Erwin Belger (former General Secretary of the Imperial Alliance Against Social-Democracy), Social-Democracy after the War (60 pfennigs), Berlin, 1915 (Berlin, S.W. 11, Concordia Publishers). (45 pp.) 3—Praise of “their [Social-Democrats’] irreproachable, honourable behaviour”....
6—“Rosa Luxemburg”—malicious attacks against her on several occasions; against the “bandit party press” (6), etc.
9—The Reichstag sessions of August 4 and 5 ... “gave us great joy” ... “the bright spot of the picture was the Social-Democratic ‘Yes!’” (10)....
...“Consequently, it [Social-Democracy] can with a clear conscience confront the international court of a world party congress” (13)....
...Our Alliance is now dying (16)....
...“Could one wish for a better German than the Mannheim hero Dr. Frank, this favourite of German SocialDemocracy?” (21)....
(On August 4) “the world experienced a historic turningpoint that is without equal” (21)....
...“It is hardly conceivable that anyone will suddenly be reconverted from a German patriot into an inveterate internationalist. This war must embed the concepts ‘national’ and ‘German’ so deeply in every heart that no one will be able to free himself from them any more” (26)....
...“Anyone who in the past, say, fifteen years ago, listened to Social-Democratic speakers at public meetings, must often have been astonished that their ugly, hateful, gross abuse could be taken at all seriously by thinking people and so furiously applauded. But anyone who frequently attended Social-Democratic meetings in the last ten years could note with growing admiration how the level both of the speakers and their audience has risen” (32)....
Class hatred—there is the evil (33 et seq.).
...“What has become of class distinctions? There are no longer any parties, and still less are there any classes. The officer” ... the mechanic, etc. (36)....
The Kaiser’s son and the leader of the Bavarian Social-Democratic youth associations, Michael Schwarz, have both been awarded the Iron Cross (36).... “Will this man, whom love of the fatherland called to the field of battle ... ever again tolerate that his young adherents shall hate the sons of his comrades-in-arms of 1914? He will not, if he does not want to fly in the face of all that is good” (36)....
...“Further consequence of altered tactics”.... “Opposition at all costs” “was a dangerous weapon”, etc.
“Can these rigid principles be maintained? To be honest towards oneself and others, the answer must be: No!” (38)....
“Social-Democracy as a party” must remain (41) without “utopias” (43), without ideas about “violence”, “nonsense” (41) ... “a purely [the author’s italics] labour party” ... a “national” party.
“After the war there will be still less basis for us Germans to spread international, utopian ideas” (44)....
...“As already indicated above, the German workers, with the experience they have gained, will on cool reflection finally reject the international trend in Social-Democracy”... (44).
Is it not a fact that the Executive Committee—of the Social-Democratic Party—countered the lies of the French, of the International Socialist Bureau Executive Committee (45), etc.?
...“When they reach the point—and it will be reached eventually—of reshaping the entire obsolete Erfurt Programme, let them draw the necessary conclusions, and above all delete the international principles”... (45).
The party must “realise that it belongs to the nation” (45)....
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Then the workers will have not an international party, not one “working for revolution” ... “but a German work- ers’ party, which recognises the strength of the national idea, is prepared for a business-like peaceful agreement and vigorously defends the interests of its adherents !” (45) (author’s heavy type). |
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((Last words of the pamphlet.))
End
[1] See present edition, Vol. 21, p. 243.—Ed.
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