But Kautsky's view is that of a very large number of Socialists, especially in Germany and neighboring countries, is having an enormous influence, and deserves careful consideration. The proletariat, he says, is not afraid of the most extreme revolutionary efforts and sacrifices to win equal suffrage where, as in Germany, it is withheld. "And every attempt to take away or limit the German laborer's right of voting for the Reichstag would call forth the danger of a fearful catastrophe to the Empire."[172] It is here and elsewhere suggested, on the basis of German experience, that this struggle over the ballot is a struggle between Capital and Labor. The German Reichstag suffrage was made equal by Bismarck in 1870 for purely capitalistic reasons, and the number of voters in England was doubled as late as 1884, and the suffrage is now to be made universal through similar motives. Yet the present domination of the German Liberals and those of neighboring countries by a reactionary bureaucratic, military, and landlord class, persuades Kautsky that genuine capitalistic Liberalism everywhere is at an end.
Yet in 1910 the German Radicals succeeded, after many years of vain effort, in forming out of their three parties a united organization, the Progressive Peoples Party (Fortschrittliche Volkspartei). The program adopted included almost every progressive reform, and, acting in accordance with its principles, this Party quite as frequently coöperates with the Socialists on its left as with the National Liberals immediately on its right. The whole recent history of the more advanced countries, including even Italy, would indicate that the small capitalist element, which largely composes this party, will obtain the balance of power and either through the new party or through the Socialist "reformists" (the latter either in or out of the parent organization)—or through both together—will before many years bring about the extension of the suffrage in Prussia (though not its equalization), the equalization of the Reichstag electoral districts, and the reduction of the tariff that supports the agrarian landlords and large capitalists, put a halt to some of the excesses of military extravagance (though not to militarism), institute a government responsible to the Reichstag, provide government employment for the unemployed, and later take up the other industrial and labor reforms of capitalist collectivism as inaugurated in other countries, together with a large part also of the radical democratic program. There is no reason for supposing that the evolution of capitalism is or will be basically different in Germany from that of other countries. (See [Chapter VII.])
Though he regards Socialism as the sole impelling force for reforms of benefit to labor, Kautsky definitely acknowledges that no reforms that are immediately practicable can be regarded as the exclusive property of the Socialist Party:—
"But this is certain," he says, "there is scarcely a single practical demand for present-day legislation, that is peculiar to any particular party. Even the Social Democracy scarcely shows one such demand. That through which it differentiates itself from other parties is the totality of its practical demands and the goals towards which it points. The eight-hour law, for example, is no revolutionary demand....
"What holds together political parties, especially when like the Social Democrats they have great historic tasks to accomplish, are their final goals; not their momentary demands, not their views as to the attitude to be assumed on all the separate questions that come before the party.
"Differences of opinion are always present within the Party and sometimes reach a threatening height. But they will be the less likely to break up the Party, the livelier the consciousness in its members of the great goals towards which they strive in common, the more powerful the enthusiasm for these goals, so that demands and interests of the moment are behind them in importance."[173]
The only way to differentiate the Socialists from other parties, the only thing Socialists have in common with one another is, according to this view, not agreement as to practical action, but certain ideals or goals. Socialists may want the same things as non-Socialists, and reject the things desired by other Socialists, and their actions may follow their desires, but all is well, and harmony may reign as long as their hearts and minds are filled with a Socialist ideal. But if a goal thus has no necessary connection with immediate problems or actions, is it necessarily anything more than a sentiment or an abstraction?
Kautsky's toleration of reform activities thus has an opposite origin to that of the "reformist" Socialists. He tolerates concentration on capitalistic measures by factions within the Socialist Party, on the ground that such measures are altogether of secondary importance; they insist on these reforms as the most valuable activities Socialists can undertake at the present time.
Kautsky and his associates will often tolerate activities that serve only to weaken the movement, provided verbal recognition is given to the Socialist ideal. This has led to profound contradictions in the German movement. At the Leipzig Congress, for example (1909), the reformists voted unanimously for the reaffirmation of the revolutionary "Dresden resolution" of 1903, with the explanation that they regarded it in the very opposite sense from what its words plainly stated. They had fought this resolution at the time it was passed, and condemned it since, and had continued the actions against which it was directed. But their vote in favor of it and explanation that they refused to give it any practical bearing had to be accepted at Leipzig without a murmur. Such is the result of preaching loyalty to phrases, goals, or ideals rather than in action. The reformists can often, though not always, escape responsibility for their acts by claiming loyalty to the goal—often, no doubt, in all sincerity; for goals, ideals, doctrines, and sentiments, like the human conscience, are generally highly flexible and subtle things.
Kautsky's policy of ideal revolutionism, combined with practical toleration of activities given over exclusively to non-Socialist reform, which is so widespread in the German movement under the form of a too rigid separation between theory on the one hand and tactics on the other, agrees at another point with the policy of the reformists. The latter, as I have mentioned, seek to justify their absorption in reforms that the capitalists also favor, by claiming that they determine their attitude to a reform by its relation to a larger program, whereas the capitalists do not. Kautsky similarly differentiates the Socialists by the totality of their demands; the individual reform, being, as he concedes, usually if not always supported by other parties also. Yet it is difficult to see how a program composed wholly of non-Socialist elements could in any combination become distinctly Socialist. A Socialist program of immediate demands may be peculiar to some Socialist political group at a given moment, but usually it contains no features that would prevent a purely capitalist party taking it up spontaneously, in the interest of capitalism.
What is it that drives Kautsky into the position that I have described? To this question we can find a definite answer, and it leads us into the center of the seeming mysteries of Socialist policy. The preservation of the Socialist Party organization, with its heterogeneous constituent elements, is held to be all-important; and this party organization cannot be kept intact, and all its present supporters retained, without a program of practical reforms that may be secured with a little effort from capitalist governments. In order to claim this program as distinctively theirs, Socialists must differentiate it in some way from other reform programs. As there is no practical difference, they must insist that the ideal is not the same, that Socialists are using the reforms for different purposes, that only part of their program is like that of any one capitalist party, while in other parts it resembles those of other capitalist parties, etc.
That "party necessity" can drive even radical and influential Socialists into such a position may seem incredible. But when it is understood that loyalty to party also conflicts with loyalty to principle in many cases even to the point of driving many otherwise revolutionary Socialists to the very opposite extreme, i.e. to fighting against progressive capitalist reforms purely for party reasons, this willingness to allow the Socialist organization to claim such reforms as in some sense its own, will appear as the lesser deviation from principle.