t has the power of salvation for society itself in the not
remote future, when it will be face to face, throughout the world, with
an irresistible current toward State socialism. Industrial democracy and
political democracy are indissolubly united; their union cannot be
sundered except at the cost of destruction to them both.

In adopting, then, the methods of education, of organization, and of
political action the socialists rest their case upon the decision of
democracy. They accept the weapons that civilization has put into their
hands, and they are testing the word of kings and of parliaments that
democracy can, if it wishes, alter the bases of society. And in no small
measure this is the secret of their immense strength and of their
enormous growth. There is nothing strange in the fact that the
socialists stand almost alone to-day faithful to democracy. It simply
means that they believe in it even for themselves, that is to say, for
the working class. They believe in it for industry as well as for
politics, and, if they are at war with the political despot, they are
also at war with the industrial despot. Everyone is a socialist and a
democrat within his circle. No capitalist objects to a group of
capitalists cooeperatively owning a great railroad. The fashionable clubs
of both city and country are almost perfect examples of group socialism.
They are owned cooeperatively and conducted for the benefit of all the
members. Even some reformers are socialists in this measure--that they
believe it would be well for the community to own public utilities,
provided skilled, trained, honorable men, like themselves, are permitted
to conduct them. Indeed, the only democracy or socialism that is
seriously combated is that which embraces the most numerous and most
useful class in society, "the only class that is not a class";[10] the
only class so numerous that it "cannot effect its emancipation without
delivering all society from its division into classes."[11]

In any case, here it is, "the self-conscious, independent movement of
the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority,"[12]
already with its eleven million voters and its fifty million souls. It
has slowly, patiently, painfully toiled up to a height where it is
beginning to see visions of victory. It has faith in itself and in its
cause. It believes it has the power of deliverance for all society and
for all humanity. It does not expect the powerful to hav