Michels, Robert, 1876-1936.
Political Parties; a Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy,
by Robert Michels

Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia

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Link to Part 4 Chapter II which contains the excerpt below:

'POLITICAL PARTIES'
by Robert Michels

"Here some reference may be made to the abundance of Jews among the leaders of the socialist and revolutionary parties. Specific racial qualities make the Jew a born leader of the masses, a born organizer and propagandist. First among these qualities comes that sectarian fanaticism which, like an infection, can be communicated to the masses with astonishing frequency; next we have an invincible self-confidence (which in Jewish racial history is most characteristically displayed in the lives of the prophets); there are remarkable oratorical and dialectical aptitudes, a still more remarkable ambition, an irresistible need to figure in the limelight, and last but not least an almost unlimited power of adaptation. There has not during the last seventyfive years been any new current agitating the popular political life in which Jews have failed to play an eminent part. Not a few such movements must be distinctively considered as their work. Jews organize the revolution; and Jews organize the resistance of the state and of society against the subversive forces. Socialism and conservatisim have been forged by Jewish hands and are impregnated with the Jewish spirit. In Germany, for example, we see on the one side Marx and Lassalle fanning the flames of revolution, and on the other, after 1848, Julius Stahl working as the brilliant theorist of the feudal reaction. In England, the Jew Disraeli reorganized the forces of the Conservative Party. We find Jews at the head of movements which marshal against one another the nationalities animated by a reciprocal hate. At Venice, it was Daniel Manin who raised the standard of liberty against the Austrians. During the Franco-German war, the work of national defense was organized by Gambetta. In England, Disraeli was the inventor of the watchword "the integrity of the British Empire," while in Germany, the Jews Eduard Simson, Bamberger, and Larker, were the leading champions of the nationalist liberalism which played so important a part in the foundation of the empire. In Austria, Jews constitute the advance-guard of almost all the strongly nationalist parties. Among the German Bohemians, the Italian irredentists, the Polish nationalists, and in especial among the Magyars, the most fanatical are persons of Jewish race. The Jews, in fact, are capable of organizing every kind of movement; even among the leaders of antisemitism there are not wanting persons of Jewish descent.

The adaptability and the intellectual vivacity of the Jews do not, however, suffice to explain the quantitative and qualitative predominance of persons of Hebrew race in the party of the workers. In Germany, above all, the influence of Jews has been conspicuous in the labour movement. The two first great leaders, Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx, were Jews, and so was their contemporary Moses Hess. The first distinguished politician of the old school to join the socialists, Johann Jacoby, was a Jew. Such also was Karl Höchberg, the idealist, son of a rich merchant in Frankfort-on-the-Main, founder of the first socialist review published in the German language. Paul Singer, who was almost invariably chairman of the German Socialist Congresses, was a Jew. Among the eighty-one socialist deputies sent to the Reichstag in the penultimate general election, there were nine Jews, and this figure is an extremely high one when compared with the percentage of Jews among the population of Germany, and also with the total number of Jewish workers and with the number of Jewish members of the socialist party. Four of the nine were still orthodox Jews (Stadthagen, Singer, Wurm, and Haase). In various capacities, Jews have rendered inestimable services to the party: Eduard Bernstein, Heinrich Braun, Jakob Stern, Simon Katzenstein, and Bruno Schonlank, as theorists; Gradnauer, Eisner, and Josef Bloch, the editor of the "Socialistische Monatshefte," as journalists; Hugo Heimann, in the field of municipal politics; Leo Arons, as a specialist in electoral affairs; Ludwig Frank, as organizer of the socialist youth. In Austria, the predominance of Jews in the socialist movement is conspicuous; it suffices to mention the names of Victor Adler, Ellenbogen, Fritz Austerlitz, Max Adler, F. Hertz, Therese Schlesinger-Eckstein, Dr. Diamand, Adolf Braun, etc. In America we have Morris Hillquitt, A. M. Simons, M. Untermann. In Holland, we have Henri Polak, the leader of the diamond workers, D. J. Wijnkoop, the independent Marxist, and M. Mendels. In Italy, Elia Musatti, Claudio Treves, G. E. Modigliani, Riccardo and Adolfo Momigliano, R. L. Foà, and the man of science Cesare Lombroso. Even in France, although here the role of the Jews is less conspicuous, we may mention the names of Paul Louis, Edgard Milhaud, and the shareholders of "l'Humanité" in 1904. The first congress of the Parti Ouvrier in 1879 was rendered possible by the liberal financial support of Isaac Adolphe Crémieux, who had been governor of Algeria under Gambetta.

In many countries, in Russia and Roumania for instance, but above all in Hungary and in Poland, the leadership of the working-class parties (the Russian Revolutionary Party excepted) is almost exclusively in the hands of Jews, 189 as is plainly apparent from an examination of the personality of the delegates to the international congresses. Besides, there is a great spontaneous export from Russia of Jewish proletarian leaders to foreign socialist parties: Rosa Luxemburg and Dr. Israel Helphant (Parvus) have gone to Germany; Charles Rappoport to France; Anna Kulishoff and Angelica Balabanoff to Italy; the brothers Reichesberg to Switzerland; M. Beer and Theodor Rothstein to England. Finally, to bring this long enumeration to a close, it may be mentioned that among the most distinguished leaders of the German anarchists there are many Jews, such as Gustav Landauer, Siegfried Nacht, Pierre Ramus, Senna Hoj (Johannes Holzmann).

The origin of this predominant position (which, be it noted, must in no sense be regarded as an indication of "Judaization," as a symptom of dependence of the party upon the money of Jewish capitalist comrades) is to be found, as far at least as concerns Germany and the countries of eastern Europe, in the peculiar position which the Jews have occupied and in many respects still occupy. The legal emancipation of the Jews has not there been followed by their social and moral emancipation. In large sections of the German people a hatred of the Jews and the spirit of the Jew-baiter still prevails, and contempt for the Jews is a permanent feeling. The Jew's chances in public life are injuriously affected; he is practically excluded from the judicial profession, from a military career, and from official employment. Yet everywhere in the Jewish race there continues to prevail an ancient and justified spirit of rebellion against the wrongs from which it suffers, and this sentiment, idealist in its origin, animating the members of an impassioned race, becomes in them more easily than in those of Germanic blood transformed into a disinterested abhorrence of injustice in general and elevated into a revolutionary impulse towards a grandly conceived world-amelioration.

Even when they are rich, the Jews constitute, at least in eastern Europe, a category of persons who are excluded from the social advantages which the prevailing political, economic, and intellectual system ensures for the corresponding portion of the Gentile population. Society, in the narrower sense of the term, is distrustful of them, and public opinion is unfavorable to them. Besides the sentiment which is naturally aroused in their minds by this injustice, they are often affected by that cosmopolitan tendency which has been highly developed in the Jews by the historical experiences of the race, and these combine to push them into the arms of the working-class party. It is owing to these tendencies that the Jews, guided in part by reason and in part by sentimental considerations, so readily disregard the barriers which the bourgeoisie endeavours to erect against the rising flood of the revolution by the accusation that its advocates are des sans patrie.

For all these reasons, the Jewish intelligence is apt to find a shorter road to socialism than the Gentile, but this does not diminish the obligations of the Socialist Party to the Jewish intellectuals. Only to the intellectuals, indeed, for the Jews who belong to the wealthy trading and manufacturing classes and also the members of the Jewish petty bourgeoisie, while often voting socialist in the elections, steadily refuse to join the Socialist Party. Here the interests of class prevail over those of race. It is very different with the Jewish intellectuals, and a statistical enquiry would certainly show that not less than 2 to 3 per cent of these are members of the Socialist Party. If the Socialist Party has always manifested an unhesitating resistance to antisemite sentiment, this is due not merely to the theoretical socialist aversion for all "nationalism" and all racial prejudices, but also to the consciousness of all that the party owes to the Jewish intellectuals.

"Antisemite socialism" made its first appearance about 1870. Eugen Dühring, at that time Privatdozent at the University of Berlin, inaugurated a crusade in favor of a "German" socialism as opposed to the "Jewish" socialism of Marx and his collabourators. 191 This movement was inspired by patriotic motives, for Dühring held that the victory of Marxian socialism could not fail to result in the complete subordination of the people to the state, to the advantage of the prominent Jews and their acolytes. 192 Towards 1875, Dühring became the center of a small group of Berlinese socialists of which Johann Most and the Jew Eduard Bernstein were members. The influence of this group, however, did not survive the great polemic which Dühring had to sustain with Friedrich Engels, the spiritual brother of "Marx the Jew." 193 Dühring's influence upon the socialist masses in fact declined in proportion as his antisemitism became accentuated, and towards 1878 it was extinct. In 1894 another attempt was made to give socialism an antisemite tendency. This was the work of Richard Calwer, another socialist of strongly nationalist views, at that time on the staff of the "Braunschweiger Volksfreund." "For every good Jewish writer," he declared, "there will be found at least half a dozen who are altogether worthless, but who possess an extraordinary power of self-assertion and an inexhaustible flow of words, but no real understanding of socialism." 194 Calwer's campaign had, however, no better success than that of Dühring. A year before, when petty bourgeois antisemitism was spreading through the country as an anti-capitalist movement which was forming itself into a poltical party and making victims everywhere, the Cologne congress (October 1893) took up a definite position towards this new political movement. Bebel's report (which in antisemite circles had been anticipated with satisfaction), although far from exhaustive, was inspired throughout by a sentiment friendly towards the Jews. Bebel said: "The Jewish student is as a rule industrious during the greater part of his university career, whereas the 'Germanic' student most commonly spends his time in the drinking-bars and restaurants, in the fencing-schools, or in other places which I will not here more particularly specify (laughter). 195 Wilhelm Liebknecht, in his well-known speech at Bielefeld, notably reinforced the impression hostile to antisemitism produced by the congress. Since that time (if we except certain observations made at the Lübeck congress in 1901 by the barrister Wolfgang Heine in a polemic against Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg 196 -- remarks that were maladroit rather than expressions of principle, and at the worst foolish reminiscences of a youth passed as a leader in the Verein deutscher Studenten< /I>) the German socialists have remained immune to the virus of race hatred, and have shown themselves quite unconcerned when ignorant opponents have endeavoured to arouse popular prejudice against them by speaking of them as a party of "Jews and their satellites."

We may now add certain observations upon the frequent adhesion to socialism of members of the plutocracy, an adhesion which at first sight seems so strange. Certain persons of a gentle and charitable disposition, abundantly furnished with everything that can satisfy their desires, are sometimes inspired by the need of undertaking propagandist activities. They wish, for example, to make their neighbors share in the well-being which they themselves enjoy. These are the rich philanthropists. In most cases their conduct is the outcome of hypersensitiveness or sentimentalism; they cannot endure the sufferings of others, not so much because they experience a genuine pity for the sufferers, but because the sight of pain arouses pain in themselves and shocks their aesthetic sense. They thus resemble the majority of human beings, who cannot bear to see pigeons slaughtered but whose sentiments in this respect do not impair their relish for a pigeon-pie.

In the sick brains of certain persons whose wealth is exceeded only by their love of paradox, there has originated the fantastic belief that in view of the imminence of the revolution they can preserve their fortunes from the confiscatory fury of the revolutionists only by making profession of the socialist faith, and by thus gaining the powerful and useful friendship of its leaders. It is this ingenuous belief which has thrown them into the arms of the socialists. Others, again, among the rich, hasten to enroll themselves as members of the Socialist Party, in the dread lest their lives should be threatened through the exasperation of the poor. More frequently, however, as has been well shown by Bernard Shaw, the rich man is drawn towards socialism because he finds the greatest possible difficulty in procuring for himself any new pleasures. He begins to feel a disgust for the bourgeois world, and in the end this may stifle his class consciousness, or at least may suppress the instinct which has hitherto led him to light for self-preservation against the proletariat.

It is a very striking phenomenon how large is the percentage of Jewish rentiers who become members of the Socialist Party. In part his may be due to the racial characteristics of the Jew to which reference has already been made. In part, however, it is the outcome of the psychological peculiarities of the wealthy man afflicted with satiety. In certain cases, again, the strongly developed love of acquisition characteristic of the Jews affords the explanation, where the possibility has been recognized of making a clever investment of capital even in working-class undertakings.

It may, however, be said without fear of error that the great majority of young bourgeois who come over to socialism do so, to quote an expression used by Felice Momigliano, in perfect sincerity and inspired by ardent goodwill. They seek neither popular approbation, nor wealth, nor distinctions, nor well-paid positions. They think merely that a man must set himself right with his own conscience and must affirm his faith in action.

These men, again, may be classed in two distinct categories. We have, on the one hand, the loving apostles of wide sympathies, who wish to embrace the whole of humanity in their, ideal. On the other hand we have the zealots, fierce, rigid, austere, and uncompromising.

But among the socialists of bourgeois origin we find other and less agreeable elements. Above all there are those who make a profession of discontent, the neurasthenics and the mauvais coucheurs. Yet more numerous are the malcontents from personal motives, "the charlatans, and the ambitious. Many hate the authority of the state because it is inaccessible to them. It is the old story of the fox and the grapes. They are animated by jealousy, by the unassuaged thirst for power; their feelings resemble those of the younger sons of great families who are inspired with hatred and envy towards their richer and more fortunate brothers. They are animated by a pride which makes them prefer the position of chief in proletarian Gaul to that of subordinate in aristocratic Rome. There are yet other types somewhat similar to those just enumerated. First of all, these are the eccentrics. It seems natural that those whose position is low should attempt to storm the heights. But there are some whose position is lofty and who yet experience an irresistible need to descend from the heights, where they feel that their movements are restricted, and who believe that by descending they will gain greater liberty. They seek "sincerity"; they endeavour to discover "the people" of whom they have an ideal in their minds; they are idealists to the verge of lunacy.

There may be added all those disillusioned and dissatisfied persons who have not succeeded in gaining the attention of the bourgeoisie to an extent proportionate to their own conception of their genius. Such persons throw themselves on the neck of the proletariat, in most cases with the vague and instinctive hope of attaining a speedier success in view of the deficient culture of the working classes, of gaining a place in the limelight and playing a leading part. They are visionaries, geniuses misunderstood, apostates of all kinds, literary bohemians, the unrecognized inventors of various social panaceas, ratés, rapins, cabotins, quack-salvers at the fair, clowns -- all persons who are not thinking of educating the masses but of cultivating their own egos.