tly recanted this view and
proclaimed that the Socialistic aim in future should be the
"strengthening of the economic and political power of the workman so
that the expropriation of private property could be obtained by
legislation." The Marxian doctrine was adopted in Germany by Wilhelm
Liebknecht and August Bebel, who, at Eisenach in 1869, founded the
Association of Social Democratic Workmen, to which the present German
party owes its name. The Eisenach programme declared "the economic
dependence of the workmen on the monopolists of the tools of labour
the foundation of servitude and social evil," and demanded "the
economic emancipation of the working classes." An attempt to get the
Lassalle society to join the Eisenacher society on an international
basis failed for the time, but the two associations finally coalesced
at the Gotha Congress of 1875.

The attempt on the life of William I in 1878 by the anarchist Nobiling
had an important effect on the fortunes of the party and the character
of its programme. The Socialist Laws were passed and the police began
a campaign against the Socialists, of which the mildest features were
the dissolution of societies, the searching of houses, the expulsion
of suspected persons, and the interdiction of Socialist newspapers and
periodicals.

For the next few years the party held its annual congresses in
Switzerland or Denmark, but as the Socialist Laws ceased to have
effect after three years, and were not then renewed, the party resumed
its congresses in Germany. The Congress at Erfurt in 1891 resulted in
the issue of a new programme rejecting the Lassalle plan for the
establishment of workmen's societies for productive purposes and
substituting for it the transfer of all capitalistic private property
engaged in the means of production, such as lands, mines, raw
material, tools, machinery, and means of transport, to the State. The
term used in the programme is "state," not "society," but the State is
in fact nothing but the society armed with coercive powers.

Other objects are universal suffrage for both sexes over twenty,
electoral reform, two-year parliaments, direct legislation "through
the people," some form of parliamentary government, autonomy of the
people in Empire, State, Province, and Parish, conscription, national
militia instead of standing army, international arbitration, abolition
of State religion, free and compulsory education, abolition of capital
punishment, f