Socialism in action is of course always the expression of a more or less socialistic philosophy shared by a majority of the people.  This great recent movement of socialization in industry is the expression not of a radical but of a moderate social philosophy.  It does not look to the abolition, but only to the modification and limitation in some directions, of private property and of competitive industry.  The spirit of this movement is opportunist, or experimental.  It is ready to try public action, but recognizes that it has difficulties and limitations.  The ultra-radical and the ultra-conservative alike declare that these measures “logically” lead on to the complete destruction of private property.  But men find that they can warm their hands without being “logically” compelled to thrust them into the fire, and that they can quench their thirst without a growing resolution to drink the well dry.  When this governmental activity has proceeded somewhat extensively and systematically in cities, as in Great Britain, it is called municipal socialism; and in states, as in Germany, it is called state socialism.

Sec. 15. #Origin of the radical socialist party.# Socialism in the partizan sense is an actual political organization.  Both in Europe and in America such organizations have been designated as “social-democratic,” “socialist labor,” or “labor” parties.  Socialism in this sense of a party organization, or movement, is very different from a social philosophy.  In its partizan phase socialism exhibits all of the baffling variability and elusiveness that it does in its other aspects.  However, in its printed program the socialist party sets forth both a socialist philosophy and an ideal of active socialism in their most radical forms.

Modern political socialism traces its origin directly to the most radical of German social philosophers, Marx, Engels, and Lassalle.  Karl Marx (1818-1883), preeminently the philosophic leader of the movement, sought to give a solider foundation of reason to the somewhat romantic socialist philosophy current in his day.  His own doctrine, first set forth connectedly[17] in the Communist Manifesto in 1848, he called Communism.  This has come to be called by his followers, “scientific socialism.”  “Scientific” was meant to emphasize the contrast with “Utopian” socialism, as Marx and Engels somewhat scornfully characterized the older communist philosophy, romances of the ideal state, and attempts to found and conduct small communistic states.

Sec. 16. #The two pillars of “scientific” socialism.# Scientific communism was to be based upon two immovable pillars.  The one was “the labor theory of value,” by which all profits and incomes from investment were shown to be robbery of the wage-workers.[18] “Capital,” that is, the ownership of the means of production, was declared to be the instrument of this “exploitation.”  The other foundation stone was “the materialistic philosophy of history,” that is, the explanation