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In case of a split, the reform wing of the party, already in the friendliest relations with the non-Socialist radicals, would doubtless join with them to constitute a very powerful, semidemocratic party, similar to the Radicals and Labourites of Great Britain or the so-called "Socialist Radicals" and "Independent Socialists," who dominate the Parliament of France.
It is true that the difference was not very fundamental, but it is interesting to note that MacDonald and Snowden and their avowed non-Socialist trade-union allies were accused of giving so much to the Liberals as even to weaken the position of the Labour Party itself to say nothing of the still greater inconsistency of such compromises with anything approaching Socialism. Mr. Barnes and Mr.
"The government employees are a privileged class whose work is necessary to carry on the government and upon whose entry into the government service it is entirely reasonable to impose conditions that should not be and ought not to be imposed upon those who serve private employers." Here the Socialists join issue squarely with the almost universally prevalent non-Socialist opinion.
To secure anything approaching equality of opportunity, the first and most necessary measure is to give equal educational facilities to all classes of the population. Yet the most radical of the non-Socialist educational reformers do not dare to hope at present even for a step in this direction.
The unions and the parties they use also join in the effort of the small capitalist investors and borrowers, consumers and producers, to control the large interests the central feature of the "State Socialist" policy. But the conservative unions do not stop with such progressive, if non-Socialist, measures; they take up the cause of the smaller capitalists also as competitors.
He does not seem to see that such questions lead almost immediately, not only to such larger issues as are already presented by the leading political parties, but also to the still larger ones proposed by the Socialists. Others of the syndicalists' criticisms, if taken literally, would undoubtedly bring them in the end to the position occupied by non-Socialist and anti-Socialist labor unionists.
The author admits his inability to solve the riddle, but during the years 1902-1914 he has heard members of all non-Socialist German parties assert that the German Socialists do not recognize any religious oath, and sections of the Socialists admit this position.
The non-Socialist reformers, they say, are engaged in a popular work, and the Socialists must go in, help to bring about the reforms, and claim part of the credit. They then propose to attribute whatever success they may have gained, not to the fact that they also have become reformers like the rest, but to the fact that they happen to be Socialists.
But I have also noted that his tactics and philosophy, as both he and they have publicly acknowledged, are alike at many points. For example, his views, like theirs, often seem less democratic than those of many non-Socialist radicals, or even of the average American.
Yet because direct legislation might rob the Socialists of all opportunity for claiming the credit for non-Socialist reforms, because it would put to a direct vote a program composed wholly of elements held in common with other parties, and differing only in its combination of these elements, because the Party tactics would have to be completely transformed and the Party temporarily weakened by being forced to limit itself entirely to revolutionary efforts, Kautsky turns against this keystone of democratic reform.
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