Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/114

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64
Studies in Socialism

hand, even after a revolutionary crisis, it may be forced to share the power with other democratic parties. After the German 4th of September, the Socialist party will have a much more considerable share of power in Germany than it had in France after the French 4th of September. But Liebknecht does not feel certain that it will have complete control, that it will be free to govern. It is possible that the bourgeois democracy will insist upon its share. And where will class-government be then ?

But there is another hypothesis: that in which the ruling powers in Germany, feeling the danger, avert the catastrophe by a policy of reform.

"In this case," says Liebknecht, "our party would be necessarily asked to participate in the government, and especially called upon to reform the conditions of labour."

Liebknecht is not, then, considering a complete assumption of power by the Socialist party, in this hypothesis of political and social evolution. Liebknecht could not imagine and in fact he did not imagine that under the Empire, under William I., William II., or William III., the Socialist party would obtain from the beginning all the power, nor even that it would be able to grasp it the day after the fall of the Empire. No, according to him, a share only of the power, a place in the government, will be confided to the Socialist party by those in the "upper circles." But this Liebknecht considered an imperative necessity. For