on
Socialist authorities, Marx, Engels, and Lasalle, whose chief writings
are now half a century old. The existence to-day of a well-developed
movement, many-sided and world-wide, makes it possible for a writer to
rely neither on his personal experience and opinion nor on the old and
familiar, if still little understood, theories. I have based my account
either on the acts of Socialist organizations and of parties and
governments with which they are in conflict, or on those responsible
declarations of representative statesmen, economists, writers, and
editors which are not mere theories, but the actual material of
present-day polities,--though among these living forces, it must be
said, are to be found also some of the teachings of the great Socialists
of the past.

It will be noticed that the numerous quotations from Socialists and
others are not given academically, in support of the writer's
conclusions, but with the purpose of reproducing with the greatest
possible accuracy the exact views of the writer or speaker quoted. I am
aware that accuracy is not to be secured by quotation alone, but depends
also on the choice of the passages to be reproduced and the use made of
them. I have therefore striven conscientiously to give, as far as space
allows, the leading and central ideas of the persons most frequently
quoted, and not their more hasty, extreme, and less representative
expressions.

I have given approximately equal attention to the German, British, and
American situations, considerable but somewhat less space to those of
France and Australia, and only a few pages to Italy and Belgium. This
allotment of space corresponds somewhat roughly to the relative
importance of these countries in the international movement. As my idea
has been not to describe, but to interpret, I have laid additional
weight on the first five countries named, on the ground that each has
developed a distinct type of labor movement. As I am concerned with
national parties and labor organizations only as parts of the
international movement, however, I have avoided, wherever possible, all
separate treatment and all discussion of features that are to be found
only in one country.

The book is divided into three parts; the first deals with the external
environment out of which Socialism is growing and by which it is being
shaped, the second with the internal struggles by which it is shaping
and defining itself, the third with the reaction of th