[194] For condemning the wages system as a form of slavery, Socialists are often vigorously condemned, but there are few sociologists of repute who question the truth of the Socialist claim. Herbert Spencer, for example, is as vigorous in asserting that wage-labor is a form of slavery as any Socialist. See _The Principles of Sociology_, Vol. III, Chapter 18. [195] See Kautsky's _Das Erfurter Program_, and also _The Social Revolution_, especially pages 128-135; Anton Menger, _L'Etat Socialiste_, page 35; and Vandervelde's _Collectivism_, pages 149-150. [196] J. Addington Symonds. CHAPTER X THE MEANS OF REALIZATION[197] I You ask me how the goal I have described is to be attained: "The picture," you say, "is attractive, but we would like to know how we are to reach the Promised Land which it pictures. Show us the way!" The question is a fair one, and I shall try to answer it with candor, as it deserves. But I cannot promise to tell how the change will be brought about, to describe the exact process by which social property will supplant capitalist private property. The only conditions under which any honest thinker could give such an answer would necessitate a combination of circumstances which has never existed, and which no one seriously expects to develop. To answer in definite terms, saying, "This is the manner in which the change will be made," one would have to know the exact time of the change; precisely what things would be socialized; the thought of the people, their temper, their courage. In a word, omniscience would be necessary to enable one to make such a reply. All that is possible in this connection for the candid Socialist is to point out those tendencies which he believes to be making for the Socialist ideal, those tendencies in society, whether political or economic, which are making for industrial democracy; to consider frankly the difficulties which must be overcome before the transition from capitalism can be effected, and to suggest such means of overcoming these as present themselves to the mind, always remembering that other means may be developed which we cannot now see, and that great storms of elemental human passion may sweep the current into channels unsuspected. Those who are familiar with the writings of Marx know that, in strange contrast with the fundamental principles of that theory of social evolution which he so well developed, he lapsed at times into the Utopian habit of predicting the sudden transformation of society. Capitalism was to end in a great final "catastrophe" and the new order be born in the travail of a "social revolution." I remember that when I joined the Socialist movement, many years ago, the Social Revolution was a very real event, inevitable and nigh at hand, to most of us. The more enthusiastic of us dreamed of it; we sang songs in the spirit of the _Chansons Revolutionaires_, one of which, as I recall, told plainly enough what we would do-- "When the Revolution comes."