n
this subject in the German Reichstag. "Herr von Puttkamer," said Bebel,
"calls to mind the speech which I delivered in 1881 in the debate on the
Socialist Law a few days after the murder of the Czar. I did not then
glorify regicide. I declared that a system like that prevailing in
Russia necessarily gave birth to Nihilism and must necessarily lead to
deeds of violence. Yes, I do not hesitate to say that if you should
inaugurate such a system in Germany it would of necessity lead to deeds
of violence with us as well. (A deputy called out: 'The German
Monarchy?') The German Monarchy would then certainly be affected, and I
do not hesitate to say that I should be one of the first to lend a hand
in the work, for all measures are allowable against such a system."[E] I
take it that Bebel was, in this instance, simply pointing out to the
German bureaucracy the inevitable consequences of the Russian system. At
that very moment he was restraining hundreds of thousands of his
followers from acts of despair, yet he could not resist warning the
German rulers that the time might come in that country when no
considerations whatever could persuade men to forego the use of the most
violent retaliative measures. This view is, of course, well established
in our national history, and our Declaration of Independence, as well as
many of our State constitutions, asserts that it is both the right and
the duty of the people to overthrow by any means in their power an
oppressive and tyrannical government. This was, of course, always the
teaching of what Marx liked to call "the bourgeois democrats." It was,
in fact, their only conception of revolution.

The socialist idea of revolution is quite a different one. Insurrection
plays no necessary part in it, and no one sees more clearly than the
socialist that nothing could prove more disastrous to the democratic
cause than to have the present class conflict break into a civil war. If
such a war becomes necessary, it will be in spite of the organized
socialists, who, in every country of the world, not only seek to avoid,
but actually condemn, riotous, tempestuous, and violent measures. Such
measures do not fit into their philosophy, which sees, as the cause of
our present intolerable social wrongs, not the malevolence of
individuals or of classes, but the workings of certain economic laws.
One can cut off the head of an individual, but it is not possible to cut
off the head of an economic law. From