In particular, the election results of Social Democracy prove how destructive an effect the doctrine of class hatred is beginning to have. Good-natured scholars laud it as a praiseworthy sign of the German workers’ pride that in our country “workers” have been elected to the Reichstag several times already, while in France such success has only occurred twice, in Britain only once before. They fail to notice that with such praise they are heading exactly towards the enlightened views of the French revolutionary minister Carnot. The latter told French voters in spring of 1848 that the old opinion about property and education strongly befitting members of parliament was reactionary superstition. This reactionary superstition, however, is an inalienable basic idea of the constitutional state. The normal situation always persists, namely that the elected always rank above their average voters. If socialist workers cast their votes today, as a matter of principle, for semi-educated men who are incapable of coping with the obligations of a member of parliament and are incapable of effectively representing the views of their constituency in parliament, then such behavior is by no means a sign of proud class conviction; instead, it is merely an effect of dogged class hatred, which cannot comprehend that a non-worker may also look after the interests of workers. And in the end, this mode of operation cannot be sustained with consequence anyway. A working-class party also requires educated leaders; almost none of history’s dangerous demagogues belonged to the “people” whom they were flattering, and the heads of German Social Democracy are “bourgeois” themselves. –
Enough said, Social Democracy is a party of moral dissipation, political licentiousness, and social strife. [ . . . ]
So now I am asking: Is this a party we can negotiate with? By way of its blunt criticism, it has drawn our attention to many a defect in our social life; and through its vile sensuality it has shown us where the eudaemonism that ruled economics in the past will lead eventually. Except for these two inadvertent contributions, Social Democracy deserves no credit. It aims at the rule of the fist; we favor the rule of education. We are further removed from it in every respect than from the Catholics’ ultramontanism. Just as we are telling the latter: first, you had better recognize the sovereignty of the state, and then we can reach an understanding about individual issues in dispute, we must also call out – and still more decisively – to the Social Democrats: first, you had better submit to the traditional social order. This demand, of course, stipulates: first, become the opposite of what you are today. Conditional recognition does not get you anywhere in the face of fanaticism, it merely delivers clean grist to its dirty mill. [ . . . ]
We must not be seen as insensitive to the sufferings of the people just because we refuse to exchange tender romantic glances with the boastful leaders of a crude mob movement. It also seems unnecessary, when discussing social issues, to talk constantly as if we were in a state of fever, as if the emancipation of the fourth estate were the “question” of the century. This emancipation does not lie ahead of us – it has already happened and simply needs securing. The German state will best resolve its social responsibility if it proceeds as calmly and modestly as it did years ago with respect to the reform laws of Stein and Hardenberg, the establishment of the Customs Union, and all the liberating deeds of Prussian history. [ . . . ]
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