struggle evolved and became
better organized, it tended more and more definitely and irresistibly
towards a certain goal, whether the workers were yet aware of it or not.
If, therefore, we Socialists participate in the real struggles of
politics, Marx said of himself and his associates (in 1844, at the very
outset of his career), "we expose new principles to the world out of the
principles of the world itself.... We only explain to it the real object
for which it struggles."[3]

But the public still fails, in spite of the phenomenal and continued
growth of the Socialist movement in all modern countries, to grasp the
first principle on which it is based.

"Socialism has many phases," says a typical editorial in the
_Independent_. "It is a political party, an economic creed, a religion,
and a stage of history. It is world-wide, vigorous, and growing. No man
can tell what its future will be. Its philosophy is being studied by the
greatest minds of the world, and it deserves study because it promises a
better, a safer, and a fairer life to the masses. But as yet it is only
a theory, a hypothesis. It has never been tried _in toto_.... It has
succeeded only where it has allied itself with liberal and opportunist
rather than radical policies."[4]

As the Socialist movement has nowhere achieved political power,
obviously it can neither claim political success or be accused of
political failure. Nor does this fact leave Socialism as a mere theory,
in view of its admitted and highly significant success in organizing and
educating the masses in many countries and animating them with the
purpose of controlling industry and government.

Mr. John Graham Brooks, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, gives us another
equally typical variation of the same fundamental misunderstanding.
"Never a theory of social reconstruction was spun in the gray mists of
the mind," says Mr. Brooks, "that was not profoundly modified when
applied to life. Socialism as a theory is already touching life at a
hundred points, and among many peoples--Socialism has been a faith. It
is slowly becoming scientific, in a sense and to the extent that it
submits its claims to the comparative tests of experience."[5]

Undoubtedly Socialist theories have been spun both within and without
the movement, and to many Socialism has been a faith. But neither faith
nor theory has had much to do with the great reality that is now
overshadowing all others in the public mind; namely,