or weakening and disintegrating armies. And
they do not hesitate to say that they will use more active measures if
capitalist governments persist in what seems to be their present
determination to resort to some form of military despotism when the
Socialists have won over a majority of the population to their views.

FOOTNOTES:

[277] Eugene V. Debs, "Life and Writings," p. 456.

[278] Tolstoi's Essay entitled, "Where is the Way Out?"--October, 1900.

[279] Dr. Karl Liebknecht, "Militarismus und Anti-Militarismus"
(brochure).

[280] Dr. Karl Liebknecht, "Militarismus und Anti-Militarismus",
(brochure).

[281] George R. Kirkpatrick, "War--What For?" pp. 318-325.

[282] George R. Kirkpatrick, "War--What For?" (Preface).

[283] Bernard Shaw, "John Bull's Other Island," pp. xxxix-xliv.

CHAPTER VIII

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

"The legal constitution of every period," says Rosa Luxemburg, "is
solely a product of revolution. While revolution is the political _act
of creation_ of class history, legislation is the continued political
_growth_ of society. The work of legal reform has in itself no
independent driving force outside of the revolution; it moves during
each period of history only along that line and for that period of time
for which the impetus given to it during the last revolution continues,
or, to speak concretely, it moves only in the frame of that form of
society which was brought into the world through the last overturn....
Therefore, _the person who speaks for the method of legal reform instead
of the conquest of political power and the overthrow of_ [_present day_]
_society is not as a matter of fact seeking, in a quieter, safer, and
slower way, the same goal, but a different goal altogether_; namely,
instead of bringing about a new social order, merely the accomplishing
of unessential changes in the old one."[284]

It is not that Rosa Luxemburg or any other prominent Socialist
underestimates the importance to the Socialist movement of universal
suffrage, and of the utilization of our more or less democratic
governments for the purpose of reform. She realizes that such democracy
as we have to-day is useful to-day, and that in a future crisis it may
serve as a lever for overturning the present social order. "Democracy is
indispensable," she says, "not because it makes the conquest of
political power by the working class superfluous, but, on the contrary,
because it makes this seiz