AND ON THE CONTINENT.

11

The teaching of reactionary Socialism is nothing different withregard to the consequences of the modern economical system forthe worker. Represented in England by the early novels of Disraeli and contemporary High Churchism (22), it has found its mostspirited adherents in Germany . In the numerous volumes of the“ Berlin Revue,” and in Glaser’s “ Annuals,” this tendency in theyears of the “ fifties ” and “ sixties ” has culminated in a social-political programme which H. Wagener , in 1855, collected in the“Outline for a Programme of the Right.” This party, as it onthe one hand glances backward to the Mercantile-State of Fred-erick the Great and Frederick William I., has on the other handbecome the basis of later State-Socialism.

Through all the volumes of the works mentioned the mainthought shows itself, that the modern economical system foundedon freedom and property, and especially centralised industryraised on this foundation, tramples down the worker irredeemably.Far from the fact that continuous economical development meansat the isame time social progress, the view is taken that deliverancedepends upon banishing “the principles of 1789” and in goingback to the old Guild trade-rights, coupled with the fixing of wagesby the State.

The most important of these writers, Lavergne-Peguilhen, attributes an implacable struggle between Capital andLabour to the present economical system. It burdenedthe worker more heavily than the feudalism of theMiddle Ages, and even than slavery (23). Similarly, Her-mann Wagener speaks of the economical system of to-day as a“ despairing and annihilating struggle which everywhere can onlylead to the complete social and political subjection of the lesspowerful—to modern slavery without masters” (24). Thebourgeoisie invited the worker, “ like a lame man, to a race,” andunder the scornfully invented pretext of freedom of trade, by theoverwhelming influence of their means shut him out from trade.Freedom of trade means for the worker nothing more than thefreedom to seek out for himself that trade wherein he wishes to

22. Compare my book ‘ 1 On Social Peace, ” German edition, vol. I., pp. 377-99.

23. Lavergne-Peguilhen: “ The Conservative Social Teaching,” secondnnmbpr : “ The Organic State Teaching,” Berlin. 1870 (Collected Essays fromthe “ Fifties” and “ Sixties,” p. 128). Compare also pp. 59, 60, 124.

24. H. Wagener: 11 The Small hut Important Party ” (Berlin , 1885),wherein the programme of the Eight of 1855 is communicated, pp. 8 and 9.