between the
parties, as formerly." Here again is the fundamental antithesis to the
Socialist view. Leaving aside for the moment the situation of persons
with $100 in the savings bank, or owners of property in general (who
might possess nothing more than a small home), Socialists are working,
with considerable success, towards the day when at least one great party
will take a position so radical that the overwhelming majority of
business men (or at least the representatives of by far the larger part
of business and capital) will be forced automatically into the opposite
organization.

Without this militant attitude Socialists believe that even the most
radical reforms, not excepting those that sincerely propose equal
opportunity or the abolition of social classes _as their ultimate aim_,
must fail to carry society forward a single step in that direction.
Take, as an example, Dr. Lyman Abbott, whose advanced views I have
already referred to (see Part I, Chap. III). Notwithstanding his
advocacy of industrial democracy, his attack on the autocracy of
capitalism and the wages system, and his insistence that the distinction
between non-possessing and possessing classes must be abolished, Dr.
Abbott opposes a class struggle. Such phrases amount to nothing from the
Socialist standpoint, if all of these objects are held up merely as an
ideal, and if nothing is said of the rate at which they ought to be
attained or the means by which the _opposition_ of privileged classes is
to be overcome. No indorsement of any so-called Socialist theory or
reform is of practical moment unless it includes that theory which has
survived out of the struggles of the movement, and has been tested by
hard experience--a theory in which ways and means are not the last but
the first consideration,--namely, the class struggle.

Mr. Roosevelt and nearly all other popular leaders of the day denounce
"special privilege." But the denouncers of special privilege, aside from
the organized Socialists, are only too glad to associate themselves with
one or another of the classes that at present possess the economic and
political power. To the Socialists the only way to fight special
privilege is _to place the control of society in the hands of a
non-privileged majority. The practical experience of the movement_ has
taught the truth of what some of its early exponents saw at the outset,
that a majority _composed even in part_ of the privileged classes could
neve