ABSTRACT
The constitution of the German Empire before the War of 1914-18 granted all German citizens all personal rights, a fair measure of political rights, and even universal suffrage in the election of the Imperial Reichstag. When the democratic movements originated, they aimed at establishing the rights of the lower-class majority against the privileges of the clergy and the nobility. After the abolition of the political privileges of these minorities a new peril arose: majorities might suppress the liberties of minorities. When the political class splits up into conflicting sections, each of which brandishes a formula of its own, one then has “parties.” Under a democratic form of government there are parties which maintain that the existing social order cannot be altered without impairing the welfare of those very lower classes which bear the weight of the entire structure. Even in the most radically democratic regime the government is not run by the majority of the citizens.
