Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [278]
Elsewhere the facts of political life were making a necessity of Revision whether the Marxists liked it or not. Industry was expanding, bringing with it a rise in trade-union membership which increased the lever of pressure in the hands of the working class. While the battle of capital and labour continued as fiercely as ever, the working class through the Socialist parties was enlarging its representation in every European Parliament. In Italy, where the peasants’ unions and agricultural cooperatives were strongly Socialist, the party increased from 26,000 votes and 6 seats in Parliament in 1892 to 175,000 votes and 32 seats in 1904. In France, Jaurès’ party, followed by the imprecations of Guesde and his followers, was performing a role in national life; and Jaurès himself was emerging as the real if not nominal leader of the Government’s majority in the Chamber. In the Socialist world he moved forward to challenge the domination of the great German monolith at the next Congress of the International, held in Amsterdam in August, 1904.
The duel of Jaurès and Bebel made the Amsterdam Congress remembered by everyone present as the most stimulating of all the meetings of the Second International. Five hundred delegates attended, of whom about two hundred at any one time understood the language of the speaker. The platform was draped in red stamped with a gold monogram of the initials I.S.C., which, with the S twining around the I bore a startling resemblance to a well-known symbol of capitalism. Overhead a banner bore in Dutch the device on which everyone could still agree, Proletaariers van alle Landen, Vereinigt U! (Workers of the World, Unite!)
Factions were multiple. Britain had four delegations: the ILP led by Keir Hardie, the Socialist-Democratic Federation by Hyndman, the Labour Representation Committee by Shackleton, and a Fabian group. France had three delegations and the United States two, with the inevitable De Leon casting his scorn on all. He disapproved of the “social and picnic” aspect of the Congress, of delegates rustling papers and conversing and walking about during speeches, visiting with foreign friends, introducing one to another, arriving and departing and slamming doors. He pronounced Jaurès an “unqualified nuisance in the Socialist movement,” Bebel its “evil genius,” Adler “absurd,” Vandervelde a “comedian,” Hyndman “too dull” to understand what was going on, the British trade unionists “disastrous,” Shackleton a “capitalist placeman,” and Jean Allemane a “flannel-mouthed blatherskite.” The only party which did not betray the working class by “revisionist flapdoodlism” was his own, whose attitude at all times was “sword drawn, scabbard thrown away.”
Cooperation was the question to be settled, placed on the agenda by demand of Guesde. Bebel’s object was to impose the Dresden Resolution of the German party upon the International. It provided, he said, the correct guidance for Socialists at all times in all circumstances since it stated the fundamental antagonism between the proletarian and the capitalist state. He took occasion to cite the growing strength of the German party. Jaurès retorted that if Socialists were as strong as that in France, they would “make something happen.” Between the appearance of German strength and the reality of their influence, he said, launching upon a major offensive, there was a startling contrast. Why? Because “there is no revolutionary tradition among your workers. They never conquered universal suffrage on the barricades. They received it from above.” All the deputies in the Reichstag were powerless, for the Reichstag was itself powerless