If it seemed necessary, abundant testimony to the truthfulness of this claim could be produced. But I shall content myself with two witnesses--chosen from the multitude of available witnesses for reasons which will unfold themselves. The first witness is Marx himself. I choose his testimony, mainly, because there is no other name so great as his, and, secondly, to show that his profoundest thought rejected the idea of sudden social transformations which at times he seemed to favor. It is 1850. Marx is in London, actively engaged in a German Communist movement with its Central Committee in that great metropolis. The majority are impatient, feverishly urging revolt; they are under the illusion that they can make the Social Revolution at once. Marx tells them, on the contrary, that it will take fifty years "not only to change existing conditions but to change yourselves and make yourselves worthy of political power." They, the majority, say on the other hand, "We ought to get power at once, or else give up the fight." Marx tries vainly to make them see this, and resigns when he fails, scornfully telling them that they "substitute revolutionary phrases for _revolutionary evolution_."[198] Mark well that term, "revolutionary evolution," for it bears out the description I have attempted of the sense in which we speak of revolution in the Socialist propaganda of to-day. And mark well, also, that Marx gave them fifty years simply to make themselves worthy of political power.
As the second witness, I choose Liebknecht, whose name must always be associated with those of Marx, Engels, and Lassalle, in Socialist history. Not alone because of the fact that Liebknecht, more than almost any other man, has influenced the tactics of the international Socialist movement, but for the additional reason that detached phrases of his are sometimes quoted in support of the opposite view. Words spoken in oratorical and forensic passion, or in the bravado of irresponsible youthfulness, and texts torn from their contexts, are used to show that Liebknecht anticipated the violent transformation of society. But heed this, one of many similar statements of his maturest and profoundest thought: "_But we are not going to attain Socialism at one bound. The transition is going on all the time_, and the important thing for us ... is not to paint a picture of the future--which in any case would be useless labor--_but to forecast a practical programme for the intermediate period, to formulate and justify measures that shall be applicable at once, and that will serve as aids to the new Socialist birth_."[199]