Speech Before the Reichstag: On the Law for Workers’ Compensation (1884)

Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor of Germany from 1871 to 1890, combined two ideas that were considered opposites in the first half of the century: nationalism and conservatism. The nineteenth-century liberal focus on individualism stripped the upper classes of their obligation to the lower, creating an opportunity for conservatives like Bismarck. By offering support to the working classes, Bismarck undermined the claim made by liberals that their policies expressed the will of the people. At the same time, he made the revolutionary platforms put forward by socialists and communists less appealing to working people. One of the places this struggle played out was in the protections afforded to workers, which liberals saw as interfering with the property rights of factory owners. Below, Bismarck lays out his vision of the proper relationship between the state and its citizens. As you read it, ask yourself what obligations Bismarck believed the state had to the people. What obligations did the people owe the state in return?

Deputy von Vollmar has expressed his astonishment that . . . we are making new and different proposals. Gentlemen, that is not our fault. Yesterday Deputy Bamberger1 compared the business of government with that of a cobbler who measures shoes, which he thereupon examines as to whether they are suitable for him or not and accordingly accepts or rejects them. I am by no means dissatisfied with this humble comparison, by which you place the united governments in the perspective of a shoemaker taking measurements for Herr Bamberger. The profession of government in the sense of Frederick the Great is to serve the people, and may it be also as a cobbler; the opposite is to dominate the people. We want to serve the people. But I make the demand on Herr Bamberger that he act as my co-shoemaker in order to make sure that no member of the public goes barefoot, and to create a suitable shoe for the people in this crucial area.

Deputy von Vollmar2 then proceeded to the connection that he imputes between our proposal and the Socialist Law.3 It is not correct, as he conceives it, that we made the proposal in order to win more support for the Socialist Law. There is, indeed, a connection between the two, but it is quite different. At the time of the submission of the Socialist Law the government, and particularly His Majesty the Emperor and, if I am not in error, also the majority of the Reichstag, underwrote certain promissory notes for the future and gave assurances that as a corollary to this Socialist Law a serious effort for the betterment of the fate of the workers should go hand in hand. In my opinion that is the complement to the Socialist Law; if you have persistently decided not to improve the situation of the workers, then I understand that you reject the Socialist Law. For it is an injustice on the one hand to hinder the self-defense of a large class of our fellow citizens and on the other hand not to offer them aid for the redress of that which causes the dissatisfaction. That the Social Democratic leaders wish no advantage for this law, that I understand; dissatisfied workers are just what they need. Their mission is to lead, to rule, and the necessary prerequisite for that is numerous dissatisfied classes. They must naturally oppose any attempt of the government, however well intentioned it may be, to remedy this situation, if they do not wish to lose control over the masses they mislead. Therefore, I place no value on the objections that come from the leaders of the Social Democrats; I would place a very high value on the objections that come from the workers in general. Our workers, thank God, are not all Social Democrats and are not to such a degree unresponsive to the efforts of the confederated governments to help them, perhaps also not to the difficulties that these efforts meet in the parliamentary arena. . . . I in no way support an absolutist government. . . .

[The real question] is whether the state—by state I always mean the empire—whether the state has the right to abandon to chance the performance of a responsibility of the state, namely, to protect the worker from accidents and need when he is injured or becomes old, so that private companies form that charge premiums from the workers and the employers at whatever rates the market will bear. . . . As soon as the state concerns itself with these matters at all, however—and I believe that it is the state’s duty to concern itself—it must strive for the least expensive form and must take no advantage from it, and above all not lose sight of the benefit for the poor and the needy. Otherwise one could indeed relinquish the fulfillment of certain state duties, such as among other things the care of the poor, in the widest sense of the word, as well as schools and national defense to private stock companies. . . . In the same way one can continue to believe that the whole of the state’s responsibility must in the end be left to the voluntary formation of private stock companies. The whole problem is rooted in the question: does the state have the responsibility to care for its helpless fellow citizens, or does it not? I maintain that it does have this duty, and to be sure, not simply the Christian state, as I once permitted myself to allude to with the words “practical Christianity,” but rather every state by its very nature. It would be madness for a corporate body or a collectivity to take charge of those objectives that the individual can accomplish; those goals that the community can fulfill with justice and profit should be relinquished to the community. There are objectives that only the state in its totality can fulfill. . . . Among the last mentioned objectives [of the state] belong national defense [and] the general system of transportation. . . . To these belong also the help of persons in distress and the prevention of such justified complaints as in fact provide excellent material for exploitation by the Social Democrats. That is the responsibility of the state from which the state will not be able to withdraw in the long run.

If one argues against my position that this is socialism, then I do not fear that at all. The question is, where do the justifiable limits of state socialism lie? Without such a boundary we could not manage our affairs. Each law for poor relief is socialism. . . .

There scarcely exists nowadays a word with which more abuse is committed than the word free. . . . According to my experience, everyone understands by freedom only the freedom for oneself and not for others, as well as the responsibility of others to refrain absolutely from any limitation of one’s own freedom. In short, by freedom they actually mean domination; by freedom of speech they understand the domination of the speaker; by freedom of the press the predominant and preponderant influence of editorial offices and of newspapers. Indeed gentlemen, and I am not speaking here in confessional terms, in all confessions, by freedom of the church the domination of the priests is very frequently understood. . . . I have no desire to speak of human weakness, but rather of the human custom which establishes the importance of the individual person, the dominance of individual persons and their influence over the general public, precisely on the pretext that freedom demands it. That is indeed more strikingly realized in our own history than in any other. In the centuries of the decay of the German Empire, German freedom was always sharply accentuated. What did this mean? The freedom of the princes from the emperor, and the power of the nobles over the serfs! They wanted for their part to be free; that means, to be free was for them and also for others identical with the concept to dominate. They did not feel themselves to be free unless they dominated. Therefore, whenever I read the word free before another adjective, I become very suspicious. . . . Deputy Bamberger expressed subsequently his regret concerning the “socialist fad.” It is, however, a harsh expression when one characterizes as a “socialist fad” the careful decision of the allied governments in Germany, weighed for three years, which they again, for the third time, propose to you in the hope finally to obtain your approval. Perhaps the whole institution of the state is a socialist fad. If everyone could live on his own, perhaps everyone would be much more free, but also much less protected and guarded. If the Deputy calls the proposal a socialist whim, I reply simply that it is untrue, and my assertion is as justified as his. He uses further the expression that the old age and disability care “were chimerical plans.” . . . There is nothing about our proposal that is chimerical. Our proposals are completely genuine; they are the result of an existing need. . . . The fulfillment of a state responsibility is never a chimera, and as such I recognize it as a legislative responsibility. It is in fact not a pleasant occupation to devote these public cobbler services to a customer like Deputy Bamberger, who treats us with scorn and ingratitude in the face of real exertions, and who characterizes as a “fad” and a “chimera” the proposal that was worked out in order to make it acceptable to you. I would like to suggest in general that we might be somewhat milder in the expressions with which we mutually characterize our efforts.

From Jan Goldstein and John W. Boyer, eds., University of Chicago, Readings in Western Civilization, vol. 8, Nineteenth-Century Europe: Liberalism and Its Critics, trans. John W. Boyer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 419-425.