it since, and
had continued the actions against which it was directed. But their vote
in favor of it and explanation that they refused to give it any
practical bearing had to be accepted at Leipzig without a murmur. Such
is the result of preaching loyalty to phrases, goals, or ideals rather
than in action. The reformists can often, though not always, escape
responsibility for their acts by claiming loyalty to the goal--often, no
doubt, in all sincerity; for goals, ideals, doctrines, and sentiments,
like the human conscience, are generally highly flexible and subtle
things.

Kautsky's policy of ideal revolutionism, combined with practical
toleration of activities given over exclusively to non-Socialist reform,
which is so widespread in the German movement under the form of a too
rigid separation between theory on the one hand and tactics on the
other, agrees at another point with the policy of the reformists. The
latter, as I have mentioned, seek to justify their absorption in reforms
that the capitalists also favor, by claiming that they determine their
attitude to a reform by its relation to a larger program, whereas the
capitalists do not. Kautsky similarly differentiates the Socialists by
the totality of their demands; the individual reform, being, as he
concedes, usually if not always supported by other parties also. Yet it
is difficult to see how a program composed wholly of non-Socialist
elements could in any combination become distinctly Socialist. A
Socialist program of _immediate_ demands may be peculiar to some
Socialist political group at a given moment, but usually it contains no
features that would prevent a purely capitalist party taking it up
spontaneously, in the interest of capitalism.

What is it that drives Kautsky into the position that I have described?
To this question we can find a definite answer, and it leads us into the
center of the seeming mysteries of Socialist policy. The preservation of
the Socialist Party organization, with its heterogeneous constituent
elements, is held to be all-important; and this party organization
cannot be kept intact, and _all_ its present supporters retained,
without a program of practical reforms that may be secured with a little
effort from capitalist governments. In order to claim this program as
distinctively theirs, Socialists must differentiate it in some way from
other reform programs. As there is no practical difference, they must
insist that the ideal i