Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [287]
Bebel opposed the general strike as totally impractical. Tied to the unions, as the French party was not, the German party looked at the strike from the union point of view. Though every member may have been a good Socialist, the unions had no wish to lose their funds in a reckless gesture against the power of the State. Financial reserves to maintain a general strike even in peacetime were not available. To oppose defence of the Fatherland in a nation seized by war fever, Bebel said, would put the Socialists in an impossible position. Even Kautsky agreed. A strike was impossible without consent of the unions, he pointed out. Privately he and like-minded friends comforted themselves, like Jaurès, with the belief that somehow, if war came, the “infuriated” workers would rise against it.
Where was the voice of the worker, the man directly concerned, in all this talk of strike? It was not heard. The worker was at home concerned with the job, the boss, the broken window, the ailing child, tonight’s supper, tomorrow’s holiday. If he thought about a strike it was for wages; if he thought about war it was as some vague grand happening with an aura of excitement and valor. He thought less of striking against it than of marching to it, to smite the foreigner and protect his country. Bebel knew him. “Do not fool yourselves,” he said to an English delegate, and repeated his old assertion that the instant the Fatherland declared itself in danger, “every Social-Democrat will shoulder his rifle and march to the French frontier.”
If Bebel was still the Pope of Socialism it was as a secular Pope; the moral torch had passed to Jaurès, “the greatest hope of the Second International,” in the words of Vandervelde’s opening speech. He was brimming with energy, plunged into a great campaign against war, delighted to be in Germany. Seizing a huge foam-crowned mug at a country beer garden, he said, “Beer! Vandervelde, German beer!” with a fresh enthusiasm that his companion found irresistible. One night, returning from an outing via medieval Tübingen, he insisted on getting out in the pouring rain and darkness, although nothing could be seen, to stand in front of the illustrious University.
Bebel threw the weight of the party against an explicit commitment to the general strike less because he was convinced it was impractical than because he feared reprisals by his Government, perhaps even renewal of the anti-Socialist law. Grown middle-aged and successful since Engels’ warning, “Legality kills us,” his party had no desire to go underground again. In addition to the conflicting French resolutions, he had also to contend against the Radicals of his own party assisted by a formidable partner. Pointing him out to a friend, Rosa Luxemburg said, “That’s Lenin. Observe his obstinate self-willed skull.” Together she and he were determined that any resolution taken by the Congress on militarism should remind the working class of its duty to transform war into revolution. In private sessions Lenin engaged in prolonged negotiations with Bebel, who insisted that there should be “nothing in the resolution that would enable the public prosecutor in Berlin