nd religion: all these give to Parliamentary
and social conservatism its real fighting force; and the more
'class conscious' we make them, the more they will understand that
their incomes, _whilst the present system lasts_, are bound up with
those of the proprietors whom Socialism would expropriate. And as
many of them are better fed, better mannered, better educated, more
confident and successful than the productive proletariat, the class
war is not going to be a walkover for the Socialists."[236]

If we take into account both this "parasitic proletariat" and the
"lumpen proletariat" previously referred to, it is clear that when the
Socialists speak of a class struggle against the capitalists, they do
not expect to be able to include in their ranks all "the people" nor
even all the wage earners. This is precisely one of the things that
distinguishes them most sharply from a merely populistic movement.
Populist parties expect to include _all_ classes of the "common people,"
and every numerically important class of capitalists. Socialists
understand that they can never rely on the small capitalist except when
he has given up all hope of maintaining himself as such, and that they
are facing not only the whole capitalist class, but also their hirelings
and dependents.

Socialists as a whole have never tended either to a narrowly exclusive
nor to a vaguely inclusive policy. Nor have their most influential
writers, like Marx and Liebknecht, given the wage earners _a privileged
position in the movement_. I have quoted from Liebknecht. "Just as the
democrats make a sort of a fetish of the words 'the people,'" wrote Marx
to the Communists on resigning from the organization in 1851, "so you
may make one of the word 'proletariat.'"

But it cannot be denied that many of Marx's followers have ignored this
warning, and the worship of the words "proletariat" or "working class"
is still common in some Socialist quarters. Recently Kautsky wrote that
the Socialist Party, besides occupying itself with the interests of the
manual laborers, "must also concern itself with all social questions,
but that _its attitude on these questions is determined by the interests
of the manual laborers_."

"The Socialist Party," he continued, "is forced by its class position to
expand its struggle against its own exploitation and oppression into a
struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression, to broaden