revolutionary economic action would
necessarily be conservative, no matter how revolutionary it seemed. The
truth from the broader revolutionary standpoint is doubtless that
neither political nor economic action in isolation can long continue to
be revolutionary. Exclusively economic action soon leads to exclusive
emphasis on material and immediate gains, without reference to the
relative position of the working class or its future; exclusively
political action leads inevitably to concentration on securing
democratic political machinery and reforms which by no means guarantee
that labor is gaining on capital in the race for power.

To Kautsky a labor party, it would seem, might be sufficient in itself,
even if economic action should, for any reason, become temporarily
impossible:--

"The formation and the activity of a special labor party which
wants to win political power for the working class already
presupposes in a part of the laboring class a highly developed
class consciousness. But the activity of this labor party is the
most powerful means to awaken and to further class consciousness in
the masses of labor, also. It knows only objects and tasks which
have to do with the whole proletariat; the trade narrowness, the
jealousies of single and separate organizations, find no place in
it."[270]

It is easy to see how an equally strong case might be made out for the
educative, unifying, and revolutionary effect of an aggressive labor
union movement without any political features. The truth would seem to
be that any form of organization that honestly represents the working
class and is at the same time militant--and no other--advances
Socialism. The objections to action exclusively political hold also
against action exclusively economic. Both trade union action as such,
which inevitably spends a large part of its energies in trying to
improve economic conditions in our _present_ society by trade agreements
and other combinations with the capitalists, and political action as
such, which is always drawn more or less into capitalistic efforts to
improve present society by political means is fundamentally
conservative. What Socialism requires is not a political party in the
ordinary sense, but political organization and a political program; not
labor unions, as the term has been understood, but aggressive and
effective economic organization, available also for the most
f