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Gustav Schmoller on the Social Question and the Prussian State (1874)

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If these simple truths were generally recognized by public opinion, social issues would be assessed completely differently, and we would be much closer to a relative solution of the question.

In that case, the attitude of leading parliamentary and government circles vis-à-vis the social question would also be different. And I would definitely deem that very desirable.

Certainly, in a parliamentary state with a free press and a liberal right of association and assembly, today’s monarchy cannot directly take leadership of the lower classes as it did in the previous century. Government has to assume a more neutral position; but then it really must hold itself neutral above the economic classes; it must not regard any demand raised by the working class – any working-class objective conforming to the bounds of current law, however disagreeable it is to the propertied classes – as being directed against the state, against public order, and thus follow it with a begrudging eye. Apparently, though, this is the case from time to time, and a number of individual government agencies indisputably act in this way. The government would relinquish all tradition of Prussian politics if it sees the social question only through the eyes of large-scale entrepreneurs; if, when taking surveys, it only questions the chambers of commerce that inevitably advocate one-sided egotistical interests; if, in the legislative process, it does not energetically resist the overwhelming influence that is being exerted today in all representative bodies and in the frequently corrupted press, by big private railways, large-scale banks and stockholding companies, great industries with their well-paid and well-trained agents. [ . . . ]

[ . . . ] [T]he dangers facing the social situation in the future can only be eradicated by one means: the monarchy and the civil service. These representatives of the idea of the state, these sole neutral elements in social class conflict must be reconciled with the notion of a liberal state and supplemented with the best elements of parliamentarism; they must firmly and resolutely take the initiative in the great campaign for social reform legislation, and they must persist unshakably in this goal for one or two generations. [ . . . ]



Source: Gustav Schmoller, "Die soziale Frage und der Preußische Staat" ["The Social Question and the Prussian State"], in Preußischer Jahrbücher [Prussian Yearbooks], vol. 33 (1874): pp. 323-42.

Original German text reprinted in Ernst Schraepler, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte der sozialen Frage in Deutschland. 1871 bis zur Gegenwart [Sources on the History of the Social Question in Germany. 1871 to the Present], 3rd rev. ed. Göttingen: Muster-Schmidt, 1996, pp. 66-70.

Translation: Erwin Fink

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