114 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 115 was both a student as well as a teacher at that remarkable institution of learning.
The Neue Zeit was founded in the fall of 1882, when the Bismarck anti Socialist laws were in full operation and the German Socialist movement at its lowest ebb. But its young founder. Kautsky was then a young man of twenty eightsucceeded in enlisting the co operation of the best talent of the Marxian wing of the International Socialist Movement, and when the German Socialist movement revived again and the Marxian wing became the dominant element of the revived International, the Neue Zeit became the scientific organ of the International Socialist Movement. The leading Socialist thinkers of the world and the most active workers of the international movement co operated to make its position unique inot only in the field of Socialist journalism, but in the field of journalism generally. We know of no publication which has reached so high a level of scientific attainment, while being also the organ of expression of a world wide practical movement.
Of the first generation of Marxian Socialists who contributed to its pages we may mention Frederick Engels, August Bebel, and Paul Lafargue. Of the next generation: Kautsky himself, who soon came to be recognized as the leading Marxian scholar the world over; then George Plechanoff, Franz Mehring, Edward Bernstein, Belfort Bax. Then came the third generation a host of young scholars and active workers in the movement scattered throughout the civilized world, but all united by the bands of the great intellectual and practical movement of which they were a part and of the unity of which the Neue Zeit was the best expression.
Such was the Neue Zeit under Kautsky editorship and while the unity of the movement lasted.
But the unity of the movement is gone and so is the Neue Zeit. For the Neue Zeit under the new management, under the management of Scheidemann Co. and as the expression.
of the Scheidemannized part of the Socialist movement cannot be considered as a continuation of the Neue Zeit that we knew and loved so well. The Neue Zeit is dead, along with the Second International of which it was the best expression.
There is a time to weep.
But more even than for weeping this is a time for thinking. For in fruitful thought there fies the seeds of the rehabilitation of the movement, of the breakdown wherof the demise of the old Neue Zeit is a visible sign. And we cannot think of a more fitting way of paying tribute to Kautsky and his work in the Neue Zeit as well as doing something towards the rehabilitation of the movement of which the Neue Zeit under Kautsky has served so well than placing before our readers an important thought expressed by Kautsky in the last article which he wrote for the Neue Zeit.
Since the German militarists, junkers and imperialists have started out to free oppressed nationalities, many Socialists seem to have lost their bearings and began clamoring for the diverse German made freedoms. Foremost among these are the demands for an Independent Poland and an Independent Finland, for which a certain class of Socialists in Germany and in this country have been clamoring vociferously.
Some of them add an Independent Ukraine.
Before the war such demands, when not instigated by agents of some rival government, were usually put forward by extreme nationalists or nationalistic Socialists. The revolutionary Socialists everywhere opposed them. So in Poland, for instance: The demand for an independent Poland was made, whenever it was made by the extreme section of Polish nationalists and occasionally by some nationalistic Socialists of the most opportunistic type. The revolutionary Socialists, the Socialists who followed Rosa Luxemburg and other revolutionary leaders of the proletariat always opposed this demand, being convinced that the interests of the Polish working class lay not in separation from the Russian proletariatbut in forming with it a democratic federal Russian Republic.
When the War came to confound the tongues of men, our tongues and thoughts stand in very great danger of being confounded in this particular and of our being carried off