[280] Dr. Karl Liebknecht, "Militarismus und Anti-Militarismus", (brochure).
[281] George R. Kirkpatrick, "War—What For?" pp. 318-325.
[282] George R. Kirkpatrick, "War—What For?" (Preface).
[283] Bernard Shaw, "John Bull's Other Island," pp. xxxix-xliv.
CHAPTER VIII
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
"The legal constitution of every period," says Rosa Luxemburg, "is solely a product of revolution. While revolution is the political act of creation of class history, legislation is the continued political growth of society. The work of legal reform has in itself no independent driving force outside of the revolution; it moves during each period of history only along that line and for that period of time for which the impetus given to it during the last revolution continues, or, to speak concretely, it moves only in the frame of that form of society which was brought into the world through the last overturn.... Therefore, the person who speaks for the method of legal reform instead of the conquest of political power and the overthrow of [present day] society is not as a matter of fact seeking, in a quieter, safer, and slower way, the same goal, but a different goal altogether; namely, instead of bringing about a new social order, merely the accomplishing of unessential changes in the old one."[284]
It is not that Rosa Luxemburg or any other prominent Socialist underestimates the importance to the Socialist movement of universal suffrage, and of the utilization of our more or less democratic governments for the purpose of reform. She realizes that such democracy as we have to-day is useful to-day, and that in a future crisis it may serve as a lever for overturning the present social order. "Democracy is indispensable," she says, "not because it makes the conquest of political power by the working class superfluous, but, on the contrary, because it makes this seizure of power not only necessary, but the only remaining alternative."