conomics, and of prophecy. The most important influence of radical
socialism has been exerted through negative criticism. It has
performed the function of a party in opposition, relentlessly hunting
out and pointing out the defects of existing institutions, arousing
the smugly contented, and, by its very recklessness and bitterness,
inspiring at times a wholesome fear of more revolutionary evils. This
has been a real service to the cause of moderate and constructive
reform.

Sec. 20. #Revisionism and opportunism in the socialist party#. Most
men have always agreed in an adverse judgment of the claims of
"scientific" socialism. The criticisms have been admitted in part even
by the intellectual leaders among the Social-democrats. They lost some
of their fantastic illusions, they tempered some of their exaggerated
claims of oracular inspiration. "Revisionism," the socialist higher
criticism, became influential in the party. 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 (altho 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 of "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 Republic