Transcriber's Note:
Footnotes have been corrected and movedto the end of chapters.
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Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1912. Reprinted October, 1912; January, 1915.
The only Socialism of interest to practical persons is the Socialism ofthe organized Socialist movement. Yet the public cannot be expected tobelieve what an organization says about its own character or aims. It isto be rightly understood only through its acts. Fortunately theSocialists' acts are articulate; every party decision of practicalimportance has been reached after long and earnest discussion in partycongresses and press. And wherever the party's position has become ofpractical import to those outside the movement, it has been subjected toa destructive criticism that has forced Socialists from explanationsthat were sometimes imaginary or theoretical to a clear recognition andfrank statement of their true position. To know and understand Socialismas it is, we must lay aside both the claims of Socialists and theattacks of their opponents and confine ourselves to the concreteactivities of Socialist organizations, the grounds on which theirdecisions have been reached, and the reasons by which they areultimately defended.
Writers on Socialism, as a rule, have either left their statements ofthe Socialist position unsupported, or have based them exclusively onSocialist authorities, Marx, Engels, and Lasalle, whose chief writingsare now half a century old. The existence to-day of a well-developedmovement, many-sided and world-wide, makes it possible for a writer torely neither on his personal experience and opinion nor on the old andfamiliar, if still little understood, theories. I have based my accounteither on the acts of Socialist organizations and of parties andgovernments with which they are in conflict, or on those responsibledeclarations of representative statesmen, economists, writers, andeditors which are not mere theories, but the actual material ofpresent-day polities,—though among these living forces, it must besaid, are to be found also some of the teachings of the great Socialistsof the past.
It will be noticed that the numerous quotations from Socialists andothers are not given academically, in support of the writer'sconclusions, but with the purpose of reproducing with the greatestpossible accuracy the exact views of the writer or speaker quoted. I amaware that accuracy is not to be secured by quotation alone, but dependsalso on the choice of the passages to be reproduced and the use made ofthem. I have therefore striven conscientiously to give, as far as spaceallows, the leading and central ideas of the persons most frequentlyquoted, and not their more hasty, extreme, and less representativeexpressions.
I have given approximately equal attention to the German, British, andAmerican situations, considerable but somewhat less space to those ofFrance and Australia, and only a few pages to Italy and Belgium. Thisallotment of space corresponds somewhat roughly to the relativeimportance of these countries in the intern