"The weightiest step on the road to power," wrote the revisionist Maurenbrecher, "is that we should succeed in the coming Reichstag in shaping the Liberal and Social-Democratic majority (formed) for defense against the conservatives, into a positive and effective working majority." In discussing the support of the budget by the Social-Democrats of Baden, Quessel explained definitely what kind of positive and effective work such an alliance would be expected to undertake; namely, "To fight personal government [of the Kaiser], to protect earnestly the interest of the consumers against the exploiting agrarian politicians, to undertake limitations of armaments on the basis of international treaties, to introduce a new division of the election districts [which has not been done since 1871], and to bring about a legal limitation of the hours of labor to ten at the most." Already the radical parties now united, favor all these measures except the limitation of armaments, which from the analogy with peace movements in other countries, and certain indications even in Germany, they may favor within a very few years. Quessel's program is that of the non-Socialist reformers, and a step, not towards Socialism, but towards collectivist capitalism. Karl Kautsky has dealt with the immediate bearing in German Socialism of what he calls "the Baden rebellion," at some length, in answer to Maurenbrecher, Quessel, and others. "The idea of an alliance from Bassermann [the National Liberal leader] to Bebel appears at the first glance to be quite reasonable," he writes, for "divided we are nothing, united we are a power. And the immediate interest of the Liberals and of the Social-Democrats is the same: 'the transformation of Germany from a bureaucratic feudal state into a constitutional, parliamentary, Liberal, and industrial State.'" Kautsky, however, combats the proposed alliance, from the standpoint of the Social-Democratic Party, along three different lines. First, he shows that the purposes of the Liberals in entering into such a combination are entirely at variance with those of the Socialists; second, that the Liberals are discredited before the German people and are not likely to have the principle or the capacity even to obtain those limited reforms which they have set on their program, and, third, that even if the two former reasons did not hold, the Socialists would necessarily have everything to lose by such common action. The second argument seems to prove too much. Kautsky reasons that neither the Radical not the Liberal parties can be relied upon even to carry out their own platforms:--