The Expanding Power of Labor

European leaders worried about the rise of working-class political power late in the nineteenth century. Laboring people’s growing confidence came in part from expanding educational opportunities. Workers in England, for example, avidly read works by Shakespeare and took literally his calls for political action in the cause of justice that rang out in plays such as Julius Caesar. Unions gained members among factory workers, while the labor and socialist parties won seats in parliaments as men in the lower classes received the vote. In Germany, Kaiser William II had allowed antisocialist laws to lapse after dismissing Bismarck as chancellor in 1890. Through grassroots organizing at the local level, the German Social Democratic Party became the largest group in the Reichstag by 1912.

Winning elections actually raised problems among socialists. Some felt uncomfortable sitting in parliaments alongside the upper classes—in Marxism, the enemies of working people. Others worried that accepting high public offices would weaken socialists’ commitment to the goal of revolution. These issues divided socialist organizations. Between 1900 and 1904, the Second International wrestled with the question of revisionism—that is, whether socialists should work from within governments to improve the daily lives of laborers or push for a violent revolution to overthrow governments. Powerful German Marxists argued that settling for reform would leave the wealthy unchallenged while throwing small crumbs to a few working-class politicians. Police persecution forced some working-class parties to operate in exile. The Russian government, for instance, outlawed political parties, imprisoned activists, and gave the vote to only a limited number of men when it finally introduced a parliament in 1905. Thus, Russian Marxist V. I. Lenin (1870–1924), who would take power during the Russian Revolution of 1917, operated outside the country.

Lenin advanced the theory that a highly disciplined socialist elite—rather than the working class as a whole—would lead a lightly industrialized Russia into socialism. At a 1903 party meeting of Russian Marxists, he maneuvered his opponents into walking out of the proceedings so that his supporters gained control of the party. Thereafter, his faction was known as the Bolsheviks, so named after the Russian word for “majority,” which they had temporarily formed. They struggled to suppress the Mensheviks (“minority”), who had been the dominant voice in Russian Marxism until Lenin tricked them. Neither of these factions, however, had as large a constituency within Russia as the Socialist Revolutionaries, whose objective was to politicize peasants, rather than industrial workers, to bring about revolution. All of these groups organized in secret instead of using electoral politics.

During this same period, anarchists, along with some trade union members known as syndicalists, kept Europe in a panic with their terrorist acts. In the 1880s, anarchists had bombed stock exchanges, parliaments, and businesses. By the 1890s, they were assassinating heads of state: the Spanish premier in 1897, the empress of Austria-Hungary in 1898, the king of Italy in 1900, and the president of the United States in 1901, to name a few famous victims. Syndicalists advocated the use of direct action, such as general strikes and sabotage, to paralyze the economy and give labor unions more power. In response, politicians from the old landowning and military elites of eastern and central Europe worked to reverse the trend toward constitutionalism and mass political participation.