The Socialist paper, _Justice_, of London, urged that "the very suggestion that any of the Liberal members of Parliament were connected with the Socialist movement created a more profound impression than all they ever said or did." This is doubtless true, but when the novelty has once worn off of this situation it is what so-called Socialists do that alone will count.
For example, the leading reformist Socialist of Great Britain, Mr.J.R.
MacDonald, wishes to persuade the Socialists of America to carry on "a propaganda of immediately practicable changes, justified and enriched by the fact that they are the realization of great ideals."[98] Such a reduction of the ideal to what is actually going on, or may be immediately brought about, makes it quite meaningless.

Evidently the immediately practicable changes that Mr.MacDonald suggests are themselves his ideal, and what he calls the ideal consists rather of phrases and enthusiasms that are useful, chiefly, for the purpose of advertising his Party and creating enthusiasm for it.
The underlying motive of the "reformists" when they claim non-Socialist reforms as their own, and relegate practically all distinctively Socialist principles and methods to the vague and distant future, is undoubtedly their belief that reforms rather than Socialism appeal to the working class.
"The mass of workingmen will support the Socialist Party," a Socialist reformer wrote recently, "not because they are being robbed under capitalism, but because they are made to understand that this party can be relied upon to advance certain measures which they know will benefit them and their families here and now.
"The constructive Socialist believes that the cooeperative commonwealth will be realized, not by holding it up in contrast to capitalism,--but only by the working class fighting first for this thing, then for that thing, until private enterprise is undermined by its rewards being eaten up by taxes and its incentive removed by the inroads made upon profits." The working people, that is, are not intelligent enough to realize that they are "robbed under capitalism," and are not getting their proportionate share of the increase of wealth, nor courageous enough to take up the fight to overthrow capitalism; they appreciate only small advances from day to day, and every step by which "private capitalism" is replaced by State action is such an advance, while these advances are to be secured chiefly through a Socialist Party.

In a word, the Socialist Party is to ask support because it can accomplish more than other parties for social reform under capitalism, which at the present period means "State Socialism." For while "reformist" Socialists are taking a position nearly identical with that of the non-Socialist reformers, the latter are coming to adopt a political policy almost identical with that of the reformist Socialists.

I have noted that one of America's leading economists advises all reformers, whether they are Socialists or not, to join the Socialist Party.

Since both "reformist" Socialists and "Socialistic" reformers are interested in labor legislation, public ownership, democratic political reforms, graduated taxation, and the governmental appropriation of the unearned increment in land, why should they not walk side by side for a very considerable distance behind "a somewhat red banner," and "without troubling themselves about the unlike goals"-- as Professor John Bates Clark recommends?
The phrases of Socialism have become so popular that their popularity constitutes its chief danger.