Thus, in Social Democracy, I can only discern the youthful fever of the great social movement into which we are entering. Our Social Democracy is somewhat different but hardly worse than English Chartism in its day; and just like it [Chartism], it will hopefully represent only a temporary phase of social development that soon makes room for more mature, clearer formations and feasible plans. Certainly, serious charges can be leveled against Social Democracy, especially that a portion of the leadership always appeals only to the negative passions: to envy, hatred, wild covetousness; and that these very leaders pursue a system of persecution against individual people, when they really ought to attack institutions. However, in addition to those who are intemperate and dishonest, Social Democracy also has leaders who are highly respectable in their persons. [ . . . ]
In our country, public opinion has done very little justice to the workers’ question. Primarily influenced by the side inconvenienced by the social movement in the calm and cozy course of business, public opinion is prejudiced against the working class; the people disseminating this sentiment – quite understandable in terms of psychology – behave in much the same way towards the workers’ movement as bureaucracy did towards liberal constitutional demands before 1848. Anyone causing discomfort to another is easily regarded as a bad fellow. There are shady elements in any crowd. People are never at a loss for examples, so soon enough there is much to say about the coarseness of the working class and the excellence of its opponents.
Today, the entire working class certainly suffers from having entered into new economic conditions, [ones] for which the moral concepts and bonds, and the customs of the old times no longer fit, and in whose place corresponding new ones have yet to develop. The workers do not quite know what they can and ought to demand, to what use they should put their higher wages, what liberties they may take in their new situation. They find themselves on somewhat unstable ground – but in this respect they very much resemble the upper classes. The moral spectacle presented to us by so many of the “founders” turned rich overnight seems quite comparable to that of the many workers who merely take their increased wages to the next pub. [ . . . ]
The working class today, as in all other periods, is exactly what it has been made to be by its schools and homes, its workshops and work, its family life and environment, [by] the example of the upper classes, and [by] the ideas of the time, today’s ideals and vices.
Is the working class alone, is the individual worker really to blame for the fact that he often lives in a hovel that reduces him to the level of an animal or criminal? Is the individual worker to blame when children’s and women’s work increasingly erodes family life in these circles? Is he to blame when the divided, mechanical nature of his labor means that he is taught less than the apprentice or journeyman in the workshop of old, and when the moral influences of the large factory are more unfavorable than those of the workshop? Is he to blame for the fact that he will never become independent, that he usually lacks the slightest hope for the future? And does not the most basic psychology teach us that the lack of any prospect makes people feeble and sullen or inclined towards revolution? Is the working class to blame for having schooling and technical training that is insufficient and that allows it to succumb so frequently in the competitive struggle?
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