the totality of its practical demands and the
goals towards which it points. The eight-hour law, for example, is
no revolutionary demand....

"What holds together political parties, especially when like the
Social Democrats they have great historic tasks to accomplish, are
their final goals; not their momentary demands, not their views as
to the attitude to be assumed on all the separate questions that
come before the party.

"Differences of opinion are always present within the Party and
sometimes reach a threatening height. But they will be the less
likely to break up the Party, the livelier the consciousness in its
members of the great goals towards which they strive in common, the
more powerful the enthusiasm for these goals, so that demands and
interests of the moment are behind them in importance."[173]

The only way to differentiate the Socialists from other parties, the
only thing Socialists have in common with one another is, according to
this view, not agreement as to practical action, but certain ideals or
goals. Socialists may want the same things as non-Socialists, and reject
the things desired by other Socialists, and their actions may follow
their desires, but all is well, and harmony may reign as long as their
hearts and minds are filled with a Socialist ideal. But if a goal thus
has no _necessary_ connection with immediate problems or actions, is it
necessarily anything more than a sentiment or an abstraction?

Kautsky's toleration of reform activities thus has an opposite origin to
that of the "reformist" Socialists. _He_ tolerates concentration on
capitalistic measures by factions within the Socialist Party, on the
ground that such measures are altogether of secondary importance; _they_
insist on these reforms as the most valuable activities Socialists can
undertake at the present time.

Kautsky and his associates will often tolerate activities that serve
only to weaken the movement, provided verbal recognition is given to the
Socialist ideal. This has led to profound contradictions in the German
movement. At the Leipzig Congress, for example (1909), the reformists
voted unanimously for the reaffirmation of the revolutionary "Dresden
resolution" of 1903, with the explanation that they regarded it in the
very opposite sense from what its words plainly stated. They had fought
this resolution at the time it was passed, and condemned