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Both the economic and political revolutionists are, on such grounds, often tempted to agree with the reformists of the party and of the labor unions, in leveling their guns exclusively against the private capitalism of to-day I might almost say the capitalism of the past instead of concentrating their attack on the evils that will remain undiminished under the State capitalism of the future.
The whole question between reformists and revolutionaries refers not so much to the policy of Socialists in control of municipalities, which is often beyond criticism, as to the value of municipal activity generally for Socialist purposes. None deny that it has value, but reformists and revolutionaries ascribe to it different rôles.
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.
Hither and thither the wind rushed, bold and blusterous, sometimes carrying landward the intermittent crashing of the surf as it fell, wrathful yet impotent, on the great dike by which, twenty-odd years before, the immortal Richelieu had snuffed the last heroic spark of the Reformists.
It is only by actions, however, that men or parties may be judged, and though Jaurès has occasionally been found with the revolutionists, in most cases he acts with their rivals and opponents, the reformists, and in fact is the most eminent Socialist reformer the world has produced.
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