retical writings, give the only
truthful and reliable impression of the movement.

In 1900 Wilhelm Liebknecht, who up to the time of his death was as
influential as Bebel in the German Party, pointed out that those party
members who disavowed Socialist principles in their _practical
application_ were far more dangerous to the movement than those who made
wholesale theoretical assaults on the Socialist philosophy, and that
political alliances with capitalist parties were far worse than the
repudiation of the teachings of Karl Marx. In his well-known pamphlet
_No Compromise_ he showed that this fact had been recognized by the
German Party from the beginning.

I have shown the Socialists' actual position through their attitude
towards progressive capitalism. An equally concrete method of dealing
with Socialist actualities is to portray the various tendencies _within_
the movement. The Socialist position can never be clearly defined except
by contrasting it with those policies that the movement has rejected or
is in the process of rejecting to-day. Indeed, no Socialist policy can
be viewed as at all settled or important unless it has proved itself
"fit," by having survived struggles either with its rivals outside or
with its opponents inside the movement.

If we turn our attention to what is going on within the movement, we
will at once be struck by a world-wide situation. "State Socialism" is
not only becoming the policy of the leading capitalistic parties in many
countries, but--in a modified form--it has also become the chief
preoccupation of a large group among the Socialists. "Reformist"
Socialists view most of the reforms of "State Socialism" as installments
of Socialism, enacted by the capitalists in the hope of diverting
attention from the rising Socialist movement.

To Marx, on the contrary, the first "step" in Socialism was the conquest
of complete political power by the Socialists. "The proletariat," he
wrote in the Communist Manifesto "will use _its political supremacy_ to
wrest, by degrees, all capital from the capitalists, to centralize all
instruments of production in the hands of the State, _i.e. of the
proletariat organized as the ruling class_." (My italics.) Here is the
antithesis both of "reformist" Socialism within the movement and of
"State Socialism" without. The working people are _not_ expected to gain
more and more political power step by step and to use it as they go
along. It is only _after_