First Speech in the German Reichstag

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(Argument in favor of a motion to grant a furlough to imprisoned comrades. Delivered November 21, 1874.)

The motion I am making reveals to you a picture of our German conditions. The group to which I and my fellows in making this motion belong has nine members, and of these nine members three are at present imprisoned. We are asking for the liberation of these three men. Why are these three men imprisoned? Has there been an act of high treason? Has the Social-Democratic Party, which some are attempting to outlaw, been guilty of any traitorous actions? We have had news in recent years, and Germany has actually witnessed the fact, that monarchs have been dethroned, that holes have been shot by cannons into the rights of legitimacy, into the kingship by the grace of God, but this was not done by Social-Democrats; the Social-Democrats did not tear up the treaties of federation, did not subvert the German constitution. Those who have done this were not tried under indictments of high treason and no state attorney drew up any counts against them.

No doubt, on one occasion, an attempt was made to draw up an indictment of high treason against our party; I know — I was to be named myself; the public transactions lasted for eighteen days, after a long preliminary investigation, and in this long preliminary investigation, as well as in the eighteen-day published hearings, not even a trace was found of any material evidence against us. And although we have been sentenced, the entire press of Europe, I think I may say the public opinion of the civilized world, has expressed itself as of the view that this trial was nothing but a frame-up, in which we, the representatives of one party, were condemned by the representatives of another party, or, to put the matter more plainly, we, the representatives of one class, the oppressed, were condemned by the bourgeoisie, which sat on the jurors’ benches.

Now, gentlemen, why are the three prisoners, whose liberation we are proposing, in prison? All of them for so-called abuse of free speech. But the fact remains that all the assertions for which our mandatories are now in prison would have passed by unpunished if they had been pronounced in this hall. The essential content of August Bebel’s statement is — although I have just heard some one laugh — entirely right: it is true that we were promised liberty, and it is true that we have not liberty now! And that Germany is now practically a huge barracks, and that Heinrich Heine’s national penitentiary has become a matter of fact — this is a truth we have all been made to feel.

Of course, for you, for the majority, for the ruling class, it is not a penitentiary. I was in jail for years and I can tell you from my own personal experience that when I returned from Hubertusburg it did not seem to me that I was returning to liberty, it seemed to me as if I were leaving a small prison and entering a big one. And furthermore, I lacked the feeling of security which I had had, after all, in the little jail. There at least I was safe from indictments, from trials, while here we know that wherever we may go there are traps set for us, that men are lying in wait for every word we speak.

Liebknecht now proceeds to discuss in detail the indictments raised against August Bebel, Johann Most, and Wilhelm Hasenclever, after which he continues:

The men whose liberation we propose were elected by the people with great majorities; they received, together with their mandates, a certificate of confidence from thousands and thousands of men. None of these men have been found guilty of any dishonorable offense; none of them is even suspected remotely of any dishonorable action. And while these men are obliged to remain in jail, we may witness a spectacle in which men who — if I may use a word which was recently pronounced in a trial by one of your own number — have rubbed elbows with the penitentiary, standing high in the confidence of the highest national officials, and who in some cases are even permitted to take part in the discussions of legislative bodies — men who were involved in the promotion scandals, men whose names have not come forth without a stain from the Royal Investigation Commission.

On the one hand, there is impunity for what the people consider to be a crime; on the other hand, there is severe punishment for actions that none of you would dare designate as a crime. Light weight for the rich, for the plunderers, for the nobles, for high state officials, heavy weight for the proletariat, for the workers, and their representatives.

I am not under any illusion as to the result of our motion. Its adoption would mean a vote of censure for the system now observed all over Germany in dealing with our party, a system of persecutions of every kind, of punishments, of trials of all types, calculated to put down the Social-Democratic Party. The passing of our motion would mean your condemning the State in its resort to mechanical modes of oppression in its vain struggle against ideas, your thereby condemning the prevalent police system. You would be condemning the fact that we have been practically outlawed.

Not only am I under no illusions as to the outcome of my motion; but even as a party member, I am completely indifferent as to the result of the vote. No doubt, it would be a very pleasant thing for our captive comrades to be permitted to breathe the air of freedom for a time, but our party is accustomed to struggle and persecution, and we know that persecutions can only strengthen us and lead us more swiftly to our goal. The decision you will make concerning our motion will not have the slightest influence upon the development of our party and its advance. The Social-Democratic Party will attain its goal. It will continue to live even if this Reichstag is dissolved, together with the empire of which it is a part. The Social-Democratic Party is an idea, based upon actual conditions, and ideas cannot be destroyed by destroying a few individuals.

Incarcerate the idea of the Social-Democracy in the person of its representatives; shoot the representatives of the Social-Democracy, if you will, following the procedure now current in France. You will thereby strengthen the idea of the Social-Democracy. From the soil of the conditions in which our party has its roots, new champions will arise, and these new champions will in the long run multiply morally and materially into such immense masses that they will conquer their opponents, first in the spiritual field and then — if need be — in the physical field.