inental press, August Bebel
contended that in Germany at least the Social Democracy and the other
political parties have grown farther and farther apart during the last
fifty years. While Bebel claims that Socialists support every form of
progress, he insists that nevertheless they remain fundamentally opposed
even to the Liberal parties, for the reason, as he explained at the Jena
Congress (1905), that "_an opposition party can, on the whole, have no
decisive influence until it gains control of the government_," that
until the Socialists themselves have a majority, governments could be
controlled only by an alliance with non-Socialist parties. "If you (the
Socialist Party) want to have that kind of an influence," said Bebel,
"then stick your program in your pocket, leave the standpoint of your
principles, concern yourself only with purely practical things, and you
will be cordially welcome as allies." (Italics mine.) At the Nuremburg
Congress (1908) he said: "We shall reach our goal, not through little
concessions, through creeping on the ground, and coming down to the
masses in this way, but by raising the masses up to us, by inspiring
them with our great aims."

Another question arose in the German Party which at the bottom involved
the same principles. It had been settled that Socialists could not
accept a share in any non-Socialist administration, no matter how
progressive it might be. But if a social reform government is ready to
grant one or more measures much desired by Socialists, shall the latter
vote the new taxes necessary for these measures, thus affording new
resources to a hostile government, and shall it further support the
annual budget of the administration, thus extending the powers of the
capitalist party that happens to be in power? The Socialist policy, it
is acknowledged, has hitherto been to vote for these individual reforms,
but never to prolong the life of an existing non-Socialist government.
The fundamental question, says Kautsky, _is to whom is the budget
granted_, and not _what measures are proposed_. "To grant the budget,"
he says, "means to give the government the right to raise the taxes
provided for; it means to put into the hands of the governor the control
of hundreds of millions of money, as well as hundreds of thousands of
people, laborers and officeholders, who are paid out of these millions."
That is to say, the Socialist Party, according to the reasoning of
Kautsky and the overwh