§13. "Opportunism" in socialist party tactics. While many winds of doctrine have been blowing over socialistic philosophy, the practical programs of the party have veered in various directions. Whenever the party gained any success at the polls, the socialists in public office and the party leaders found it necessary to "do something" immediately. The rank and file might be willing to talk of the millennium, but preferred to take it in instalments instead of waiting for it to come some centuries after they were dead. And so the socialist party, as fast as it gained any practical power, became " opportunist" and worked for moderate practical reforms. The leaders did this with many misgivings lest the masses might become so reconciled to the present order that they would refuse to rise in revolt. In that case the revolution never could happen (although it was inevitable).

As the party socialists did more to improve the present, they talked less of the distant future state. They ceased their criticisms of "mere temporizing" "bourgeois" reforms, and began to claim these as the achievements of the socialist party. They began to write of the remarkable growth of social legislation in Europe and America in the past half century under such titles as "socialism in practice" and "socialists at work." This was despite the fact that these reforms were all brought about by governments in which the socialist party had no part whatever or was a well-nigh insignificant minority. This bald sophistry, or self-deception, was easily possible by confusing the word "socialist" as relating to the abstract principle of social action, with socialist as applied to their own party organization. It is as if the Republican party in the United States were to claim as its own all the works of the republican spirit and principles of government in the world from the party's organization to the present time.

The German democratic revolution of November 1918, which drove the Kaiser into exile, brought the social-democrats into power as the dominant party in Germany. The more moderate element is in the majority and, in alliance in parliament with various liberal parties, has thus far been administering the affairs of the state along economic lines little different from those of the old order. No serious modification of private property has been made. The situation is far from clear as yet. We seem to see here again the sobering effect of responsibility, and the definite unwillingness of the German workingmen, with the example of Bolshevik ruin under their eyes at the East, to risk abolishing capitalism.

§ 14. Alluring claims of party socialism. In becoming opportunist, the radical socialist party in every country has been somewhat put to it to retain any clear distinction between itself and other parties of social reform. It has done this however by continuing to proclaim the ultimate desirability of re-organizing all society without leaving any productive wealth in private hands; while in practice it has shown misgivings prompted by the experience of the world. Its case against the present order continues to be far the strongest in its negative aspect, the exposure of evils. To many natures the claims of the socialist party have all the allurements of patent medicine advertisements. These describe the symptoms so exactly and promise so positively to cure the disease, that they are irresistible, especially when the regular physicians keep insisting that the only way to get well is to adopt such troublesome and disagreeable methods as taking baths and exercise, and stopping the use of whiskey and tobacco.

Those attracted to the socialist party by its sweeping claims are of two main types. The one is the low-paid industrial wage-worker to whom competition awards so small a share of the national income; the other is the sympathetic person of education or of wealth (or of both), who has become suddenly aroused to the misery in our industrial order. To both of these types, feeling intensely on the subject, the socialist party appeals as the only one with promises sweeping enough to be attractive. The one becomes the proletarian, workshop socialist, the other the intellectual, parlor socialist. Many of the latter type are persons overburdened either with unearned wealth or with an undigested education. Many of them, having enjoyed for a time the interesting experience of radical thought and of bohemianism, come later to more moderate social opinions.

§ 15. Changes in the socialist party vote. The socialist vote in Europe and in the United States had been steadily growing in the forty years preceding the outbreak of the World War, and amounted in the aggregate at least to six and possibly to ten millions (as variously estimated, the name socialist being elastic). There were 3,000,000 social-democratic voters in Germany at the outbreak of the war, and the socialist party in the United States polled 900,000 votes in the presidential election of 1912. The socialist parties were made up of men of many shades of opinion. They included not only the radicals, but large numbers of the discontented, unable to find an alternative economic philosophy and a plan that inspired their hopes. They included many others who held only the mildest sort of socialistic philosophy. In America many men voted the socialist ticket as a protest against the inaction of the conservative parties, and barely one-tenth regularly enrolled as members of the party. Similarly, in Germany before the war many voters supported the social-democratic party merely as the most effective way to protest against Militarism, Kaiserism, and undemocratic class government.

The war affected profoundly the policies and fortunes of partizan socialism. In accord with the doctrine of the class conflict, Marx had exclaimed, in the Communist Manifesto, "Proletarians of all lands, unite." Marxian socialism condemned national patriotism and fostered in its place a spirit of internationalism. For years prominent Marxians had boldly announced that any attempt to bring on a European war would be blocked by a general strike declared by the socialist workers. But when German militarism precipitated war in 1914, only a feeble fraction of the German radical socialists stood out against it, and nearly all socialists in every country lined up with their fellow nationals. The immediate result was loss of prestige and of following for the socialist parties in the allied countries.

The American socialist party with an enrolled membership largely of immigrants, many of them still unnaturalized, was more unpatriotic and pro-German than were the socialists in any of the other allied countries. A number of its American members and of those born in allied countries left the American socialist party. The socialist vote for presidential electors fell to 590,000 in 1916, but rose again in 1920 to 900,000. In addition over a quarter of a million of votes were cast, mostly in the Northwest, for the Farmer-labor party, presenting a state-socialist program.