The New Germany

But with the revolution came an alternative to "nationalisation"—"socialisation"—in which all those connected with the coal industry should have an interest in it. An autonomous guild might preserve initiative and energy; while the interest of the consumer and of the community might be safeguarded by representation in the Guild and by State supervision.

A beginning was made towards such a solution in regulations, passed in the first months of the revolution, recognising the functions of the Workmen's Councils and attempting to reconcile their activities with expert administration and official supervision. No progress was, however, made by Weimar during the spring in this practical process of working through a sort of Whitley Council system to a sort of Guild Socialism; and the general strike of March found the Government with nothing in particular to which it could refer its critics.

Accordingly two Acts were hurriedly run through the Assembly. One, the "Socialisation Bill," recorded the right of the citizen to employment or to support (amended to reserve "personal liberty")—the right of the State to socialise all economic enterprises (restricted by amendment to cases of urgent necessity and adequate compensation)—the administration of socialised industries by autonomous guilds—(amended to include the State or other Government authorities). And from this it will be seen that an Act intended to establish general "socialisation" in principle, on a basis of expropriation was amended into one contemplating "nationalisation" in urgent cases, with compensation.

A clause in this Act required immediate application of the principle of socialisation to coal mines, and a Coal Bill has accordingly also been passed. By this the State takes over the industry and entrusts it to a Coal Board, reserving the right to regulate prices. Nothing is said as to the composition of this Board, but nothing is changed in the proprietary basis of the industry further than its organisation in regional syndicates.

There is also to be an Expert Council, representing employers, workmen, and officials equally. The retail coal trade remains untouched.

As to "Socialisation" generally, the reports of the Socialisation Commission have all been rejected and the Commission, that last relic of the revolution, resigned as long ago as May. The recommendations of Wissels, an active Minister, had as little success and he resigned in June.

The Government had promised that socialisation was to be established in the Constitution; but Art. 156 of the Constitution does no more than give the State the power to "socialise" and syndicalise industry, while Art. 155 says that private royalties are to be legislatively transferred to the State.

Therefore, in spite of plaintive posters, it is not communistic socialisation, but capitalistic syndicalisation, that has been introduced in Germany. While loudly proclaiming a step forward, the Government has taken a long stride back.[5]

"Socialisation" has not as yet affected the economic basis of the Prussianism that we have been fighting. This basis was a coalition between the old political interest of the landed proprietors and the new political interest of the captains of industry, or, to express it shortly, between the Junkers and the Jews. The free trade and liberalism that kept Great Britain from "Prussianism" in spite of the power retained by a few feudal families and the landed gentry was due to the different relationship in England between the upper and middle classes. In England our "Junkers" and "Jews" coalesced during our great industrial development, perhaps because our upper class had already more Jews than Junkers. In Germany they remained apart but combined for their own interests. We have seen to what extent the revolution has threatened the economic authority of the captain of industry—the industrial profiteer. Is the feudal landed proprietor also threatened?

The first effort of the revolution further east in Russia, Hungary and the Baltic States has been to "socialise" land. Either, where the agricultural industry is primitive, as in Russia, by simply dividing up the land among the peasants, or where it is progressive, as in the model-farm estates of Hungary, by putting the estate under control of a council of workers as though it was a factory. But in Germany the urban character of the revolution, which has accounted for the comparative ease with which the Government have coerced it, is shown by land tenure being as yet little affected. The only definite action against the large landed estates, that I know of, is a measure of the Prussian Assembly postponing action until 1921. This characteristic procrastination is, of course, explained to the revolutionaries as merely allowing a short period for voluntary breaking up of the big estates, and to the reactionaries as a postponement of all action. Meantime financial conditions in Germany are quite as favourable to the dispersal of large estates as with us; for wherever the farming system obtains the farmers have made even larger fortunes in Germany than in England. But the system of landed tenure is much more varied in Germany. There is a large proportion of freeholders and copyholders, while big estates are farmed by bailiffs with hired labourers.

In the region of these big estates—the land of the Junker (Mecklenburg, Pomerania and Brandenburg)—the revolution is openly defied. The agrarians of these regions not long ago had a regular trial of strength with the present régime, and though worsted were none the worse.

The strength of the German revolution is in labour, its weakness is in the land.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VToC

COUNCIL GOVERNMENT

From its present position and at its present pace the Weimar Parliament will never overtake events. I remember once as a boy pointing out to a cavalcade in red coats jogging along a by-lane that the hunt was off in a different direction.

"The hounds, you mean," said an old gentleman severely; "we are the hunt," and they all jogged happily on.

Meantime the dogs of war—of civil war between the constitutional and council movements, between Conservatives and Communists—are still running at a fearful pace and quite out of hand. The workmen will not work unless some real socialisation is introduced, and this is only possible if more steam be brought into the political machine than the parliamentary system can raise. Socialisation and reconstruction have been going back, not forward. The Socialisation Commission and the responsible Minister have both resigned, because Weimar would not give effect to their mildly socialistic recommendations. Yet nothing can save Germany from bankruptcy and Bolshevism but a re-energising and reorganising of the people for peace at least as effective as that they underwent in the war. Nothing can do this but a new ideal and new institutions. And the ideal of direct political power for the workmen and the institution of an industrial councils system is, so, far as I can see, alone capable of drawing out such force as is still left and of driving the country through the slough of war weariness and waste.

The Councils movement in Germany, at first, followed much the same course at much the same pace as it did in Russia. In Germany, as in Russia, the Councils, after reaching at a bound the sole power during the days of revolution, relapsed under a re-assertion of Parliamentary and Party government; then recovered, and, in the case of Russia, realised the second revolution. The German movement was last spring (1919) in the early stage of recovery. Its development is of special interest to us, in that eventually the German movement will probably take a middle place between the Russian and our own.

Before the revolution the Labour movement in Germany was very much in the same condition as with us. The attempt to combine on a patriotic platform all productive forces, and to concentrate Capital and Labour on winning the war, had only superficially smoothed over the distrust between Employers, Associations and Labour organisations, or the dissension between heads of unions and the bodies of workers. When the revolution broke out on November 9th it was carried through first by committees of sailors, then of soldiers, and finally of workmen, that sprang up simultaneously and assumed supreme authority. The advent of this new authority, however, brought about an alliance between the previous authorities thus put on one side, the Employers' Associations and the Trades Unions.

The employers, who had hitherto been resisting claims for an eight-hour day and a share in control, found themselves threatened with expropriation. Under the leadership of a Captain of Industry, Hugo Stinnes, they at once opened negotiations with the Unions led by Legien; and by November 15th reached agreement on the eight-hour day and the establishment of Labour Associations (Arbeitsgemeinschaften) equivalent to our Whitley Councils, and Labour Chambers (Arbeitskammern), for dealing with wages and welfare, in which employers and employed would have equal representation.

As Dr. Reichert, spokesman for the metal industries, has pointed out to his supporters, these concessions looked more than they were. For the eight-hour day would have to be abandoned unless, as was unlikely, it became general in Europe; and as to the associations, it should always be possible to get in and bring over a "Christian" representative of one of the Labour organisations under the influence of the Catholic Centrum. It is this agreement, none the less, between the Trust and Trade Union bosses that is the basis of the present Coalition Government's Labour policy, and that is embodied in the new Constitution.

But, since the revolution, the real Labour movement of Germany has passed to the "Councils" (Räte), as we must call them for want of a better word. For "moot" is too archaic and "committee" suggests either a party of bores and busybodies or a posse of Bulgarian brigands; while Soviet, which is only the Russian for Council, would mean branding the movement as "Bolshevist."

Of these Councils then, the three main divisions in Germany are Workmen's Councils (Arbeiterräte), or Industrial Councils (Betriebsräte), Soldiers' Councils, and Communal Councils. Of these, the first only seem to have a constitutional future in Germany.

The Communal Councils have not yet been fully admitted to the Council system, and seem to have but little vitality.

The Soldiers' Councils, which played the more prominent part in the revolution, and still form part of the organisation, have not succeeded in making headway against the efforts of the Government to demobilise them. Thus a regulation of January 19th reduced them to welfare committees and restricted their right of deposing officers to a mere recommendation. Attempts of the more revolutionary corps to resist authority in December, January and March were put down by the Frei-Corps with excessive and progressive severity; and the large bodies of revolutionary troops that survived the demobilisation, as "Republican Guards," "Public Safety Guards," "People's Naval Division," &c., &c., have been gradually dispersed by the Government's Frei-Corps.[6] So that the Soldiers' Councils as the political organ of the revolutionary fighting forces are losing their importance. Now that the British Admiralty have recognised "welfare committees" in the Navy, it is safe to assert that the Council movement in Germany so far as concerns the armed forces is no longer in advance of ours.

Returning, therefore, to the Industrial Councils, we find that in the early days of the revolution the movement spontaneously developed an organisation consisting of a national Central Council, elected by a national Congress of Councils, in its turn elected by local Executive Councils. These were all political institutions, which for a few days enjoyed entire political power. This power passed back to the old political Parties and Parliamentary system, owing to the Council accepting as "Commissaries of the People" Parliamentary politicians, whose sole idea and secret intention it was to reconstitute a Cabinet and reconstruct a Chamber on reformed but not revolutionary lines. The capital error was in trying to realise the revolution by only establishing revolutionary bodies—the Councils—in supervision of, instead of in substitution for, politicians and officials of the old régime. This was the cause of the relapse into reaction.

The real revolutionaries realised this mistake and Liebknecht, after accepting office, withdrew and joined the Communists and "Spartacists." The Communists were and are, of course, "whole-hoggers" in the Council movement, whose war cries are, "All power to the Soviets" and "Down with the Assembly." The Independents ranged from men like Ledebour, Däumig and Richard Müller, who saw in the Councils the salvation, not only of the revolution, but of civilisation, to men like Haase, Cohn and Breitscheidt, who believed that Parliamentary democracy and proletarian dictatorship could be co-ordinated. The Social-Democrats ranged from members of the Council organisation, who believed that the Councils should have economic functions, and who were last summer coming over to the Independents, down to men like Legien, who would abolish the Councils as a revolt against the Trade Unions, or Noske, who would abolish them as rebels against authority. The Democrats included intellectuals, who recognised the political utility of the Councils, but consisted mostly of Liberals with no appreciation for them: though many of these latter had been coming over to the idea, as, for instance, the veteran economist, Brentano, or the internationalist, Schucking.

Owing to a tactical blunder of the Independents, the Central Council, as well as the Cabinet of Commissaries, came under the sole control of the Social-Democrats, the Trade Unions, and Moderate Socialists. Consequently, the Central Council, instead of being the citadel of the Council system, became a salient from which the enemies of the system could undermine its whole position.

The Central Council, pursuing the Government's policy that all power in the hands of revolutionary authorities must be surrendered to the parliamentary institutions, in February publicly and formally recommitted its mandate, whatever that might be, to the Assembly. One might have supposed that this solemn suicide of its central authority would have been the end of the Council movement. But exactly the same surrender of the Central Council occurred at a similar stage of the Russian revolution, with the result, not that the movement collapsed, but that control of it passed from the Socialists to the Communists. This seems likely to be the result in Germany. The first consequence of the abdication of the Central Council was that leadership passed to the Executive Council of Berlin, where the Independents and Communists were already in a majority. The Executive Council proceeded to press for a convocation of the Congress of Councils, and thereby a re-election of the Central Council. The latter procrastinated, but gave way on the Executive Council threatening to convene the Congress itself, but even then succeeded in having it postponed more than once.

Now, while the Opposition was moving to the Left in attempts to realise the revolution, the Government was moving to the Right, and rapidly restoring the old Police-State behind a façade of parliamentary institutions. The consequence was a growing dissatisfaction with the Government, which, for want of proper expression through the Council organisation, broke out in periodic strikes and street fights. These were exploited by the Government as excuses for repressive and reactionary measures, which all contributed to reinforcing the Council movement. It was the vicious circle that we in England have come perilously near more than once.

The defection of the Central Council also resulted in depriving the whole Council movement of any stability and solidarity, and drove it into local offensives or "putsches," which were beaten in detail. First Bremen and the coast ports, then Dusseldorf and the coal area, next Saxony and the industrial districts, and finally, in the first week of March, Berlin itself, all declared general strikes in which recognition of the Council system was the principal demand. And the Berlin strike, following close on that of Saxony, did frighten the Government into what might have been a considerable concession.

As late as the end of February the Government had declared semi-officially that no member of the Government had the slightest intention of having the Council system incorporated in the Constitution either legislatively or administratively; but two days after the outbreak of the Berlin strike, early in March, the Government announced, not only the socialisation of mines but the sanction of the Council system in the Constitution.

The first Government scheme for organising the Councils was of much the same character as the socialisation that it promised at the same time—an elaborate organisation of Factory Councils, Industrial Councils and Labour Chambers with "economic functions"; which all boiled down to little more than the "Whitley Council" principle previously proposed and rejected by the workmen. Since then the Government has had to concede more, and Art. 165 of the Constitution as signed in August, recognises the Workmen's Councils without representation of the employers, though they have to associate themselves with employers' representatives in order to discharge their constitutional functions. Thus associated they can intervene in social and economic legislation through a Central Economic Council. But it was clear that neither this nor any other concession likely to be made by the Assembly would satisfy the workmen. A bi-cameral system might have done so, but this the Coalition Government could never have imposed on its Centrum and middle-class supporters.

The best chance of arriving at a compromise between Parliamentary and Council government was through the Congress of Councils which at last met in Berlin in May.

This Congress had also another function of the first importance. It afforded the only gauge available as to the velocity and volume of the revolutionary revival. The Assembly at Weimar was in this, as in most respects, useless. The Press was so coloured by class and party feeling as to be quite unreliable. While owing to general disorganisation of the country and the disintegrated nature of the revolutionary movement the leaders of it themselves did not know what their forces were. All that was known was that there had been a steady defection from the Majority Socialists supporting the Government and the Parliamentary system to the Independents, in opposition, who advocated a combination of Parliament and Councils; and from the Independents to the Communists, who were for "all power to the Councils."

So steady had this leftward flow been that probably the Congress, if left to itself, would have reflected it by coming together with a majority for the Opposition. It would then have been able to begin at once its function of elaborating a suitable compromise between Parliament and Councils. For it is to be assumed that the Communists and the right Majoritarians would have been each in a small minority, with an absolute majority for delegates representing the Independent position. That this was, at the time, the prevalent opinion in the movement is suggested by the delegates from German-Austria associating themselves with the Independents.

However, partly for the better preservation of party, power, and place, partly from the pressure of constant "officious" admonitions from us that peace would only be made with a parliamentary government, the German Government did their best to falsify the character of the Congress and get as many Majority Socialists into it as possible by hook or crook. The hook used was a new electoral arrangement prepared by the Central Council which most of the great towns rejected. In some, as in Breslau, the delegates first elected were recalled, and real workmen's representatives substituted. And when the Government found its lost sheep weren't coming home, like Bo-peep, it took its little crook, determined for to find them; and found them indeed, but with the historical result. For if by hook and by crook you make workmen's delegates of country lawyers or country magistrates you cannot expect them to bring much of a working-class tail behind them. So when the Council came together it was distinctly rather parliamentarian than proletarian in its character. But if the Government's object was to cripple and control the Congress it failed. Because the first result of their gerrymandering was that the Communists refused to take part, thereby greatly facilitating the subsequent rapprochement between the two Socialist factions, the Majority and the Independents.

The Congress, when it met, was found to consist of 130 Majority Socialists, 64 Independents, 20 soldiers' representatives, and about 80 miscellaneous and absent; and of these quite a large number were not working men at all. But all the same the difference between the atmosphere of Parliamentary and Council government at once appeared when it got to work. For this much gerrymandered and very jerry-built Congress showed itself capable of adapting itself to pressures in a way that the National Assembly could not. It showed itself to be a real deliberative body, capable of coming rapidly to a joint decision radically different from the several views subscribed by its individual members before its meeting. In other words, the Congress had vitality enough to make its constituents real representatives instead of merely instructed delegates. Its response to the general trend of opinion to the Left and against "Government by the Frei-Corps" was shown by its first vote which, by 199 to 81 called for the release of Ledebour, an Independent "intellectual" imprisoned for alleged complicity in the January disorders. This was followed by a vote of congratulation to Hungary; while a similar congratulation to Bavaria, where a "Council Republic" had just been proclaimed, was very properly postponed as prejudging the whole question of Council government that was before the Congress.

The first days were passed in general debate, during which much negotiation between section leaders and a general alignment of forces were going on in the lobbies. A fictitious interest was given to this work of "realising the revolution" by the Congress having met in the Herren-Haus, the old Prussian House of Lords, the shrine of reaction. It was piquant to see a fervent Majority Socialist and a fiery Independent discussing whether Parliament and universal suffrage were not irretrievably reactionary, under the cold marble nose of a Prussian Princelet who had looked on them as the ultimate Chaos and Dark Night of Revolution. But as will be seen, the genius loci, won in the latter end.

The Congress took some days in making up its mind what line to take. The Majority leaders did not know which way to turn, associating themselves when they could with attacks on the Government, and when they could not, apologising. For though the Independents on one side and the small Democratic section on the other were disciplined bodies, the Majoritarian bloc was disorganised. When it came to a vote they obeyed the whip, but many slipped out, and the vote was very different from what was expected.

The Government's advisers in politics and in the Press, finding that so far from bringing over the Independents to the Government the Congress was fast drawing the Majority into opposition, strongly recommended the Government to close the Congress on the ground that it was only wasting time in futile and inflammatory agitation. The Independents countered this by forcing an immediate issue on the main question—the constitutional recognition of the Council system.

The opening of the discussion showed that a majority of the Congress favoured a combination of Parliament and Councils in which the latter should have political as well as economic functions. Whether the Majoritarian leaders in the Congress were genuinely convinced of the necessity of giving the Council system recognition or whether they were forced to compromise in order to retain command of their followers, and through them control their following among the workmen, I do not know. Anyway, after a series of speeches, in which the Majoritarian leaders, Kalinsky and Cohn-Reuss, vied in concessions, a compromise was put forward that represented practically the position held by their opponents the Independents a few weeks before. The compromise between the Parliamentary system and Council system they proposed was probably workable; though arrived at from an unsound position—that of regarding the Central Council as a controlling authority over the National Assembly; whereas it would really be supplying the driving power and the Assembly the brake.

Now, although the Independents, for the same tactical reasons that had driven the Majoritarians to the Left, were now proclaiming the principle of "all power to the Councils" (which had been until then the position of the absent Communists) they were rather embarrassed at finding themselves "Bolshevists," explicitly demanding the dictatorship of the proletariat. The spring running of German politics to the Left had been so headlong that the parliamentarian leaders of the Left had had to sprint hard to keep ahead of their followers. But if they had kept one eye anxiously gauging the pace of the avalanche surging at their heels they had kept the other guessing no less anxiously at the position of the abyss of "Bolshevism" ahead. And small wonder if they were a little bewildered and out of breath. For as late as December they had been still accepting the Assembly as the sole executant of the revolution, and looking on the Councils as practically extinct and politically eccentric. By January they had been forced to accept the Councils as a fact that had to be fitted in somehow. In February their periodicals were full of schemes for giving economic powers to the Councils, while reserving all political power, national and provincial, to the Assemblies. By March they had recognised that they must have political power as well and by April they had reached the compromise of a bi-cameral constitution now adopted by their conservative opponents, the Majoritarians. And now, in order to clear the leftward road for the Majoritarians and keep pace with the Communists, old parliamentary hands, like Haase, Oscar Cohn and Breitscheidt, found themselves condemning their newly born and much beloved parliamentary democracy to be smothered in its cradle for the benefit of a Bolshevist changeling. No wonder they were ready to join forces with their Socialist comrades of the majority in a compromise which found a place for their firstborn the Weimar Parliament and for their familiar world of party politics.

Thus the Socialist parties, still hopelessly divided in that cold storage of faction, the Weimar Assembly, had been re-fused and re-moulded by the volcanic fires of the Congress.

One Sunday afternoon, after the Congress had been a week at work, I heard that the leaders of these two sections had that morning privately agreed to reconstitute the Central Council on a principle of parity, i.e., twelve Majoritarians and twelve Independents, with a few Democrats and soldiers.

This private agreement, unreported until after it had been repudiated, was a political event of an importance second only to the revolution itself. It reunited the Socialist party on a platform of realising the revolution through the Council system by constitutional action. The Congress of Councils, for whose dissolution the whole Press were clamouring openly and every secret sinister influence was conspiring, had in six days gone further towards the reconstruction and re-orientation of Germany than Weimar had in six months.

But one obvious result of this new alliance between Majoritarians and Independents in the Council system would have been the jettisoning of Majoritarian Ministers, such as Noske, Landsberg and Scheidemann, compromised by their complicity with reaction and the brutalities of the Frei-Corps. It was therefore not surprising that the full force of party pressure and of administrative authority was brought to bear on the Majoritarian parties to the agreement. Under this pressure, like good citizens and genuine Germans, they buckled up and broke down, repudiating the principle of parity. They offered instead a proportion of fourteen Majoritarians to ten Independents in the Central Council or a representation corresponding to the numerical proportion of parties in the gerrymandered Congress. These offers were refused, the Congress came to an end, and the pusillanimity and place-hunting of parliamentary politicians had ruined the revolution a second time. The first was when the Independents, under pressure from the Left, withdrew from the Coalition with the Majoritarians in December. The second was when the Majoritarians, under pressure from the Right, now in their turn withdrew from the reconstituted Coalition in May.

The Council was reconstituted with Majoritarians, and the Independents were thrown back upon the Communists and "direct action." The only course then left to the adherents of the Council movement was to perfect their organisations and wait until parliamentary government was overthrown, either by reaction or revolution. The first essential for such organisation was a general electoral system which would put the Councils on a regular basis and prevent such interference and intrigues as had preceded the previous Congress. The last meeting that I attended of the Plenary Assembly of Berlin Councils, the driving body of the movement, was occupied with discussing the crucial question as to who should be considered a workman and qualified to vote and stand for a Council. It was there tentatively agreed that a workman might have a few assistants without becoming an employer, and that scientists, experts, and such like connected with an industry, other than managers, directors and such, might count as workmen. On the other hand the Assembly had to adjourn for a time in disorder owing to protests against the presence of a police official as a delegate of the Democrats. It was clearly going to be difficult to express in terms of an electoral law a disability obvious enough in each individual case. The German workmen were ready to admit to equality anyone with any industrial productive status, who was not in the service of declared enemies of the Councils—such as the captains of industry or the Coalition Government. And so important is this suffrage question as a gauge of the liberality of the Council movement in Germany and of its distinction from Bolshevism, that I append as a footnote the regulation of the Berlin Executive Council, published previous to the Convention of the second Congress of Councils.[7]

This work of making the Council system really representative has been much hampered of late by the growing reaction which is still trying to break the neck of the movement by arresting its leaders, and impeding its development in every way. At the same time, schemes are being continually put forward by the less reactionary elements for drawing the teeth of the movement by "diddling" concessions. Among such may be counted the clauses "anchoring" the Councils in the Constitution. The word itself shows how rapidly the German politicians are picking up the devices of parliamentary democracy. Again and again, on the platform and in the Press, the workmen are assured that all is well with the Councils because they are "anchored" in the Constitution. What the workmen want is not to see them "anchored" so much as under way; but it is creditable diddling is that catchword, "anchored in the Constitution." And another diddling device is the electoral law advocated by the Majoritarians that the Government are trying to impose on the Councils, which would penetrate the movement with propertied interests and partition it up into regional areas.

Of late, indeed, the Council movement proper—the revolutionary movement—has been almost driven underground. The Central office of the Berlin Executive Council has been repeatedly raided, its leaders are continually being arrested, and its meetings broken up. At a conference of the Industrial Councils of Germany recently held (August 26th, 1919) at Halle from which all Majoritarians were excluded, the general tone was pessimistic. It was recognised that the German workman was not as a whole revolutionary in sentiment, that the mass movement to the Left that had marked the first months of reaction had to some extent been checked and that the Government policy of compromising with the Council movement had had some measure of success. No agreement could be reached at this conference, even on such primary questions of policy as to whether the Government proposals should be considered or whether the Trades Unions should be co-operated with. Finally, centres of the revolutionary movement were established at Halle and Leipzig.

From this it would seem that the revolutionary Council movement is just at present passing through a phase of depression due to the Government's diplomatic policy.

It will be seen that so far the German Councils are no political system, but only a surge of spontaneous self-government. If they can be really co-ordinated with the new political machinery, and if they can be concentrated on the economic reconstruction of Germany, it may be the salvation, not only of Germany but of Europe. For, though the years of war have accustomed us to looking on Germans as barbarians and better dead than alive, as a matter of fact this unattractive people is still, as it always has been, the sturdiest and steadiest of the workers of the world; and Germany is still the centre of gravity of the European social system. There can be no stability in Europe if the Germans are on strike. The consequences of driving the Russians into extremes are before us now in the worst menace to the existing social order since the peasants' rising of the Middle Ages. It will take much pressure to drive the German revolution into extremes, but if Germany once develops a real Bolshevism of its own, it will not be long before the rest of the Continent follows its example.

It is a national characteristic of us English to fight new ideas and institutions in principle abroad, while, in practice, we introduce them at home under different names. This has worked well on the whole. While reaction is occupied with damning and downing the novelty as an absurdity and atrocity introduced by the brutal and barbarous foreigner, real-politik finds that the same novelty, under some new name, helps production at home. Thus, while we fight the Soviets with military expeditions and poison gas, and the milder Räte-Republics of Germany with military missions and diplomatic notes, we work away at our Guild Socialism and our Shop Stewards' Committees, extend Whitley Councils to the Civil Service and Welfare Committees to the Navy, and even admit employés to joint control of our railways.

There is an English revolution not only impending, but in progress, and those to whom revolution means barricades and "Bolshevism" will be relieved to hear that the course of events, both in Germany and Russia, suggests that our British revolution is so well advanced that these stimulants of a revolution, that has stiffened and stagnated, will not be required. England, not being wholly, at all events for long, run by London clubs and political cliques, manages to achieve its political revolution by way of economic reconstruction, and it is doing this on the same principles as Germany, though by a different procedure. That is why it was as foolish for the British to try to upset the Council movement of the Berliners as it was for the Berliners to upset it among the Brunswickers and Bavarians.

Moreover, if the Councils can still be killed, the Germans themselves will eventually kill them by diddling concessions or by diplomatic compromises. For such compromises as those already put forward in Germany show a fatal ignorance of, or indifference to, the fundamental facts of this revolutionary movement. I much doubt whether the German revolutionary workmen and their political leaders, whether Independent or Communist, can ever be got to accept the Labour Chamber (Arbeitskammer) with its parity of representation between employers and employed; at all events, until the employer is represented by the State. And such "nationalisation "is only valued by the German workman as a preliminary to "socialisation." The workers are attached to the Council idea largely because it attacks the capitalist, and gives the workmen protection against him in a way the Union cannot. If the Councils are to be widened into a democracy including all classes, the power of private capital must first be broken or brought in bounds.

So desperate is the economic condition of the country that even the Employers' Associations of Berlin have declared in favour of a large measure of Council government. But this is an exception. The German ruling class, and their middle-class supporters, recognise that their class supremacy is challenged. They retort by attacking Council government as class government and, consequently, as undemocratic. The issue is represented as being between a Parliamentary democracy, as in England, and a Soviet despotism, as in Russia. It seems worth while, therefore, to the German ruling class to fight the revolution with its own weapon of violence, rather than face the risks of Council government; and this same view would doubtless be taken in England if the question of principle were raised. In the recent railway strike our Government, by appealing for national support against a leading section of Labour, did, in fact, go far to create a class war.

But, as a matter of fact, the demand for a dictatorship by the proletariat is not an essential element in the Council movement. Such a demand is not the cause, but the consequence, of class conflict. Essentially and fundamentally the Council movement, so far from being less democratic than our Parliamentary system, is a revolt back to the purest and most primitive democracy from the artificialities and anomalies of modern Parliamentary representation. It is no more undemocratic than the Renaissance was inartistic, the Reformation unchristian, or the French Revolution anarchical. As the German Revolution best shows, the growth of Councils is the result of a revolutionary impulse in a modern community. Such an impulse uses any form of association between men and women for the urgent political purpose of appointing a spokesman and leader. The most widely spread and deeply rooted association nowadays is industrial—in the workshop. Consequently, we find the Councils taking predominantly an industrial character and origin, as in our native embryo the Shop Stewards' Committee. But any association will serve; and so, in the German Revolution, besides the Workmen's Councils there were Soldiers' Councils, Communal Councils, and even Unemployed Councils. If this new system were to develop, so to say, in a vacuum, without opposition, it would theoretically provide a democratic representation for every human relationship. As it is, such representation is reduced, as in Germany, by political pressure, to association that is rooted in the most vital relationship; and we find the Unemployed Councils, Communal Councils, and even Soldiers' Councils being choked off, and only the Workmen's Councils surviving. This is why the practical process in Germany is, as said before, leading to the same conclusions as those come to by the a priori reasoning of our own Guild Socialists when they divide the citizen into consumer and producer, and, in his latter capacity, give him representation through a Council system. I found, in fact, that my most useful function in Germany at one time was putting German Labour leaders in possession of the conclusions of our Guild Socialists.

Nor, when we come to examine constitutional history, is there any real difference between the democracy of the Council system and the democracy of Parliament. They are the same in origin and will probably be the same in development. For Parliament, it must be remembered, grew out of a Council with an industrial suffrage—land tenure—which was later reinforced by a general industrial suffrage through the Boroughs and their Guild organisations. But, for the first two centuries of its existence, say 1100 to 1295, Parliament, the National Council of our Angevin Kings, was a Soviet, a Betriebsrat. It was to this body that we owe our Magna Charta of 1215, the foundation of our democracy. And, in the fourteenth clause of the Great Charter, the clause constituting Parliament, we read that the summons was to be sent direct to the Archbishops and Bishops, Earls and Greater Barons, and, through the Sheriff, to all those "who hold of us in chief." It was this latter body of tenants of the Crown that became the Knights of the Shire in our House of Commons. The Knights of the Shire represented the landed industrial interest as directly as the representatives of the Boroughs represented other forms of industry and commerce. Of course, later, the regional and representative system gradually overlaid and obscured the original industrial basis, much as it has done with the Council system in Russia and is doing in Germany.

The Council system in Germany has, in three months, indeed, covered the course that took our Parliamentary system three centuries. This corresponds roughly to the increased pace of political development to-day. If we were to translate the Council movement of to-day into the terms of the Parliamentary movement of seven centuries ago, we might say that, before our present democracy could begin, industry had to be nominally socialised by the principle that all land was held of the King, and a strong central government established on a popular basis of industrial councils, with equal representation for the two other estates, the feudal or military and the clerical or official. For we can see the progenitors of the Soldiers' Councils of to-day in the feudal courts of yesterday, and of the Civil Service bureaucracy of to-day in the chancellors and justiciars of yesterday. Thus we may, if we like, see in the short history of the Russian Council movement an epitome of our whole constitutional history. Or, we may compare the present Council movement in England with the political situation early in the thirteenth century, when the Greater Barons, progenitors of our Captains of Industry, were about to force clause 14 of Magna Charta and a National Whitley Council on a Civil Service of arrogant ascetics, who were vainly trying to retain power for a silly and selfish ruling class. In applying this analogy to the present day, the Parliament of to-day would be no more than a survival of a previous constitutional epoch, a Witanagemot applying Anglo-Saxon Dooms. And this will, any way, give an idea of the way parliaments are looked upon to-day by German workmen. Possibly, in the end, the representative and regional system will rule the roost again, and will force the industrial suffrage upstairs into a House of Lords that will, in time, exercise mainly the judicial functions peculiar to its original industrial character. But we have first to get our Magna Charta and our Statutes of Westminster.

That the Council system of to-day is a truer democracy than existing Parliamentary systems is also shown practically by its being a much surer and safer machine for the realisation of public opinion. Theoretically, the pyramidal piling up of Councils, each represented in a superior Council, until a Central Council caps the pile, would seem to be indirect election raised to infinity; and indirect election is theoretically undemocratic. But this was not the conclusion forced on one in Germany when one compared the working of the two systems. The inferiority in the position of politicians, owing their power to the Parliamentary system, compared with that of those based on the Council system, was very striking. The Parliamentarians never knew where they were or what was what. Out of touch, necessarily, with their enormous constituencies, they seemed to be always crawling about with their ears to the ground, dependent on agents and reporters of every sort, even on the Press, for an idea of what was going on. As they never knew where the hounds were, they could not use such knowledge of the country as they had to lead the field. The leaders of the Council movement, on the other hand, had an immediate indication of every trend of opinion in the changing composition of the lower strata of Councils; and their difficulty was rather to control the energies that came pouring up to them through the system. The Parliamentary leader seemed like a water finder, wandering about and waiting for the twig to twiddle, while the Council leader was more like a marine engineer with his eye on the pressure gauge and his hand on the lever. Perhaps indirect election is only undemocratic when the function of the lower body is mainly to elect to a higher, but becomes democratic when it has vital functions of its own that are merely controlled by the higher body.

And yet another point and a paradox. Whereas the results of Council representation of opinion in Germany are not revolutionary, the results of the Parliamentary system are becoming more and more so, and not only in Germany but in Great Britain. The failure of the Parliamentary system to express the forces making for change—a failure not confined to Germany—and the fictitious relationship between the elector and the elected has two results. It diverts a large part of these forces of progress into various forms of direct action, all of them revolutionary, whether actively so, such as street fighting, or passively so, such as strikes. It also gives a revolutionary character to the periodical elections. For the vast constituencies vote merely along the line of the least common multiple of their mob minds. This line is generally a vague dissatisfaction; and unless it be diverted by "stunts" or otherwise diddled, will result in violent pendulum swings. Under these impulses Parliament will become still less representative, and will tend to be either revolutionary or reactionary. For an exaggerated majority is the extremists' opportunity.

The Council movement, on the other hand, slowly changing from below upwards, should never drop much behind the drift of opinion, and consequently should be in little danger of being driven ahead of it. The German Parliament, as the results of an election decided by this L.C.M. motive of the mob mind—a motive of assuring power to whichever party seemed to offer the best prospect of peace abroad and at home—is to-day reactionary. Whereas the political condition of Germany to-day is such that it absolutely must have a Government responsive to the requirements of reconstruction, or relapse into civil war. The Weimar Parliament is so dead that only civil war can galvanise it to action. If reinforced by a Council system, the Weimar Party Government and the Preuss Federal Constitution would perhaps have steam enough to work.

The Councils are as essential to Germany to-day as the Commons were to us a century ago. Indeed, our insistence on the supremacy of the Weimar Assembly as a guarantee for the maintenance of peace, can be paralleled by our insistence a century ago on the maintenance of Upper Houses in the constitutions of the States revolutionised from France. The function of the territorially elected Parliament will, in Germany, and probably everywhere, become more and more that of an Upper House; while the industrially elected Congress will be the creative and constructive institution. The whole difficulty lies in finding a working compromise, or rather co-operation. Just as Feudalism imposed its political system which survives in the House of Lords, just as Liberalism imposed its system as represented in the House of Commons, which now obviously requires supplementing, so Socialism must have its political system in the Councils. This is not revolution but evolution. The revolution comes from thwarting and threatening it.