What is better

hallo

hallo

wow, such an interesting post

hallo

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We live in a society

hallo

The Prussian government has performed a new assault on the Polish people! The regulation enacted by Minister of Education Studt removed the last remnants of the Polish language from the schools of the city of Poznan [1], the last remaining subject taught in Polish, Religious Education, will be taught in German from now on! Our children, who spend half the day at school, will no longer hear a single word in the language of their people, the language of their fathers and mothers. Education, the intellectual nourishment for life, which they are supposed to absorb in school, will be presented to them in a language that is completely strange and unintelligible to them! Are these not outrageous circumstances? The schools were founded for this purpose, the people send their children to school, so they can absorb the light of science, so they grow into knowledgeable, educated people, for their own benefit and for their country’s joy. In Poznan, however, school will not serve the education of the children, but turn them into spiritual cripples, who do not know their own nationality and language, not to sow the seed of knowledge and civilization, but for the violent spread of German identity.

This is not the first attack of the Prussian authorities on our language and nationality. For more than twenty years, the government has been displacing the Polish language from Poznan’s schools, eliminating the Polish element from public offices and from public life, spending hundreds of millions for “colonization,” i.e. for the Germanization of our regions. It endeavors to forcibly transplant Germans – peasants and tradesmen – to Polish soil, and all that with a tenacity and perseverance that would be worthy of a better cause.

What do they want to achieve? It is clear that the Polish language and nationality shall disappear in Prussia, three million Polish people shall forget that they were born as Poles and transform into Germans! The children shall forget their fathers and mothers, the grandchildren shall forget that their grandfathers once lived on Polish soil!

Your hair stands up when you think about these attempts, your fist clenches out of desperation, that such things have been happening in broad daylight before the eyes of all Europe and the entire civilized world for decades, and none of the elites speak out, no one pushes back the Germanizing power; the Hakatists [2] laugh at our weakness and quietly continue their work of uprooting Polish identity, as if they were doing the world’s most honorable and righteous work. So it is a crime to speak your own language, which you imbibed with your mother’s milk; so it is a crime to belong to a people, into which you were born!

Truly, it is about time for the Polish people to shake off its lifelessness, to express its indignation, to rise and fight against Germanization. In which way this fight shall be led, in which way the defense of Polish nationality will be achieved most effectively – these are questions which it pays to consider seriously.

hallo

Most of all: Who are the true perpetrators of this oppression, which the Poles must suffer by the Germans? Who should we make responsible for this violent Germanization? The usual answer is: “It’s the fault of the Germans. The Germans are oppressing us.” This is what Polish papers in the Poznan province always write. But is it possible to blame the entire German people, 50 million Germans? This would be a great injustice and a great error, which we would suffer most from. To get a clear picture of the situation, to see where is the actual cause of our oppression, is absolutely necessary, if we want to seriously and successfully start to defend our endangered nationality.

It is crystal-clear that the Prussian government is the foremost author of Germanization. It has been single-handedly pushing a policy of oppression against the Poles for decades. The Prussian ministers of education issue one ordinance after the other, to banish the Polish language from schools, the Prussian ministers of the interior order the police to disband Polish popular assemblies in Upper Silesia and other provinces, the Prussian presidents and district administrators invent dozens of methods to provoke and harass the Polish population. But the government of the German Empire stands behind the Prussian government like a wall. Its Chancellor is also the Prussian Prime Minister. Therefore, the most exquisite harmony usually prevails between the All-German and Prussian governments, especially when it comes to persecuting Poles.

But although they control vast means, the government agencies would be powerless, if influential layers of German society offered resistance to them. Against the express wishes of these circles, the German government, and even less the Prussian, would never dare to persecute the Poles with such tenacity. No government is able to stay long if the whole society sincerely and forcefully condemns its policies. So the Germanization policy of the government must find support among certain segments of the German people, and indeed so it does. We all know these gentlemen Hakatists, who set public opinion upon the Poles like dogs upon rabbits. Who, unasked, of their own evil will, found special associations for the extermination of Polish identity. These most determined agitators for Germanization mostly belong to the class of German landlords and factory owners. It is also true that only a small handful of German landlords and industrialists follows the despicable banner of Hakatism. But how do the broadest segments react to the Hakatist attacks and the government’s Germanization policies? Do they protest, are they outraged, do they try to prevent these policies? The best answer is a look at the German press and the behavior of the various parties in the German Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag.

Both in their press and in the national and district parliaments, almost all German parties are either outright benevolent towards Hakatism or react with cold indifference to the suppression of Polish identity. At best, they bother to quietly grumble against these phenomena, which should cause any righteous person to throw lightning bolts! The Conservatives and the Liberals, the parties of the large estate owners and industrial millionaires, grind their teeth over the Poles and give lively applause to all Germanization assaults. The “free thinkers” of various shades, the agents of commerce and finance, partly give spiritual support to the extermination of Polish identity and partly – to save their honor, after all they are free thinkers! – grumble about Hakatism in this or that minor newspaper. Of course the government gives as much attention to this grumbling as to the barking of a dog. The Catholic party, finally, the so-called “Zentrum” [“Center”], to which the Poles in Prussia have been holding on for decades, like a drunkard to a lamp-post, all this Zentrum does for the protection of the Polish people, is to write occasional snide comments about the Germanization attempts of the government and the Hakatists in its newspapers. However, the critics of this “Zentrum” party are usually so-called “wimps,” whom the government secretly makes fun of. If the Zentrum seriously and honestly cared about defending the Poles, it would find a way! It is the strongest party in parliament, with the most deputies, namely 107. No important law can pass parliament against the opposition of the Zentrum. This happened during the recent project of the fleet reinforcement [1], which meant so much to the government. As long as the Zentrum party raised its nose and pretended not to agree with this burdening of the poor people, so long the bill hung on a silken thread. The ministers crowded the antechambers of the Zentrum, to soothe and convince it by all means. Assume the Zentrum would have declared: We do not agree with the fleet upgrade until the government solemnly promises to cease all further persecution of the Polish people, the government would have had to give in, and the Catholic party would have proven that it really cared about the Polish question. But the Zentrum did not even think about the Poles, instead it stated a different condition: That it would agree to the doubling of the fleet, if the government promised to increase the duties on grain and other foodstuffs! So the Zentrum, this “Catholic” party, showed that it cared not about the freedom of conscience and nationality for three million Polish Catholics, but about the money bags of a few thousand landlords in Germany, who reap golden profits from the increase of prices for agricultural products through tariffs. That this price increase wrings tears of misery from thousands of fathers and mothers among the poor – such things do not interest the Zentrum party.

Indeed, how can you believe in the friendship of the Zentrum folks with the Polish people, how can you expect them to sincerely defend the oppressed Polish identity, when the Zentrum party – particularly in Prussia – consists largely of large estate owners and so-called coal barons, i.e. aristocrats and millionaires, just like the other parties, the Conservatives and the National Liberals. Expecting the German aristocrats and industrial millionaires to defend the oppressed Polish people would be sheer insanity. As we know, most Zentrum deputies are elected in Upper Silesia, the Rhine Province and Westphalia, exactly where the large coal mines and steel mills are. These “Catholic” aristocrats earn millions with their mines, and who are the people who work day and night, in the stifling dark, to increase the gold of these Zentrum party aristocrats? The poor Polish people! In Upper Silesia, hundreds of thousands of Polish miners and smelters sweat for Messrs. Ballestrem, Donnersmarck and others. In Westphalia and the Rhine Province, thousands of Poles, who also bear the yoke of mining and smelting, eke out a miserable existence.

From the labor, the misery and the disadvantages of these Polish people, the Catholic aristocrats make millions, by only giving the Polish miner just enough to feed himself, by keeping him in misery and dirt, worse than their pigs or cows. How can you expect that these “Catholic” aristocrats care about the oppressed Polish people, when they themselves live off the injustice they perpetrate against these people? How can these Zentrum aristocrats ensure that a Polish child can pray in its mother tongue, while they keep these Polish people in such misery that they have neither bread nor clothing for their children?

The hopes of the Poles for the help of the Zentrum party come from earlier times, when Bismarck most brutally persecuted Catholicism in the German Empire and thereby forced the Catholics to unite for the protection of their belief. During this so-called Kulturkampf [“cultural struggle”] [2], 10 to 15 years ago, the Zentrum party was not as strong as today, and due to the superiority of the National Liberals, i.e. the Protestant capitalists, in parliament, it could exert no great influence. Bismarck’s persecution united Catholics of various estates under the banner of the Zentrum party: Silesian and Upper Silesian magnates, Rhineland tradesmen, Bavarian farmers and even a part of the working class. Hence, the Catholic party became somewhat of a representative of the working people and under their pressure assumed a democratic, progressive character.

Back then, the Catholic party also opposed the government, against burdening the people with high taxes, tariffs and military conscription, also against all attacks on the freedom of conscience, language and nationality. The Zentrum party also defended the Polish question more enthusiastically, since, as the saying goes, the starving best understand the starving, the beaten best understand the beaten. When the German Catholics felt themselves, what persecution, oppression and injustice by the government meant, they also felt sympathy for the repression of the Poles.

But times have changed – the Kulturkampf went to hell, together with its founder, Bismarck. The government understood that its persecution of the Catholics only united them more, strengthened them and made them enemies. Today, as we said, the Catholic party is the strongest in the German parliament. The government must dance to its whistle, the persecutions of Catholicism are over, and the newspapers even rumor, that the Jesuit priests might be allowed to return to Germany soon. But how these conditions have changed the Catholic party! When the oppression of Catholicisms ceased, when their own hide no longer hurt, the injustice done to strangers ceased to interest the Zentrum folks. In this colorful jumble of classes and estates, which makes up the Catholic parties, the magnates, the industrialists, in one word, the parasites and reactionaries are taking over. The politics of the Zentrum are also developing a totally different character. Compassion and care for the poor working people have disappeared, just as any care for the Poles. Today, the Catholic party votes in parliament for increasing tariffs, i.e. more expensive food, invents new taxes for the population, votes for increasing the infantry and the navy of the “dear German fatherland.” The Poles, however, it has almost forgotten and only shows them a kind face from time to time, to lead them on the leash, so the Polish parliamentarians will continue to listen to the Zentrum’s command. The defense of Catholicism is just a faded business sign for the Zentrum, a hollow phrase. Finally it has surfaced, that a party consisting of magnates, counts and industrial millionaires cannot be a defender of the poor and downtrodden. In earlier times, the Zentrum members were enemies of the German government and friends of the people, today they are friends of the government and enemies of the people. Our Polish people should finally understand this and stop clinging to the door handle of the Catholic party for old times’ sake. The old times are over.

So we will find no protection with any of the mentioned German parties. If the German government, the Prussian ministers, allow themselves to persecute the Poles so openly, and the Hakatist scum dare to bark at us, the responsibility lies with those classes of the German people, whose applause or silence, or insincere defense of Polish identity, maintain the pressure of Germanization. It is their fault that the government dares to treat three million German citizens like second-class beings, who are not even allowed to have their own language and – as you say – praise God in their fashion! Against the Polish people, the aristocracy, the magnates, factory owners, bankers, coal mine owners, in brief, the entire class of the rich and propertied, who live off other people’s work and by exploiting the population, are united with the German government. Protestants, Catholics, or Jews – to us they are all the same, like the Prussian government, which is dismantling our nationality.

This is no miracle. Such people as the aristocrats, the industrialists, the capitalists, only know one political goal – monetary profit. Their idol is the Golden Calf, their creed is exploitation. All other slogans and phrases their various parties proclaim, like “Patriotism,” “Catholic Religion,” “Liberalism,” “Anti-Semitism,” “Progress” are just cloaks of different size and shape, which always hide one and the same goal: Profit-seeking and greed for riches. When the Prussian Conservatives and Liberals are such burning patriots and want to violently convert Poles into Germans, the only reason is that this Germanization business smells like profit. Is it not becoming for the German bourgeoisie that it can situate thousands of its sonnies in gainful positions in the Poznan district, as civil servants, teachers, newspaper scribblers, merchants and tradesmen and finally can feed some of its peasants off Polish soil? All this would be lost, would stay in Polish hands, if not the necessity to Germanize the Poles had been invented. So long live the dear “German fatherland,” which again served as a dairy cow, and go for the Poles!

But if German patriotism once does not pay, these same Prussian conservatives turn like a weather vane in the wind. For example, it is known that the German farm workers are fleeing from Prussia westwards in hordes, to the industrial cities, because they no longer want to endure hunger and beatings on the Prussian estates. But the poor Polish farm worker from across the border, from the Kingdom of Poland, agrees with everything, is ignorant and therefore gentle as a lamb. And the same German magnates, who want to erase every trace of Polish identity in Prussia, the “sweet fatherland” always on their tongues, order Polish farm hands by the thousands from Poland, because they are cheaper and dumber, because they are easy to fool and do not scorn the whip. So, if exterminating Polish identity pays, long live Hakatism! But if the spread of Polish identity is necessary for the estate, welcome stupid Polish servant! As long as profits flow!

We mentioned above that the Zentrum, the German Catholics, also spread the slogan of defending religion and friendship with the Poles, but at the same time feed off the labor of the Polish Catholic miner and mill worker in Upper Silesia. For them, too, profit is the only creed, while justice, defense of the oppressed, freedom of speech and conscience, are mere phrases, which they proclaim or kick to the dust, depending on what is “good for business.”

Thus looks the upper part, the ruling layer of German society. It is no better or worse than in all other countries, but in no other country does it find such naive people as here in Poznan, who expect protection for the weak and oppressed from this class, who expect the wolves to protect the lambs.

hallo

Among the German people there is just one party, which honestly supports us and raises not just its voice against Germanization and any injustice, but also the clenched fist. This party is Social Democracy, the party of the German workers.

They draw no benefit from the persecution of Poles, as those higher classes of German society, who hunt for profits and good positions among us. The German worker, just as our Polish worker or tradesman, in general never lives off injustice he inflicts on others, but from his own hard, but honest labor. He is not the oppressor of others, but indeed oppressed himself, and therefore he feels and understands our oppression, because he is oppressed by the same ones who torment us Poles – by the German government and the parties we listed earlier.

So, just as one ordinance after the other has been decreed against Poland for the last twenty years, the German government has been on a witch hunt against the German workers for decades, ever since the German people began to lift their heads, to educate themselves and fight against injustice and exploitation. Yes, they fight us mostly using administrative ordinances, but the working people in Germany were directly outlawed 22 years ago, in 1878, by the so-called Emergency Law against Socialists. Although the German Constitution guarantees all German citizens equality before the law, freedom of press, speech, conscience and association, socialist workers were neither allowed to print newspapers for their own education, nor to speak about their issues at assemblies, nor to found associations – all these acts were punished with imprisonment. For eleven full years, the German workers were without rights, and during this time, thousands of them languished behind prison walls, hundreds had to leave their country, their own fatherland, to escape persecution, had to abandon their wives and children to hunger and misery, while they sought a hospitable roof, civil freedom and equality before the law in other countries.

And who was the main culprit of this persecution? The same Bismarck, who began the extermination of Polish identity by starting the Colonization Fund [1] and by Germanizing the schools in the Poznan province, the same German aristocrats and factory owners, who actively or passively supported Hakatism. And who now finally betrayed the German working people? The same “Catholic” party, Zentrum, which also left the Polish question to oblivion, which has turned from a fighter for civil equality into a pillar of the government and its oppression.

The German working people therefore have the same enemies in their own country, suffer from the same oppression, so they are our natural allies, our friends. The Social Democratic Party recognizes no distinction of language or of faith; every oppressed and disadvantaged person is its brother, it condemns and seeks to eradicate all injustice. It is the only party which protects the common people against aristocrats and capitalists and oppressed nations against their persecutors.

The Polish newspapers in the Poznan province occasionally write muddle about Social Democracy: That it is the greatest danger, greater than the Hakatists, because Socialists want to introduce anarchy, i.e. stand the world upside down, abolish religion, introduce widespread fornication of women, divide up the wealth of the rich, etc. This is silly talk, and those who spread it are either fools or wicked liars, who want to throw sand into the eyes of the common people.

The Socialists would never dream of turning the world upside down, because it is already standing on its head. Is it not a twisted order that millions of common people sweat from daybreak to night – in workshops, factories, on fields or in coal mines – and in return hardly have a bite of bread and miserable nook to call their home? The lords and ladies, the factory owners, who don’t lift a finger all their lives, pocket the profits, ride in carriages, drink champagne and live in palaces! It is exactly the Socialists who want to put the world back on its feet and introduce an order, where those who work honestly have plenty for themselves and their families, but the idlers, who feed off others’ work, get nothing.

Equally amusing are those who say, that the Socialists want to abolish family life and introduce widespread immorality. Is not the family life of millions of working families already destroyed, because the wife and mother must earn money, has no time to watch the children, and often does not know wherewith to clothe and feed them? Are not already hundreds of poor seamstresses in Poznan forced by need into commercial fornication? And who is to blame? Not the Socialists, but the gentlemen factory owners and clothing manufacturers, who do not even pay the poor girls enough to live off for sitting all day over the needle. Yes, the Socialists want to abolish exactly this exploitation and secure an ample livelihood for every honest woman, so she need not become a prostitute!

Finally, the Socialists allegedly want to abolish religion! Whoever believes this sassy fairy-tale must be really stupid, because Bismarck and those who declared war on the Catholics with him are the ones who are abolishing religion. The Socialists, however, were the mortal enemies of Bismarck and his cronies, for precisely this reason and for other crimes, and declared always and everywhere: Each hold on to the belief and convictions he considers right, no one is entitled to rape the human conscience! The best evidence, however, for the Socialists’ defense of freedom of religion and conviction is that the Social Democrats in parliament vote for the return of the Jesuit priests to Germany every time.

Likewise, Social Democracy is the first and so far only party to take the side of our persecuted nationality. Immediately after the assault by Minister Studt, the Social Democrats were the first to call a large popular assembly in Lambertstaal (Poznan) on 15 August 1900, to protest against this method of Germanization. The Polish bourgeoisie, embarrassed by this power of the Socialists, only under great effort managed to call an assembly on 8 September.

On its convention in Mainz [2] in September 1900, the Social Democrats dealt with the Polish question right on the first day, expressed their utmost indignation about the government’s actions and unanimously accepted the following proposal by deputies from Poznan:

The party convention calls the parliamentary group to address in the Reichstag the newest measures against the use of the Polish language in the schools of the Poznan province by the Prussian government and to emphatically combat the treatment of Poles as second-class citizens. [3]

Of all political parties, Social Democracy was the first and so far only to denounce in parliament the system of government Hakatism and to demand punishment for the originators of this system.

This party therefore is the only in German society we rely on and on whose help and friendship we can count. And that is no small help, because the Social Democrats already have 56 members in parliament and are the strongest party in the state. At the recent elections they won 2¼ million votes. [4] This party has been growing for a year like an avalanche, all the exploited, oppressed and disadvantaged people flock to its banner, while the government, the nobility and the capitalists look with horror at the growing power of the working people. This party is also where the Polish workers must seek refuge, only here can they expect fraternal support and protection against the violence of the German government.

hallo

When the Social Democrats where the first to support religious education in Polish in Poznan, which Mr. Studt had abolished, and called a large popular assembly, where they called all working people to defend their rights, what did the other parties of our society do? The “cream of the nation,” the aristocrats, the landowners, did not even speak. They, who always and everywhere are called the leaders, the head of the nation, who allegedly manage national interests, who always and everywhere blare their patriotism – where were they, when the people, its mother tongue, needed defending? They are not here! When it comes to grabbing mandates for the national or state parliaments, those like Kwilecki, Chlapowski, Czartoryski, Radziwill, Koscielski, stand in line and hold “civil” or “patriotic” speeches. Representative duties in the capital, in Berlin – they can handle that! But where is their whole stock of “civic consciousness” and “patriotism,” when these gentlemen, elected by the votes of the people, take place in the deputy seats in parliament? What good have these deputies done for the Polish people? Nothing at all! Our Polish deputies sit like mummies in national and state parliaments; they have achieved neither power, nor influence, nor respect. When all year the deputies of various parties fight stubbornly about the vital questions of the people, about safety laws for factory workers and tradesmen, about civil rights for farm servants, about tariffs on wheat and meat, then nothing can be heard or seen of our Polish deputies. When the people need protection against inflation, taxes, governmental oppression, Czarlinski, Radziwill and Kwilecki become tongue-tied. Once a year, they tweet a few words against Germanization, but anemically, without spice, so that the ministers do not even turn around to look at them. The Social Democrats defend the Polish identity much more vigorously, although so far there is not a single Pole among them. Their influence made it possible that someone who declares in court, that he does not speak the German language sufficiently, must receive an official interpreter. Every year they reproach the government, because the children in Upper Silesia have no schools!

But that’s not all. The hypocritical patriotism of our emblazoned parliamentary deputies surfaces fully during the vote for the expansion of the infantry and the navy. [1] In 1893, our Polish deputies voted for the expansion of the German infantry, for strengthening the armed forces of the same government, which is tormenting Poland, for tightening the noose around the neck of the Polish people! Considering this, must the government not laugh at the patriotic whimpers of the Polish deputies? And does this not show clearly that the Polish people have been sending their enemies, not their defenders as deputies into parliament? Even during the doubling of the German fleet this year, whose sole purpose was to subdue and oppress the Chinese [2], like they are oppressing us today. Even here, barely half of our deputies cared to vote against the government bill. The second half of these “Poles” disappeared from parliament, as befits brave men, and hid in a mouse hole, so, God forbid, they would not have to vote against the government!

Who could have expected anything else from them? Our Polish deputies are a bunch of tycoons, nobles, for whom the people already sang a hundred years ago: “Honor to you, Princes and Prelates, for our slavery and chains, honor to you, Dukes, Princes, you dog’s cunts, for our land stained with brothers’ blood.” Back then, the fatherland to them was just personal profit, and the people were just the foot stool for reaching higher positions; today it’s still the same. Almost all of them are owners of large estates and therefore live off the efforts of the Polish farm workers, just like the German agrarians. Almost all of them keep and feed their “brothers, the little peasants” like German tycoons – worse than pigs. Their main concern is also to sell expensively the grain, the livestock and liquor they distill, so they want high tariffs, even though their own people will suffer under inflation and alcoholism. Basically, they belong to exactly the same kind of people as the German nobility and the German capitalists; they are equal. Although the Germans favor the Hakatists and the Poles allegedly defend their identity, the band of greed is stronger than national hate. Like the Germans, the main concern the Polish agrarians and industrialists have for the “fatherland” is how to best exploit the people working for them. Birds of a feather flock together – so our deputies sent to parliament to defend the Polish people band with our worst enemies – the government and the German ruling classes. Is it any wonder that Hakatism becomes stronger, and stronger and that the Polish people suffer one defeat after the other?

The so-called People’s Party, i.e., our bourgeoisie, has done little more to protect the Polish people. This party has been active in the Poznan province for many years; it controls several newspapers, it can call public assemblies, because the venue owners do not reject them, like they reject the Socialists. And what are the results? The same aristocrats sit in parliament and the “people’s” movement does not even care that Hakatism is making greater and greater progress, while the Polish people live in the same poverty and ignorance as in earlier times.

The “People’s Party” might have good intentions, but what incompetence, what confusion, what political backwardness! The best image of this party was given by its behavior after Studt’s last attack. In its awkwardness, it stalled the beginning of any protest movement until the Social Democrats did it first and called a popular assembly in Poznan. Shamed by this example, they finally managed to call an assembly, but what did they decide? Rather than denounce the Polish deputies for their awkward behavior in parliament, instead of denouncing the Catholic party for its hypocrisy in defending Polish identity, instead of unveiling the true character of the government and its allies and calling the people to a relentless fight against them, the assembly sent a whiny plea to the Archbishop to protect “our children” and religious education in schools! Holding on with both hands to the priestly cassock – that is the whole wisdom of the “People’s Party.” Doing everything with and through the priests, that is an old policy, which the aristocracy already followed in the former Polish Republic, until this policy led to disaster.

What best proves the awkwardness and backwardness of the “People’s Party” is that it pretends to fight the aristocracy and awaken the people to develop their own political life, while it holds on to clerical politics, point for point, just like the nobility.

And not without reason. This party calls itself the “People’s Party” but it actually cares little about the welfare of the actual people, the working people – the Polish tradesmen, workers, farm hands.This party does not wish to open the people’s eyes and point to its enemies: Capitalist exploitation, the power of the aristocracy, the partiality of the government. When in Poznan Polish workers and tradesmen began some years ago to organize in professional associations, to fight against Capital, for better wages, for a better existence for their women and children, the “People’s” Party looked very sour and its newspapers tried to dissuade them from this project. About the German oppressors, these “People’s Partisans” like to invent as much as possible, but to hear some bitter truths about their own Polish oppressors and exploiters is not according to their taste. They are afraid that the people might smarten up and therefore want to keep them on a leash with the help of the priests. But in this way, the entire defense of Polish identity simply becomes the wiggling of a toe in a boot, because if the fight against Hakatism should end with the distribution of little calendars an with deputations to the Archbishop, an evil fate awaits our nation. After all, the clergy, just like our bourgeoisie, is not interested in defending the Polish people against Germanization, but rather in protecting the Polish industrialist, master tradesman and landowner against the justified demands of the disinherited working people, not so much in the holding back the Hakatist ignorance, but rather in holding back the light of Socialism. It is interesting and telling that the Archbishop, in his long answer to said deputation and the “humble plea” of the bourgeois assembly of 8 September, spoke much about religious observance, but lost no word about defending the Polish language, as if the whole matter had nothing to do with the Polish language. He exhorted the deputation to “resist the temptation”: “With the words of the Redeemer, I address you, be vigilant and pray so you may not be tempted, because outbursts and pain will serve the enemy of our souls, who offers alluring phrases to tempt you into overthrowing the divine and social order.” (Goniec Wielkopolski, No. 207)

This is their first demand faced with the threatening avalanche of Hakatism – a great warning and the fear of Social Democracy, i.e., of the only party which honestly defends Polish identity and is an irreconcilable enemy of the government and the Hakatists! This shows what the “patriotism” of the “People’s Party” is worth. We now see that can expect no effective protection against Germanization from the Polish aristocracy and their parliamentary deputies, or from the bourgeois party, the “People’s Party”, or from the priests. Our bourgeoisie endeavors, just like the nobility, to convince the working people that the oppression of Polish identity is our only evil, that the Germanizers are our only enemies, and that the struggle against Hakatism is our only political task. Meanwhile, the Polish tradesman, worker, farm hand suffers under thousands of other disadvantages, thousands of other sorrows plague him!

Capitalism exploits the tradesmen and workers, the farm hand is sucked dry by the nobility and the land owners, the entire working population is ruined by the government through high food tariffs and inflation caused by these tariffs; this same government impoverishes us through taxes, oppresses us through the military draft and commits injustice against us by not spending the people’s money for schools or for the welfare of the people, but for cannons and war ships. This is our greatest sorrow, these are our enemies: Exploitation by capitalists and aristocrats, a government serving only the capitalists and aristocrats and ordering the people to “pay taxes, serve your military service and shut up”!

And in this exploitation and in these politics, as mentioned, the Polish bourgeoisie and landowners have the same share as the German ones. Does the Polish industrialist or landowner pay the Polish worker one bit better than a German one? Does not the Polish textile manufacturer ruin the Polish tradesman or the Polish seamstress just like the German one? They equal each other like two drops of water, whether they end in “-berg” or “-ski” – there is not the slightest difference in their relationship to the Polish working class.

Therefore our bourgeoisie and our nobility compete to convince us that nothing oppresses us but Germanization, that we have no enemies but the Hakatists. This is nothing but a maneuver, a policy to throw sand into the eyes of the working people, to divert its attention solely to the German enemies and to distract it from the enemies in its own house. These “leaders” of the people want the people to only think of their language and their Catholic religion, but not about their empty stomachs; to only fight the Hakatists, not against the exploitation by its own parasites, against oppression in the shape of politics, tariffs and the military.

Therefore we must consider the “patriotism” of the higher Polish classes a mean swindle against the people! Not behind them, not with these landowners and bourgeois should we go, but against them; not seek to save our nationality in community with them, but fight to defend our welfare and our mother tongue against them! The Polish people can count only on themselves and on the only class whose misfortunes equal theirs: the German working people. May the Polish tradesman, worker, miner rise to fight, may he unite his efforts with the aspirations of his suffering German comrades, and the German government and the Hakatists will need to reckon with this force. Under the banner of Social Democracy, this sole refuge for freedom and justice, is where the Polish working people must flock. Here they find protection of their welfare, their family lives, their civil rights and mother tongue.

The agrarian, the industrialist, the capitalist, whether German or Polish, is our enemy, but the German worker is our ally and suffers just as much under capitalist exploitation and oppression by the ruling classes as we. Following the example of the working people in Germany, our Polish people must also take up the fight for its material and spiritual existence and must organize for this purpose, must join labor unions, to resist against the Capitalists together, must read workers’ papers and leaflets, to become educated and understand its needs and objectives. But above all, our working people must vote only for Social Democratic workers’ candidates, so that from Poznan, West Prussia, Masuria and Upper Silesia no more enemies of the people, no emblazoned parasites or bourgeois idiots take their seats in parliament. An alliance with the German working people against exploitation by the German and Polish ruling classes and against governmental oppression – this is what we want!

hallo

At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal – the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.

It is in Eduard Bernstein’s theory, presented in his articles on Problems of Socialism, Neue Zeit of 1897–98, and in his book Die Voraussetzungen des Socialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie[1] that we find, for the first time, the opposition of the two factors of the labour movement. His theory tends to counsel us to renounce the social transformation, the final goal of Social-Democracy and, inversely, to make of social reforms, the means of the class struggle, its aim. Bernstein himself has very clearly and characteristically formulated this viewpoint when he wrote: “The Final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything.”

But since the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the Social-Democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labour movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order – the question: “Reform or Revolution?” as it is posed by Bernstein, equals for the Social-Democracy the question: “To be or not to be?” In the controversy with Bernstein and his followers, everybody in the Party ought to understand clearly it is not a question of this or that method of struggle, or the use of this or that set of tactics, but of the very existence of the Social-Democratic movement.

Upon a casual consideration of Bernstein’s theory, this may appear like an exaggeration. Does he not continually mention the Social-Democracy and its aims? Does he not repeat again and again, in very explicit language, that he too strives toward the final goal of socialism, but in another way? Does he not stress particularly that he fully approves of the present practice of the Social-Democracy?

That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.

To expect an opposition against scientific socialism at its very beginning, to express itself clearly, fully and to the last consequence on the subject of its real content: to expect it to deny openly and bluntly the theoretic basis of the Social-Democracy – would amount to underrating the power of scientific socialism. Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine. On this account, we must, unconcerned by its outer forms, pick out the sheathed kernel of Bernstein’s theory. This is a matter of urgent necessity for the broad layers of the industrial proletariat in our Party.

No coarser insult, no baser aspersion, can be thrown against the workers than the remarks: “Theocratic controversies are only for academicians.” Some time ago Lassalle said: “Only when science and the workers, these opposite poles of society, become one, will they crush in their arms of steel all obstacles to culture.” The entire strength of the modern labour movement rests on theoretic knowledge.

But doubly important is this knowledge for the workers in the present case, because it is precisely they and their influence in the movement that are in the balance here. It is their skin that is being brought to market. The opportunist theory in the Party, the theory formulated by Bernstein, is nothing else than an unconscious attempt to assure predominance to the petty-bourgeois elements that have entered our Party, to change the policy and aims of our Party in their direction. The question of reform or revolution, of the final goal and the movement, is basically, in another form, but the question of the petty-bourgeois or proletarian character of the labour movement.

It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of “academicians” in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught. The movement will then find itself on sure and firm ground. “Quantity will do it”

hallo

If it is true that theories are only the images of the phenomena of the exterior world in the human consciousness, it must be added, concerning Eduard Bernstein’s system, that theories are sometimes inverted images. Think of a theory of instituting socialism by means of social reforms in the face of the complete stagnation of the reform movement in Germany. Think of a theory of trade union control. Consider the theory of winning a majority in Parliament, after the revision of the constitution of Saxony and in view of the most recent attempts against universal suffrage. However, the pivotal point of Bernstein’s system is not located in his conception of the practical tasks of the Social-Democracy. It is found in his stand on the course of the objective development of capitalist society, which, in turn is closely bound to his conception of the practical tasks of the Social-Democracy.

According to Bernstein, a general decline of capitalism seems to be increasingly improbable because, on the one hand, capitalism shows a greater capacity of adaptation, and, on the other hand, capitalist production becomes more and more varied.

The capacity of capitalism to adapt itself, says Bernstein, is manifested first in the disappearance of general crises, resulting from the development of the credit system, employers’ organisations, wider means of communication and informational services. It shows itself secondly, in the tenacity of the middle classes, which hails from the growing differentiation of the branches of production and the elevation of vast layers of the proletariat to the level of the middle class. It is furthermore proved, argues Bernstein, by the amelioration of the economic and political situation of the proletariat as a result of its trade union activity.

From this theoretic stand is derived the following general conclusion about the practical work of the Social-Democracy. The latter must not direct its daily activity toward the conquest of political power, but toward the betterment of the condition of the working class, within the existing order. It must not expect to institute socialism as a result of a political and social crisis, but should build socialism by means of the progressive extension of social control and the gradual application of the principle of co-operation.

Bernstein himself sees nothing new in his theories. On the contrary, he believes them to be in agreement with certain declarations of Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, it seems to us that it is difficult to deny that they are in formal contradiction with the conceptions of scientific socialism.

If Bernstein’s revisionism merely consisted in affirming that the march of capitalist development is slower than was thought before, he would merely be presenting an argument for adjourning the conquest of power by the proletariat, on which everybody agreed up to now. Its only consequence would be a slowing up of the pace of the struggle.

But that is not the case. What Bernstein questions is not the rapidity of the development of capitalist society, but the march of the development itself and, consequently, the very possibility of a change to socialism.

Socialist theory up to now declared that the point of departure for a transformation to socialism would be a general and catastrophic crisis. We must distinguish in this outlook two things: the fundamental idea and its exterior form.

The fundamental idea consists of the affirmation that capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible. There were good reasons for conceiving that juncture in the form of a catastrophic general commercial crisis. But that is of secondary importance when the fundamental idea is considered.

The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order. And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.

Bernstein pulls away from the first of the three fundamental supports of scientific socialism. He says that capitalist development does not lead to a general economic collapse.

He does not merely reject a certain form of the collapse. He rejects the very possibility of collapse. He says textually: “One could claim that by collapse of the present society is meant something else than a general commercial crisis, worse than all others, that is a complete collapse of the capitalist system brought about as a result of its own contradictions.” And to this he replies: “With the growing development of society a complete and almost general collapse of the present system of production becomes more and more improbable, because capitalist development increases on the one hand the capacity of adaptation and, on the other – that is at the same time, the differentiation of industry.” (Neue Zeit, 1897-98, vol.18, pg.555)

But then the question arises: Why and how, in that case, can we attain the final goal? According to scientific socialism, the historic necessity of the socialist revolution manifests itself above all in the growing anarchy of capitalism, which drives the system into an impasse. But if one admits with Bernstein that capitalist development does not move in the direction of its own ruin, then socialism ceases to be objectively necessary. There remain the other two mainstays of the scientific explanation of socialism, which are also said to be consequences of capitalism itself: the socialisation of the process of production and the growing consciousness of the proletariat. It is these two matters that Bernstein has in mind when he says: “The suppression of the theory of collapse does not in any way deprive socialist doctrine of the power of persuasion. For, examined closely, what are all factors enumerated by us that make for the suppression or the modification of the former crises? Nothing else, in fact, than the conditions, or even in party the germs, of the socialisation of production and exchange.” (Ibid., pg.554)

Very little reflection is needed to understand that here too we face a false conclusion. Where lies the importance of all the phenomena that are said by Bernstein to be the means of capitalist adaptation – cartels, the credit system, the development of means of communication, the amelioration of the situation of the working class, etc.? Obviously, in that they suppress or, at least, attenuate the internal contradictions of capitalist economy, and stop the development or the aggravation of these contradictions. Thus the suppression of crises can only mean the suppression of the antagonism between production and exchange on the capitalist base. The amelioration of the situation of the working class, or the penetration of certain fractions of the class into middle layers, can only mean the attenuation of the antagonism between Capital and Labour. But if the mention factors suppress the capitalist contradictions and consequently save the system from ruin, if they enable capitalism to maintain itself – and that is why Bernstein calls them “means of adaptation” – how can cartels, the credit system, trade unions, etc., be at the same time “the conditions and even, in part, the germs” of socialism? Obviously only in the sense that they express most clearly the social character of production.

But by presenting it in its capitalist form, the same factors render superfluous, inversely, in the same measure, the transformation of this socialised production into socialist production. That is why they can be the germs or conditions of a socialist order only in a theoretic sense and not in an historic sense. They are phenomena which, in the light of our conception of socialism, we know to be related to socialism but which, in fact, not only do not lead to a socialist revolution but render it, on the contrary, superfluous.

There remains one force making for socialism – the class consciousness of the proletariat. But it, too, is in the given case no the simple intellectual reflection of the growing contradictions of capitalism and its approaching decline. It is now no more than an ideal whose force of persuasion rests only on the perfection attributed to it.

We have here, in brief, the explanation of the socialist programme by means of “pure reason.” We have here, to use simpler language, an idealist explanation of socialism. The objective necessity of socialism, the explanation of socialism as the result of the material development of society, falls to the ground.

Revisionist theory thus places itself in a dilemma. Either the socialist transformation is, as was admitted up to now, the consequence of the internal contradictions of capitalism, and with the growth of capitalism will develop its inner contradictions, resulting inevitably, at some point, in its collapse, (in that case the “means of adaptation” are ineffective and the theory of collapse is correct); or the “means of adaptation” will really stop the collapse of the capitalist system and thereby enable capitalism to maintain itself by suppressing its own contradictions. In that case socialism ceases to be an historic necessity. It then becomes anything you want to call it, but it is no longer the result of the material development of society.

The dilemma leads to another. Either revisionism is correct in its position on the course of capitalist development, and therefore the socialist transformation of society is only a utopia, or socialism is not a utopia, and the theory of “means of adaptation” is false. There is the question in a nutshell.

eddie

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