Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movementWalling, William English
History
Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movement
Walling, William English
Socialism
Kautsky and his associates will often tolerate activities that serve
only to weaken the movement, provided verbal recognition is given to the
Socialist ideal. This has led to profound contradictions in the German
movement. At the Leipzig Congress, for example (1909), the reformists
voted unanimously for the reaffirmation of the revolutionary "Dresden
resolution" of 1903, with the explanation that they regarded it in the
very opposite sense from what its words plainly stated. They had fought
this resolution at the time it was passed, and condemned it since, and
had continued the actions against which it was directed. But their vote
in favor of it and explanation that they refused to give it any
practical bearing had to be accepted at Leipzig without a murmur. Such
is the result of preaching loyalty to phrases, goals, or ideals rather
than in action. The reformists can often, though not always, escape
responsibility for their acts by claiming loyalty to the goal--often, no
doubt, in all sincerity; for goals, ideals, doctrines, and sentiments,
like the human conscience, are generally highly flexible and subtle
things.
Kautsky's policy of ideal revolutionism, combined with practical
toleration of activities given over exclusively to non-Socialist reform,
which is so widespread in the German movement under the form of a too
rigid separation between theory on the one hand and tactics on the
other, agrees at another point with the policy of the reformists. The
latter, as I have mentioned, seek to justify their absorption in reforms
that the capitalists also favor, by claiming that they determine their
attitude to a reform by its relation to a larger program, whereas the
capitalists do not. Kautsky similarly differentiates the Socialists by
the totality of their demands; the individual reform, being, as he
concedes, usually if not always supported by other parties also. Yet it
is difficult to see how a program composed wholly of non-Socialist
elements could in any combination become distinctly Socialist. A
Socialist program of _immediate_ demands may be peculiar to some
Socialist political group at a given moment, but usually it contains no
features that would prevent a purely capitalist party taking it up
spontaneously, in the interest of capitalism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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