Indeed, no Socialist policy can be viewed as at all settled or important unless it has proved itself "fit," by having survived struggles either with its rivals outside or with its opponents inside the movement.
If we turn our attention to what is going on within the movement, we will at once be struck by a world-wide situation.

"State Socialism" is not only becoming the policy of the leading capitalistic parties in many countries, but--in a modified form--it has also become the chief preoccupation of a large group among the Socialists.

"Reformist" Socialists view most of the reforms of "State Socialism" as installments of Socialism, enacted by the capitalists in the hope of diverting attention from the rising Socialist movement.
To Marx, on the contrary, the first "step" in Socialism was the conquest of complete political power by the Socialists.

"The proletariat," he wrote in the Communist Manifesto "will use _its political supremacy_ to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the capitalists, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, _i.e.of the proletariat organized as the ruling class_." (My italics.) Here is the antithesis both of "reformist" Socialism within the movement and of "State Socialism" without.

The working people are _not_ expected to gain more and more political power step by step and to use it as they go along.