The Anxious Triumph

by Donald Sassoon

  I found that the causes of the vulgarities of civilization lay deeper than I had thought, and little by little I was driven to the conclusion that all these uglinesses are but the outward expression of the innate moral baseness into which we are forced by our present form of society.57

  This ambivalence towards industry was also present in northern Europe, particularly where the Lutheran Church predominated, as in Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Estonia, and the Scandinavian countries, where those who were particularly concerned with the social question ended up in the ranks of social democracy, whose anticlericalism was fairly restrained. Those concerned with defending agrarian relations against industry ended up in specifically agrarian parties. Here religion was almost incidental. Thus Santeri Alkio, who founded the Agrarian League (Maalaisliitto) in Finland in 1906, was a strong Christian, though also an opponent of an established state Church. The Agrarian League had no confessional basis, its main ideology being a kind of linguistic nationalism (anti-Swedish and anti-Russian) and a populism tinged with liberalism.

  Some of the agrarian parties that emerged in eastern Europe like-wise had no overtly religious basis. In Bulgaria the Agrarian Union, which held its first congress in 1899, originally campaigned against a new land tax proposed by the ruling Liberal Party. By 1901 it had turned itself into a fully fledged party, the Bulgarian Agrarian Popular Union – the word ‘popular’ signalled its ambition to be a party of the whole people and not just of the peasantry.58 By 1908 it was the largest opposition party in the country, albeit with only 11 per cent of the vote, since the opposition was unusually fragmented.59 Its leader, Alexander Stamboliski, an anti-monarchist who became Prime Minister after the war, wrote at length on the importance of peasants and agriculture but kept Christianity in the background. He was a corporatist in the sense that he thought that the country should be run not by political parties (which he despised) but by representatives of economic interests, namely a group of people with the same occupation (artisans, wage workers, merchants, entrepreneurs, peasants, and so on, the sort of society some Italian Fascists tried to develop in the 1930s).60

  The Czech Agrarian Party, formed in 1899 (it merged in 1905 with its Moravian and Silesian counterparts), sought to unite all country-dwellers against rising socialism. Thus alongside typical agrarian demands (tariffs policies that suited farmers’ interests, removal of ‘unfair’ land taxes, and so on) the party took up traditional nationalist demands, such as equality of the Czech language with the German language and as much autonomy as possible within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but religion played no formal part in its ideological make-up.61 Its enemies were the ‘bourgeois’ parties such as the Czech National Party (Národní strana) or Old Czech Party, and the National Liberal Party (Národní strana svobodomyslná), also known as the Young Czech Party, which claimed to represent the nation as a whole.62 There was also a Czech Catholic Party, led by the priest Jan Šrámek (later Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile during the Second World War). It emerged in the 1890s, far stronger in Moravia, where it obtained 36.6 per cent in the 1911 elections, than in Bohemia. Inspired by Rerum Novarum, it stood in antagonism to the marked anticlericalism of the Young Czech Party.63 Its real growth, however, occurred when Czechoslovakia became an independent state after the First World War.

  The rise of religious-based parties in eastern Europe was further encouraged by the agrarian crisis of the 1880s, which affected peasant smallholders and rural artisans. This enabled membership of some religious-based parties to grow, as was the case with the Catholic People’s Party of Hungary (founded in 1894). This was ‘anti-capitalist’ in the sense that it wanted to restore ‘the natural order’ uprooted by liberalism and capitalism, which it decried as a form of gambling. But this party was never as strong as its Austrian counterpart, Karl Lueger’s Christian Social movement, which we will discuss at greater length below.64

  Organized political Christianity was stronger in Belgium than anywhere else, followed by German-speaking areas such as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In Switzerland a Catholic and rural party (rather than Protestant and urban) arose as early as 1848. It changed its name to Katholische Volkspartei in 1894 and to Konservative Volkspartei in 1912, and again in 1957 before in 1970 becoming the Swiss Christian Democratic Party, until recently one of the major Swiss parties.

  Of greater significance was the emergence of a Catholic political party in Bismarck’s new German Empire. This Germany was roughly two-thirds Protestant and one-third Catholic. Had Austria become part of Greater Germany (Größdeutschland) – as many German nationalists had hoped – Catholics and Protestants would have had more or less equal weight. As it turned out, ‘smaller’ Germany (Klein-deutschland) suited the Protestants better. Apart from the obvious religious differences, Catholics were far less ‘bourgeois’, in the sense of middle class or Mittelschicht, than the Protestants; Catholic workers were more religious than their Protestant counterparts; far better organized around a formidable network of associations, charities, music societies, clubs, and so on – a path the Social Democrats also took. Catholics were thus seen by Bismarck and his main political allies, the National Liberals, as potential threats to the authority and stability of the new empire, because, or so he claimed, they did not possess a national identity (Protestants, after all, were Lutheran and hence ‘more German’). Catholics looked towards Rome and had accepted the new dogma of papal infallibility – decreed by the First Vatican Council (1869–70) – just as nineteenth-century nationalism recorded its clearest victories: the unification of Germany and the ‘liberation’ of Rome, the new capital of a new state, by Italian troops.

  Faced with growing Protestant hostility, German Catholics, to protect their rights as a minority, formed their own party, the Deutsche Zentrumspartei or Zentrum. Bismarck interpreted all this as the continuation of an age-old conflict for power between ‘kingship and the priestly caste’.65 Anti-Catholicism became state policy. It became known as the Kulturkampf (struggle for culture in the sense of struggle for civilization). This ‘struggle’ was particularly intense in Prussia, where the majority of Catholics were Polish – the Kulturkampf had a decidedly anti-Polish subtext.66 Laws against the Jesuits were enacted, enabling the authorities to deport them at will; priests not appointed by the state were arrested; Catholic schools were subjected to strict government supervision; and some church property was confiscated. Ultimately, the Kulturkampf proved a failure, since it politicized Catholics to an extent unimaginable before.67 The Zentrum became the focus of Catholic loyalties at the expense of pastors and bishops.68 Furthermore the Bismarckian state also lacked (and failed to develop) institutions for its anti-Catholic laws. German judges had a scrupulous regard for evidence, and their rigorous approach hindered the successful implementation of the Kulturkampf, which, anyway, encountered considerable public hostility.69 In the Reichstag elections of 1874 the Zentrum doubled its vote. Bismarck’s Germany was not as authoritarian as is commonly thought.70

  Bismarck, ever the realist, dropped anti-Catholic repression and, in 1878, with the support of the once so reviled Zentrum Party, turned against the socialists of the Social Democratic Party, not by banning the party outright but by making life difficult for them (banning newspapers, strikes, meetings, etc.) with the so-called Anti-Socialist Laws. The Zentrum, once a subculture, was becoming part of the establishment. It was an ‘identity’ party with a clear overall aim: the defence of the religious interests of Catholics. Otherwise, as was the case with nationalist parties, it was far from clear what its politics should be. Its class basis was complex: there were few Catholic industrialists, but plenty of Catholic farmers, rural dwellers, shopkeepers, and even some workers (here the competition with the SPD was keen). Catholics, like Social Democrats, opposed high taxes and military expenditure and also wanted the eight-hour day. Catholics were ‘anti-centralist’ because they feared a centralizing state. In fact, Catholics everywhere were anti-statist because states everywhere were encroac
hing on education and family law (marriage, divorce), and after all the Roman Catholic Church was a transnational organization. The Zentrum, however, was far from being a tool of Rome, as its enemies insisted. In 1887, Leo XIII, as a gesture of conciliation towards Bismarck, put pressure on the Zentrum to support the government’s military budget. The Zentrum refused. The Pope leaked his instructions and allowed Bismarck to publish them.71 Most of the senior German clergy sided with the party. The Pope, they thought, was infallible only on theological rather than political matters.

  Catholics and Social Democrats turned out to be the real victors of the 1890 Reichstag (federal parliament) election. The Social Democrats obtained 19.7 per cent of the vote, but only thirty-five seats. The Zentrum had 18.6 per cent but, thanks to a distribution that favoured rural areas, it obtained 106 of the 397 seats, making it the largest party in the Reichstag. So the least pro-capitalist parties had polled together almost 40 per cent of the vote. The National Liberal Party and the various conservative parties, Bismarck’s staunchest allies in his ‘wars’ against Social Democrats and Catholics, lost heavily.72 Bismarck wanted to renew the anti-socialist legislation but many, including many industrialists, were alarmed at the unending climate of confrontation with the unions and the Social Democrats. The bill to renew the legislation was thrown out by an unlikely and disparate coalition made up of Conservatives (who wanted a more anti-socialist law), Social Democrats, Catholics, and liberals.73 Even the young Kaiser, Wilhelm II, preferred a more conciliatory approach towards the ‘social question’. It was the end of the great Chancellor. He was sacked by Wilhelm in March 1890, having held office for twenty-seven years.

  The Social Democrats (and the Zentrum) went from strength to strength. They obtained the most votes in every election leading up to the war and, in 1912, for the first time, also won the most seats (110 out of 397) with more than double the votes of the Zentrum Party. It was now, in every sense, the largest party in Germany. This was a pattern that would repeat itself throughout democratic Europe in the course of the twentieth century: pro-capitalism, pure and simple, was never a recipe for electoral success. To be a leading party one had to be a Christian Democratic Party, or a Social Democratic Party, or a nationalist ‘one nation’ party like the Gaullists and the Conservatives. Only after 1980, when neo-liberalism had become the hegemonic ideology, was it occasionally possible to win on the basis of being the ‘best party’ to manage the market economy.

  In Catholic Austria there was a successful Christian Social Party (Christlichsoziale Partei), but it was strong only in the Austrian part of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Unlike the Zentrum it was strongly urban-based. Its birth was almost simultaneous with that of the other great mass party of fin-de-siècle Austria, the Social Democratic Workers’ Party. Both were centred on Vienna, where Karl Lueger, a social Christian (and a ferocious anti-Semite), dominated local politics as mayor from 1897 until his death in 1910. Lueger’s goal was the unification of the fragmented bourgeoisie, the Bürgertum, into an effective political party to meet the challenge of social democracy.74 In 1907, thanks to universal manhood suffrage, the Christian Social Party became the largest parliamentary group in Austria’s Lower House, though, at the subsequent election, that position was taken by the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiter-partei Österreichs). So, in both Austria and Germany, no overtly pro-capitalist party succeeded in obtaining a majority in Parliament.

  The Emperor Franz Joseph, as well as the central government, were alarmed at Lueger’s extreme populism and anti-Semitism, and tried to block his rise by vetoing his election.75 Lueger’s party was the first anti-Semitic populist party of some importance. There were, of course, plenty of anti-Semites in Europe, but they were never organized in substantial political parties (Adolf Stoecker’s Christlichsoziale Partei in Germany did not have a mass following). Lueger used anti-Semitism for political ends but the strength of the party rested on more complex foundations. Its main strength was among Catholic artisans in Austria who were hostile towards immigrants and Jews since these were, in the main, supporters of the Liberal Party and/or competing artisans. In the 1880s, before the party was formed, Lueger’s populism was overtly hostile to big capital (originally he had been active in the left faction of the Progressive Party, a liberal party), and he demanded the regulation of private companies, protectionism to defend local industry, nationalization of insurance and credit systems, laws to protect the workers against big industry, and laws against political corruption.76 By 1887 he had espoused political Christianity.77

  In 1891 the newly launched Christian Social Party won major electoral successes in Vienna and, in 1897, when Lueger became mayor. In his inaugural address he outlined the kind of ‘municipal socialism’ he wanted for Vienna: municipalized utilities, including new gas and water works, improved care for the poor, and a greater share of tax revenues for the city.78 By 1910, when Lueger died, a substantial share of the city budget depended on the profits from a vast network of municipal utilities and services. By 1913, Vienna had one of the best public transportation systems in the world.79 Lueger was the kind of anti-capitalist who distinguished between good and bad capitalism. The party’s appeal was a combination of Christianity, anti-Semitism, and elements of economic interventionism, including many from the Social Democratic programme.80 It prefigured later fascist parties. Hitler wrote of Karl Lueger, ‘my fair judgement turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times.’81 Posterity has been kind to Karl Lueger. In 1926 his former opponent, the Social Democrat Karl Seitz, unveiled an imposing bronze statue of Lueger in Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Platz.82 The square is still so named and the statue still stands.

  The Christian Social Party was anti-liberal but so were the Social Democrats. The two parties detested each other, but they were both strong in Vienna, and Vienna was the bureaucratic centre of the empire.83 The major banking centre was Budapest, once a provincial backwater but, in the decades leading to 1914, one of the most vibrant and fastest-growing cities of Europe (it was the eighth largest city on the continent).84 The major industrial centres were in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia, later part of Czechoslovakia and today’s Czech Republic. After the dismemberment of the empire in 1918 and particularly after the Second World War, when Austria had become a small Alpine republic with a capital that had once been the capital of an empire, the two dominant parties continued to be the Christian Social Party and the Social Democrats (under various different names) for nearly a century.

  Catholic parties were strong in Germany and Austria, but never supreme, at least not in the decades leading up to the First World War. They never formed a government. Elsewhere they barely existed, with the one major exception: Belgium. Faced with a strong anticlerical Liberal Party, dominant since the creation of the country in 1830, Catholics started to organize politically earlier than elsewhere, though it would take a long time for a proper Catholic party to emerge. What they objected to was not so much the iniquities of industrialization and capitalism as the determination of the Liberals to create a strongly secular state in control of education. There was substantial workers’ unrest in 1885–6 led by the coalminers, and a constitutional crisis over the reform of the electoral system (1891–5).85 The main political conflict, however, was over education and whether the Church or the State controlled schools. It was so acute that it came to be known as La première guerre scolaire (1879–84). The Liberal government had passed a law in 1879 establishing that there should be at least one secular school in each commune. The bishops reacted by announcing that the last rites would be withheld from teachers who taught in those schools and from parents who sent their children there – thus condemning them to burn in Hell for eternity. When the Catholics returned to power in 1884, they modified the law in their favour without, however, abolishing secular schools, as the more intransigent Catholics had hoped. The struggle over education continued throughout the twentieth cent
ury. There was a second guerre scolaire in the 1950s. Finally, in 1958, a compromise, still extant, was reached. Capitalism, industrialization, the economy, labour market regulation, and so on were never the central issues in this lengthy conflict.

  In Belgium, the two-party system (Liberals versus Catholics) became, as the socialist movement developed in the last decades of the nineteenth century, a three-party fight. Liberals and Socialists cooperated on secularism, since both detested the Catholics (‘popish gangs’), but disagreed on regulating markets. Liberals and Catholics hated each other but both feared the revolutionary appeal of the Socialists. Socialists and Catholics regarded the Liberals as their main enemy, though for quite different reasons. Since the Catholics were always in power after 1884, Liberals and Socialists ended up cooperating in trying to eliminate clerical control over education, with little success. To complicate things further, there was a regional dimension: the Catholics were stronger in Flanders (with the exception of industrial Ghent) whereas the Liberals and Socialists were stronger in French-speaking Wallonia.