Politics & Power Quote by Gustav Stresemann

Stresemann is arguing that democracy is not a temporary arrangement negotiated between parties; it is a non-negotiable civic ethic. The line is built to outlast electoral swings: “No change in the balance” doesn’t just mean coalition churn, it anticipates volatility as normal and insists that inclusion must remain constant anyway. He’s drawing a bright line between the theatrics of parliamentary advantage and the deeper legitimacy of the state.

The key word is “class,” and in Weimar Germany that word carried live ammunition. Stresemann governed in a republic haunted by the memory of empire, pressured by communist agitation on one side and nationalist reaction on the other, with industrialists, unions, and a resentful middle class all convinced the system was rigged against them. In that climate, “excluded” signals more than formal disenfranchisement; it points to the social reality of people feeling locked out of decision-making and, therefore, unbound by its outcomes. He’s trying to foreclose the logic that produces extremism: if the state is “theirs,” why respect its rules?

The subtext is disciplined, even prosecutorial: shared responsibility is the price of shared power. By pairing “contributing to” with “sharing responsibility,” Stresemann rejects both aristocratic paternalism (rule without broad consent) and populist entitlement (claiming benefits without accepting constraint). It’s a wager that the republic survives only if every major social bloc is made a stakeholder, not a spectator.