An American Socialist author expresses the opinion of many Socialists when he says of the movement: "It strives by all efforts in its power to increase its vote at the ballot box. It believes that by this increase the attainment of its goal is brought ever nearer, and also that the menace of this increasing vote induces the capitalist class to grant concessions in the hope of preventing further increases. It criticizes non-Socialist efforts at reform as comparatively barren of positive benefit and as tending, on the whole, to insure the dominance of the capitalist class and to continue the grave social evils now prevalent."[169] (My italics.)
Because non-Socialist reforms tend to prolong the domination of the capitalist class, which no Socialist doubts, it is asserted that they are also comparatively barren of positive benefit. And if, from time to time and in contradiction to this view, changes are bought about by non-Socialist governments which undeniably do very much improve the condition of the working people, it is reasoned that this was done by the menace either of a Socialist revolution or of a Socialist electoral majority.
"A Socialist reform must be in the nature of a working-class conquest," says Mr. Hillquit in his "Socialism in Theory and Practice"—expressing this very widespread Socialist opinion. He says that reforms inaugurated by small farmers, manufacturers, or traders, cause an "arrest of development or even a return to conditions of past ages, while the reforms of the more educated classes if less reactionary are not of a more efficient type."
"The task of developing and extending factory legislation falls entirely on the organized workmen," according to this view, because the dominant classes have no interest in developing it, while the evils of the slums and of the employment of women and children in industry can be cured only by Socialism. Such reforms as can be obtained in this direction, though they are not considered by Mr. Hillquit "as the beginnings or installments of a Socialist system," he holds are to be obtained only with Socialist aid. In other words, while capitalism is not altogether unable or unwilling to benefit the working people, it can do little, and even this little is due to the presence of the Socialists.
Another example of the "reformist's" view may be seen in the editorials of Mr. Berger, in the Social-Democratic Herald, of Milwaukee, where he says that the Social-Democrats never fail to declare that with all the social reforms, good and worthy of support as they may be, conditions cannot be permanently improved. That is to say, present-day reforms are not only of secondary importance, but that they are of merely temporary effect.
"There is nothing more to hope from the property-holding classes."
"The bourgeois reformers are constantly getting less progressive and allying themselves more and more with the reactionaries."
"It is impossible that the capitalists should accomplish any important reform."
"With all social reform, short of Socialism itself, conditions cannot be permanently improved."
These and many similar expressions are either quotations from well-known Socialist authors or phrases in common use. Many French and German Socialists have even called the whole "State Socialist" program "social-demagogy." As none of the reforms proposed by the capitalists are sufficient to balance the counteracting forces and to carry society along their direction, Socialists sometimes mistakenly feel that nothing whatever of benefit can come to the workers from capitalist government. As the capitalists' reforms all tend "to insure the dominance of the capitalist class," it is denied that they can cure any of the grave social evils now prevalent, and it is even asserted that they are reactionary.