Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/42

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
xxxvi
Translator's Introduction

public mind and preparing the way for the next step.

The very great importance attached to legislative action by Reformists leads naturally to their adopting a different attitude toward practical politics. They wish to bring about certain definite reforms, and being always in a minority they must, in order to accomplish anything, enter into alliance with other parties that are willing to carry out at least part of their programme. It is over this question of alliance that the battle within the party has raged. How close shall it be? Shall it be purely temporary, or of indefinite duration? And shall a Socialist ever be permitted to hold office in a non-Socialist ministry? These are the practical questions that agitate European Socialists in all countries.

    values, the proceeds to be applied to public employment and bettering the condition of the workers; for the equal suffrage of men and women; for the prevention of the use of the military against labour in the settlement of strikes; for the free administration of justice; for popular government, including initiative, referendum, proportional representation, and the recall of officers by their constituents; and for every gain or advantage for the workers that may be wrested from the capitalist system, and that may relieve the suffering and strengthen the hands of labour. We lay upon every man elected to any executive or legislative office the first duty of striving to procure whatever is for the workers' most immediate interest, and for whatever will lessen the economic and political powers of the capitalist, and increase the like powers of the worker."