-if we
remain what we have been, the deadly enemy of the existing social
and political condition, which is oppressing the masses more
cruelly all the time, and for the overthrow of which they are all
the time more ardently longing. If, on the other hand, we go into
the electoral struggle arm in arm with the Freethinkers (Radicals)
or even with the National Liberals, if we make ourselves their
_accomplices_, if we declare ourselves ready for the same miserable
behavior which the Freethinkers made themselves guilty of by
entering into an alliance with von Buelow, we may disillusion the
masses; we may push them from us and kill political life. If the
Social Democracy ceases to be an opposition party, if even this
party is ready to betray its friends as soon as it becomes by such
means "capable of governing," those who are oppressed by
present-day conditions will lose all confidence in progress by
political struggle; then we shall be sowing on the one side the
seeds of political indifference and on the other those of an
anarchistical labor unionism." (Italics mine.)[199]

Here is the generally accepted reason for the Socialist's radical
attitude. In most countries Socialists are unwilling to make themselves
_accomplices_ in what they consider to be the political crimes of all
existing governments. Especially do they feel that no reform to which
the capitalists would conceivably consent would justify any alliance.
The inevitable logic of Kautsky's own position is that, _even if the
liberals in Germany and elsewhere do undertake a broad program of
reform_, including all those Kautsky mentions as improbable, no
sufficient ground for an alliance is at hand.

Kautsky himself now admits that there seems to be a revival of genuine
capitalistic Liberalism in Germany, which may lead the Liberal parties
to become more and more radical and even ultimately to democratize that
country--with the powerful aid, of course, of the Social-Democrats.
Evidence of this possibility he saw both in the support given by
Liberals of all shades to Socialist candidates in many of the second
ballots (in the election of 1912) and the fact that Bebel secured the
overwhelming majority of Liberal votes as temporary President, while
another revolutionary Socialist, Scheidemann, was actually elected by
their aid as first temporary Vice President of the Reichstag.

Kautsk