The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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6 THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. CHAPTER II. THE forerunners—FICHTE AND MARLO. S ocialism, as a political party, is of very recent origin in Germany. It dates only from 1863, when Lassalle excited and organized the labourers’ agitation. The profound socialist movement which stirred the labouring classes in France, during the last years of Louis-Philippe’s reign, and particularly after 1848, had raised but a feeble echo beyond the Rhine. No German state, except Baden, was at all prepared to com prehend it. The institutions of the old régime had in part disappeared, but its spirit and influence were still dominant. The artisans were maintained and kept in check by the trade guilds. The great factory system was still in its infancy, while the rural labourers were as much under the influence of the nobles as the serfs from whom they had sprung. The modern proletarian was almost unknown. The lower classes had no idea that one day they might obtain the suffrage and play a part in politics. Never imagining that their fate could be other than what it was, they resigned themselves to it as in the Middle Ages. The French working men were full of the memories of the French Revolution. Their fathers had been masters of the State, why should not they become so? They were the sovereign people—the only true and real sovereign—why live in misery? The life of the German working man was far harder, but was not that his allotted destiny ? He remembered neither the equality of condition, based on collective property, of primitive Germany, nor the peasant revolt of the sixteenth century, so soon drowned in blood. He still felt the leaden

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