CHAPTER I.
"STATE SOCIALISM" WITHIN THE MOVEMENT The Socialist movement must be judged by its acts, by the decisions Socialists have reached and the reasoning they have used as they have met concrete problems.
The Socialists themselves agree that first importance is to be attached, not to the theories of Socialist writers, but to the principles that have actually guided Socialist parties and their instructed representatives in capitalist legislatures.

These and the proceedings of international and national congresses and the discussion that constantly goes on within each party, and not theoretical writings, give the only truthful and reliable impression of the movement.
In 1900 Wilhelm Liebknecht, who up to the time of his death was as influential as Bebel in the German Party, pointed out that those party members who disavowed Socialist principles in their _practical application_ were far more dangerous to the movement than those who made wholesale theoretical assaults on the Socialist philosophy, and that political alliances with capitalist parties were far worse than the repudiation of the teachings of Karl Marx.

In his well-known pamphlet _No Compromise_ he showed that this fact had been recognized by the German Party from the beginning.
I have shown the Socialists' actual position through their attitude towards progressive capitalism.

An equally concrete method of dealing with Socialist actualities is to portray the various tendencies _within_ the movement.

The Socialist position can never be clearly defined except by contrasting it with those policies that the movement has rejected or is in the process of rejecting to-day.