BERNSTEIN TO RATHENAU.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18323, 13 August 1921, Page 2

BERNSTEIN TO RATHENAU.

A SOCIALISTIC PILGRIMAGE. By Constant Reader. From Bernstein to Ratiienau may bo taken us indicative or ttio cnange ot tlie U'cuu in German socialistic tliougno during (he past 4x) to 50 years. According to iUr jjortrand Russell, Bernstein represents ‘tlie decay 01 Marxian orthodoxy irom within” as Syndicalism typmes the attach on Marxiauiam Irom without. It was Bernstein wno inaugurated the ''Revisionist'’ movement whicn combated the revolutionary ideas ot Karl Marx and which blunted the edge ot ''international'’ socialism by an insistence on that degree of nationalism so strongly characteristic of British socialism. Bernstein's ideas and opinions assume new importance in the light ot the announcement that the British Labour Party intends holding an international comercnce in London in October on a platform broad enough to include the Moscow Internationale and the brotherhoods of the affiliated American Federation of Labour.

Like his groat antagonist Marx, Bernstein was exiled in England; and it would bo difficult, if not impossible, to bridge the gulf between Bernstein and Rathenau except by inference to recent developments in British socialism. Rathenau attacks socialism and delends capitalism, within certain well-defined restrictions, yet he preaches a gospel curiously compounded of tlie teachings of Ruskin and William Morris, the economics of Bertrand Russell and the ethics of the New Testament. At least it is possible, with the aid of half a dozen recently published volumes to make an interesting socialistic pilgrimage commencing with “My Years of Exile,” by Eduard Bernstein; following with “Tlie Social and Industrial Problem” of Alfred Hook; taking next the "Guilds, Trade, and Agriculture” of Arthur J. Pcnty, and “The New Labour Outlook” of Robert Williams; leading up to “Parliament and Democracy” of J. Ramsay Macdonald, and culminating “In Days to Come” of Walter Rathenau, Minister of Reconstruction in Germany, and author of another notable book, “Tho New Society.”

Bernstein’s book is of extreme interest to all students of socialism. He begins with an account of the journey to Switzerland which, commenced on "October 12, 1878, was destined to exile him' from Germany, his native country, and from Berlin, the city of his birth, for more than 20 years. In consequence of the socialistic activities in which ho actively engaged in Switzerland and of which a detailed account ia given in the early chapters of the book, Bernstein was banished and forced to settle in London in the spring of 1888. Some eight years earlier, in company with his friend, August Bcbel, he had paid his first visit to London, and while there had met Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels. Bernstein gives a detailed account of the tragedy connected with Marx’s daughter Eleanor, in consequence of her “free marriage” with her evil destiny, Dr Edward B. Aveling, the translator into English of “Das Kapital.” Bernstein writes: Whoever has read or seen Bernard Shaw’s “The Doctor’s Dilemma”—which we Germans know under the titlo of “The Physician at the Cross Roads’’— will have made the acquaintance of a somewhat retouched Aveling in the painter. Dubedat. Shaw, who knew both the Avelings very well, gave Dubedat nearly all the characteristics of Edward Aveling; his passion for having everything of the best; the assured and shameless manner in which he borrowed, in order to pay for his pleasures, the scanty cash of even the poorest of his acquaintances ; his gift of fascinating the ingenuous, and, in particular, women, by his lyrical and aesthetic affectations and flirtations, in order to exploit them in the same unceremonious fashion ns that in which a spoilt child makes a convenience of its nurse: these are the -"aracteristic features of the man for whom Eleanor Marx sacrificed herselt as completely in real life as Mrs Dubedat sacrificed herself for her husband in the play. And the deliberate blindness and deafness of Mrs Dubedat in respect of all that was said to the detriment of her husband is precisely the counterpart of the obstinacy with which Eleanor Aveling, despite all her painful experience of her chosen comrade, continued to believe in him until he involved nor in t,ie

inlaray which led to the catastrophe. For the reality was in this case tragic, where in Shaw’s play it is tragic-comic. Edward Aveling did indeed “die beautifully,” like Dubedat—a death which any one might envy him: while reading a book, in an easy chair, in the sunshine, he fell asleep for ever. But he left behind him, not a wife who had solfsacrificingly tended him for long years, who was “soon to marry again/’ but a newly-married wife, with whom ho had contracted a legal marriage behind Eleanor’s back, his first lawful wife haying died some little time before. This treatment of her drove Karl Marx’s daughter to suicide. Bernstein revisited London in 1884, the year alter Marx's death, and again in. 1837,' before finally taking up his residence in England in 1828. In November, 1887, he witnessed the demonstration of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square, which the police dispersed. “A few only,” writes Bernstein, “offered a stubborn defence. Among them was a thick-set, robust artisan of some 30 years of age, with black hair and bushy eyebrows, as well as a slender, well-dressed, dark-skinned man in whom no one would have suspected the revolutionist. Both defended themselvps like lions, until the police overpowered them and placed them under arrest. They were charged with opposing the authority of the State and condemned to six weeks’ imprisonment. The fashionably-dressed man was Cunningham-Graham, at that time Member of Parliament for the Camlaohie division of Glasgow; a member, too, of the upper ton thousand, who had been elected as a Radical, but had gone over to the Socialist Party, to which he still belongs to-day As a writer ho is greatly admired, his style being particularly individual. The artisan was the engineer and Socialist agitator, John Burns, a man of real oratorical powers, noted for his comprehensive grasp of administrative ptoblems. Eighteen years later he was Cabinet Minister in a Liberal Government. And the man who defended the two revolutionaries was a young barrister who had just entered parliamentary life, but for whom many persons, impressed by his varied talents, foretold a great political career. In this they wore not mistaken, for the barrister’s name was Herbert Henry Asquith.” Bernstein gives some interesting impressions of the people he met in London, mostly at the house of Friedrich Engels. These included Ernest Belfor Bax, George Bernard Shaw, Mr and Mrs Hubert Bland, H M Hvndman, William Morns John Burn? H "H. Champion, and Will Thorne. His chapters on “Th'e Socialist Intellectuals in ‘ England” and on “The Life of the People” make good reading, containing as they do, references to the Rev. Stewart Headlam and the Rev.. Pearcy Dearmer as representing the Christian Socialists. Mention is also made of Graham Wallas, whoso recent book, “Our Social Heritage, has attracted so much attention. The way in which husband and wife have worked together in the cause of Socialism is illustrated in the cases of Sydney and Beatrice Wcbb-Pottor and James Rnmsav and Margaret Macdonald. A good .sketch is also given of the career of James Keir llardie. The value of Bernstein s • book to the student of socialism is in the intimate glimpses it gives, through German eyes of the men and women who bore the brunt of the battle for Socialist ideas and principles in Great Britain during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It is interesting to follow Bernstein s “Mv Years of Exile” with a study of ‘ The Social and Industrial Problem, . by Alfred Hook The former work pictures the human side of Socialism, singling out for sympathetic treatment the people who have devoted their lives to the cause they have at heart. Mr Hook’s book consists of a series of lectures on economics delivered at Twickenham. England, durjng the winter of icqq.oO and is expressly designed for workers taW industrial and political field. The lectures are popular rather than academic, and they cover awidc field. Starting with

. n i "Uv Years of Exile: Reminiscences of , |,v Edward Bernstein. Translated by Bernard Mini!'. 1 tendon: I-conaril Parsons (lus "The Social anil Industrial Problem: A & OnlU” By Bober, w iVinins I/mdon: Leonard Parsons Ms W ncl). 4 ) "UnibU, Trade. and Agriculture. by \ rib nr .1. Polity. London: Gcorrjc Allen and Unwin fas not). ~ . T „ /-i <• I s Li linm-ont a,nd Democracy, r>y .1. Hamsay" Macdonald. London: Leonard Parsons Ms "Vl'-rn Pars to Come,” bv Walter Rallienau. Trari-lated from tbe demon by Eden and Cedar I’aul London; Goorgc Allen and Lomu (U!b Cd net.)

primitive man and primitive society, due allowance is made for the play of human nature in stating the economic problem. There follows a sketch of conditions in England from the Norman Conquest, special attention being devoted to the land question and to the pre-capi,talistic period In turn such matters are discussed ns Capitalistic production and the world market, money and wages, capital and the .State, banking, distribution, and profits and taxation. As a handbook for students of economics Mr Hook’s volume has much to recommend it. The author’s standpoint may be judged from a part of his concluding paragraph;— Throughout this discussion society is regarded as a form of human association which is subject to continuous development. Wc must regard social reform as a continuous approach to an ideal (more or less speedy according to the adaptability of the people), and not tljp attainment of a particular ideal. The latter is impossible, since certain of the factors in our problem are not susceptible of absolute human control. The specific forms of social and industrial change discussed in these pages must therefore not be judged as ..matters of immediate attainability. Given general goodwill they could be effected speedily : but that general goodwill is just one of the factors which lie outside the range of easy human control. It involves some present material sacrifice on the part of the more fortunate sections of the community; but it may be hoped that that material sacrifice would be more than made good in all that is reallv oontributab'e to human happiness if all sections of the community could approach these problems in a spirit of co-operation and a genuine desire to find a solution that would lift the whole life of this country to a higher and worthier

plane. One salient feature in Mr Hook’s treatment of his subject is his attitude towards the class war, that struggle between the wage-earner and the capitalist so strongly stressed by all orthodox Marxians. “It is tho common practice of orthodox circles,” writes Mr Hook, ‘‘to scout the suggestion that there is any such thing as a class war and to look upon it as the outcome of a diseased imagination. The fact, however, remains that a very large number of the workers who take an active interest in these questions regard the class war as an indisputable fact. There is an aspect of the relations between classes which presents itself to this section of the workers as one of mutual hostility, and which is described, more or less epigrammatioally, as war. The teacher who denied the existence of this class war would render his whole work futile. His hearers would not regard him as dealing with realities, and the whole of his teaching (whether good or bad in itself) would be suspect. It is better to'admit the class war, and to show its real nature by explaining the economic relations between the '’various classes of the State.”

An argument for this attitude may probably be based on the pages of “The New Labour Outlook,” by Robert Williams, which, written after a visit to Russia, is frankly revolutionary in its teaching. Mr Williams, like his father before him. London docker, and ho was nurtured in the works of Karl Marx and the publications of the Rational Press Association. Out of his own experiences of trades 'unionism and labour disputes he sketches the causes of the changed outlook in the Labour movement. He describee the “Older,” or Pre-world War Outlook,” which was content with evolution; and passes on to the social revolution precipitated by the war, which he designates “The Changing Outlook.” So far Mr Williams is largely historical, but in discussing the “Newer 'Outlook.” which 1 dawned at the armistice of November, 1918, he casts history to the winds and indulges in sinister prophecy: The Third or Communist International repudiates bourgeois democracy. It says plainly and unmistakeably that to resist the dictatorship of the workers is to accept the dictatorship of the exploiters; it neither shudders at nor shrinks from the implications of an armed uprising, with the possibility, nay certainty, of sanguinary casualties; its exponents, realising the havoc of war and the horrors of industrial peace, are prepared to take every risk, to make every sacrifice, to suffer any ordeal, in order to bring about proletarian emancipation. Better one death in the glorious cause of the social revolution than a hundred in a bondholders’ war.

“The Second International is Dead,” exclaims Mi Wilifems. , “Long Live the Third International.” He outlines the future, as he visions it, in these words: “Parliamentary democracy is a mytji exploded by the war and the developments arising from the war. The Soviet idea, or that of Workers’; Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Councils, is one which by factory and workshop represontation goes right down to the roots of the Capitalist System and destroys it at its very foundation. Before success is ultimately achieved mountains of work will have to be accomplished, but that will be done before and during the revolutionary crisis. Finally, the militant proletariat in this, as in every capitalist country, will work steadily for and dedicate and devote themselves unceasingly to the Social Revolution ; peacefully, it possible, hut—the Social Revolution.” , . . „ , “Guilds, Trade and Agriculture, by Arthur J. Penty, represents an attempt at a compromise between the conservatism of Capitalism on the one hand and the revolutionarv extreme of the Soviets on the other. Mr Penty believes that Europe is m chaos', and that in the guild system is to be found the ultimate solution of the deadlock now existing. He also believes that the Guild Socialists “must descend from the clouds and begin to construct their system hern and no"'.” for “if things are allowed to drift for another two or three years it will be too late.” Mr Penty deplores the recent, divisions among Guild Socialists, which he thinks evidences the perplexity that has overtaken the movement. He attemnts to remedy the defect by “stating guild theory and policy from the point of view of exchange.” His central idea is expressed in these words: — Instead of making the establishment of guilds the central issue, it treats guilds as a means to an end—the end being the maintenance of the Just Price—in the belief that the establishment of the Just Price is the solution of the problem of exchange in so far as this problem is a question of money and values. The restoration of the guilds therefore provides the key to the economic problem. The control of prices is a precedent condition of success in any effort to secure economic reform, inasmuch as until prices aro fixed it will be impossible to plan or arrange anything that may not be subsequently upset by the fluctuations of the market. It is a' necessary preliminary to any securing of the unearned increment for the community, since until prices are fixed it will always be possible for the rich to evade attempts to reduce their wealth by transferring any taxation imposed upon them on to the shoulders of other members of the community.

The complexity of the social situation is strangely illustrated in the fact that hardly has Mr Penty formulated his argument in favour of the guild system than Mr J. Ramsay Macdonald rushes into the breach. In “ Parliament and Democracy ” he argues that a purely industrial body like a Guilds Congress cannot settle the problems of production and that the demands of the State can only be adequately met in a representative Parliament. Mr Macdonald is one of the clearest thinkers among the British Labour lenders to-day, and the fact that he differentiates between Socialism and Communism and declares for a Socialism which has its roots in parliamentary representation and which is opposed to revoluntionnry Communism, should carry great weight. He insist throughout that the parliamentary structure is capable of such adaptability as wifi fit it to grapple with modern social conditions. In this connection his exact words may be quoted: During the past century great changes have taken place in our social structure, mho social England of 1852 is as different from that of to-day as that was from tlie social England of the Wars of the Roses. Now, Parliament as wo know it is the instrument of government which was adapted to such conditions of those of 1832 and an adherence to parliamentary methods and democracy necessitates, rather than presents, such an examination of representative institutions in relation to social structure and to social administration as will enable us to amend and reconstruct, to refit and re-adapt and to in-iiv Parliament again into organic touch with” national life. Nothing becomes a relic sooner than an institution when

it, is left alone. Our Socialistic pilgrimage has been long but noteworthy, asd it ends on a hopeful note. “ In Days to Come.” by Walter Rathenau. is a picture and a portent, 'flie Minister of Reconstruction in Germany lias a social gospel to preach, and if the sermon extends over 300 pages, its cist can be condensed into a few sentences. The sins of capitalism are many, but they are attributable not so mudb to the faulty

structure of the capitalistic system as to the spirit behind the system. So long as the spirit remains unaltered, any change in the system will be futile. A materialistic and mechanistic socialism or communism, whether brought about by revolution or by evolution, must in its ultimate be as harmful and as mischievous as a materialistic or mechanistic oaptolism. And the had spirit once cast out and replaced by the spirit of goodwill, it matters little what the system may be—the outcome must be beneficial to all classes. Like Mr Bertrand Rusgell. Herr Rathenau believes that man’s mission is to create rather than merely possess. ,With William Morris ho insists that man is destined to be a craftsman and not a pure profiteeer: ho combats socialism, but be presents a more arduous way:— Although the inadequacy of socialism is manifest, let not those rejoice who combat socialism from an easy-going toiKinees for that which exists, from a dread ot having to make sacrifices, from spiritual S *Tho sacrifices that will be demanded in days to come will be greater, the service will be more arduous, the material reward will be less considerable than m the socialist commonwealth; for j in days to come there will bo. required something more than the renunciation of material goods. We shall have to put away from ourselves our dearest vanities, weaknesses, vices, and passions; upon us will he imposed the duty of cherishing and performing deeds which to-day we esteem in theory while despising them” l practice; we shall have to learn by hard experience that our aim in life must not be happiness but fulfilment, that we have to love not for our own takes, but for, th Not k foa°r, not hope, the motive Not the seasoned striving for the attainment of a mrcbnnVnl fo.uinoise. not goodness not even justice. What imppls man forward upon that oath is faith, out ot love, arising put pf the utmost need and out of ' Uo C ‘‘ The Herr Rathenau first of all describes The Goal.” Contrasting the faisa goal m wnion " tuu oeiigiU in possession o-A,omes accentuated to a mad hunger lor dities ” with the true goal, when what we create is created from a prolound and uhoonscious impulse; ' v h ab , . 1 / VL „ npr! , v . which we yoaru for with divine energy, what we cherish, belongs to the unknown world of the future; what wo believe dwells in the realm of the infinite. Having glimpsed the goal towards which mankind fhould strive aif the goal of human freedom Herr Rathenau points out the way as first the way of economics; secondly the way of morals; and, thirdly, the way of to® will. Under the first head he defends capi_ tal as corfo'-ming a decisive function t \ ' t tl - B tream of labour to the place where the needTs most urgent. Interest « necessary in order that the proper use o capital may be secured Kali '^^cnpi ita in the world were nationalised to-day, He writes, “it 'would to-morrow be made over to innumerable borrowers, and would the day after to-morrow be distributed among innumerable owners. The necessity of interest derives from the necessity of « hol among rival projects. He insists that the nationalisation of the means of has no economic significance,! and that pro petty, consumption, demand, are not private matters Some of the abuses which call for rectification are .forcibly set down:Too long, in economic attairs, has individualist industry, gu.ded by the la tionalist notion of individual rights and liberties, been tardy and mutinous m yielding to the demands of the comm Economically regarded, the world and still more the nation, is a union of producers. Whoever squanders labour, labour-time, or the means of labour, is robbing the community. Consumption is no private matter, but a communal affair, it is an affair of State, of morality. ° f lf k froni the outlook of this order of importance w© contemplate the world s production of goods, we realise with a terrible sense of shock the contemporary economic life. , The J u P° r fluous. the null, the harmful, and the contemptible are heaped up m our shops. We find there the useless gauds of fashion destined .to glitter for an hour with a spurious light; intoxicants, stimulants. and anodynes galore: nauseating scents; worthless imitations of industrial and artistic models; articles made not for use but for show; trash of all kinds v. hich serves as the small change for those who are compelled by convention to give one " Presents. Season after season the‘show-cases are refilled with theseinto* futile of latest novelties. The manulac ture transport, and sale of such articles, require the labour of millions of hands, demand raw materials. '' oal ; ma f '' nP o S f *£ factories; occupy noariy a third of the. industry and commerce of the world. . . Wore but half of the squandered labour directed into suitable channels it could provide food, clothing., and shelter foi ev°rv impoverished wight among the dwellers in civilised lands Herr Rathenau endeavours to sll6eb , 1 1l ; tirn leulablo responsibility for these roc)nomio malprocticM. and he apportions a share in the blame to women. Lien a cursory examination of this book, which cursory impossible to compass compieh P t hi 3 article, convinces iTlue lt is difficult to. avoid the conclusion that if the author . in h.s capac tv as Minister of Reconstruction, succeeds “dotting the ear of the Gorman nation, and° in compelling them to respond, to his gospel Germany may yet lead the world saintly, economically., and industrially. In tins connection he writes: Enough now to say that by wisely economising the extravagances that disgrace our own epoch, the luturo can and will create moans to generalise a sm.iciency of well-being. Upon us -t devolves to recognise what is amiss and to wok for a remedy, inspired by the knowledge that the consumption of commodities n not a private matter,, and aware that tin* consumption is derived from the stores of forces unci materials which aro procnrable in r.triotlv limited quantities, and for ■which each one of us muss share respond bility.