eforms brought
out precisely on the basis of capitalist production, and which
consequently do not affect the relation of capital and wage labor,
but in the best case only diminish the expenses and simplify the
administrative labor of a capitalist government.... In the
promotion of their plans they act always with the consciousness of
defending first of all the interest of the working class. The
working class only exists for them under this aspect of the
suffering class.

"But in accordance with the undeveloped state of the class struggle
and their social position, they consider themselves quite above
antagonism. They desire to ameliorate the material condition of
life for all the members of society, even the most privileged. As a
consequence, they do not cease to appeal to all society without
distinction, or rather they address themselves by preference to the
reigning class."[178]

Marx points out that the chief aim of these "reactionary Socialists" was
the transformation of the State into a mere organ for the administration
of industry in their interest, which is precisely what we mean to-day by
"State Socialism."

In contrast with this "reactionary Socialism," now prevalent in Great
Britain and Australia, the Socialist parties of every country of the
European Continent (where such parties are most developed), without
exception are striving for a social democracy and a government of the
non-privileged and not for a scheme of material benefits bestowed by an
all-powerful capitalist State. Professor Anton Menger, of the University
of Vienna, one of the most acute and sympathetic observers of the
movement, remarks correctly that--"in all countries, at all times, the
proletariat [working class] has rightly thought that the continuous
development of its _power_ is worth more than any _economic advantage_
that can be granted it."[179]

The late Paul Lafargue, perhaps the leading thinker of the French
Socialist movement, a son-in-law of Karl Marx, made a declaration at a
recent Party Congress which brings out still more clearly the prevailing
Socialist attitude. Denying that the Socialists are opposed to reforms,
he said: "On the contrary, we demand all reforms, even the most
bourgeois [capitalist] reforms like the income tax and the purchase of
the West [the Western railroad, lately purchased by the government]. It
matters little to us who prop