which? His own, or that of the enemy? It is well 
known that peace persists only thanks to the unending revolution 
in weapons technology, which precludes anyone getting ready for 
war, and thanks to everybody’s fear of the absolutely incalculable 
prospects of the only war now still possible, a world war. 

Only one thing can help: an uprising, provoked by governmen- 
tal brutality and suppressed with double and triple brutality, a 
general state of siege, and re-election in conditions of terror. Even 
that would only produce a few years’ stay of execution. But it 1s 
the only way—and we know that Bismarck is one of those who 
will stop at nothing. And did not William too say: At the slightest 

resistance I shall have them all shot down? And therefore this way 
certainly will be applied. 

The German Social-Democratic workers have just won a 
triumph, a triumph well earned through their tough steadfastness, 
their iron discipline, their cheerful humour in battle, their 
tirelessness; but it certainly came unexpectedly, even to them- 
selves, and has astonished the world. The increase in the Social 
Democratic vote in every new election has proceeded with the 
irresistible force of a natural process; brutality, police despotism, 
judicial despicability—all these bounced off without effect; the 
steadily growing attack force moved forwards, forwards with 
increasing rapidity and now stands there, the second strongest 
party in the Empire. And should the German workers now spoil 
their own game by allowing themselves to be misled into a 
hopeless putsch for the sole reason of helping Bismarck out of his 
mortal anguish? At the moment when their own courage, their 
courage above all praise, is supported by the interaction of all 
outside circumstances, when the whole social and political situa- 
tion, when even all their enemies have to work for the Social 
Democrats, as though they were paid by them—at this moment 
should discipline and self-control fail, and should we throw 
ourselves upon the outstretched sword? Never! The Anti-Socialist 
Law has trained our workers too well for this, for this we have far 
too many old soldiers in our ranks, amongst them too many who 
have learned to stand at order arms in a hail of bullets till the 
moment is ripe for the attack.