Hans Delbrück, Government and the People’s Will, Berlin, 1914
Generally speaking, a most foul, reactionary opus, with tricky arguments against democracy. Everything is trotted out against democracy—sophistries, historical examples, etc.
There is some value in (1) his exposure of bourgeois (**) democracy (the reference to revealing English sources, for instance).
Literature: (**)
Wilhelm Hasbach, Modern Democracy (1912).
Adolf Tecklenburg, Development of the Franchise in France since 1789.
J. Unold, Politics in the Light of the Theory of Evolution (the work of a journalist, he says).
Lowell, The Constitution of England.
Belloc and Chesterton, The Party System.
(2) The Polish question. The author is an opponent of Prussia’s Polish policy as being ineffectual.
P. 1. What is a people? The German people?— we have “many millions—Poles, Danes, Frenchmen” (p. 1).
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“There are German-speaking people in Alsace- Lorraine who consistently reject political kinship with the German people” (p. 1). |
| Hegel on “the people |
A saying of Hegel’s: “The people is that part of the state which does not know what it wants” (p. 41).... |
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N.B. a reac- tionary on self- determi- nation of nations |
“But it is manifestly impossible for every single fraction of a people, cut out at ran- dom, to have the right to self-determination. If we accept it for the Alsace-Lorrainers, then why not for each of the three ethnic groups Swabians, Franks and Frenchmen? And why not, finally, for each individual community?” (p. 2). |
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On the Social-Democrats: Michels, he says, admits that the Social-Democrats are losing their revolutionary character (fear for their organisation). “Indeed, from another standpoint, too, it was long ago predicted that the growth of such a revolutionary party does not bring it nearer its goal of genuine revolution; on the contrary, it is internally separated from it” (p. 80). And pp. 82-83, against Mehring: organi- sation always requires leaders; the masses, even the most educated masses, need them. “Will these leaders use their power to carry out a revolution and bring about a general overthrow, at the risk of destroying not the existing state and society, but themselves, or will they prefer occasional compromises—that is the question” (83), which, he says, Mehring rejects out of hand. (Written 1914. Preface: November 11, 1913.) In reply to Delbrück, Mehring says he did not write this article, and puts forth the argument, a very feeble one, that the Social-Democrats more than anyone else have “measures” to prevent bureaucracy (Die Neue Zeit, 1913-14, 32, I, p. 971). |
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N.B.: the number of government officials in Germany = about 1,350,000 = about one-tenth of the number of electors: 13,300,000 in 1907, p. 182. |
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The Prussian policy of Germanising the Poles has up to now cost 1,000 million marks. Why “complete bankruptcy”? (161). |
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The Poles are embittered against the German schools the Polish children “know from their own experience all the bitterness of foreign rule, for there is no deeper insult to national consciousness” than that inflicted through language (162). |
Polish is being kept alive in the towns. Of the four estates (nobility, clergy, peasantry and bourgeoisie), only the lastnamed is irreconcilable. German colonisation embitters the Poles and unites them nationally. A trade boycott: “Poles, buy Polish!”
The Poles cannot be “conciliated” (p. 171), they should be divided and helped to form a Prusso-Polish party (172).
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“Of course, the reconciled Poles remain, essentially, ‘Prussians subject to notice’, as we have described them” (p. 174)—that is inevitable, but we must pursue such a policy that the “ideally possible notice (Kündigung) never becomes actual”. |
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“The reputation a people enjoys among other great civilised peoples is of vast importance for any foreign policy. The German people—and let there be no illusions on that score—is the most unloved of all, and it is by no means merely the envy harboured by other peoples, as we are so ready to put forward in excuse, that causes them to look at us with such a jaundiced eye. Our wrong nationality policy is to no small extent responsible for the hate we encounter everywhere” (175): the Poles and the Danes (N.B.) cry out about us to the whole world!! |
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