For the Marxian program did not work out according to schedule. Trade unions improved the conditions of the workers. Legislation, backed by so-called capitalist parties, also improved their conditions. Suffrage was widened, and the political parties bid for the support of the working classes. All this tended to impede the development of "class consciousness" and of its final climax, the social revolution.
Finally the rank and file of the socialist organizations began to insist on participation in politics. They wanted candidates elected to office, especially rep resentatives sent to the legislative bodies. The staunchest of the Marxians fought this tendency, some to the present day. These have been known as the "impossi bilists," or "direct actionists." The majority, however, succumbed to the prospects of political party power.
The first Socialist representatives elected to legislative bodies were sent to the North German Diet, in the seventies, and soon after Socialist political parties were formed in other countries as well.
From that day until the present there has been a steady growth in all countries, of the Socialist political parties and of the number of their representatives in the governing bodies. But even within the parties themselves there continued the original split, between those who, while willing to have their representatives elected to legislative bodies, did not be lieve they should support reform legisla tion; and those who supported all legisla tive measures for the betterment of the masses.
The first believed that all reform measures retarded and even checked the growth of class consciousness, therefore delayed the social revolution, which was to be the means by which the proletariat would achieve power. The latter suc cumbed to pressure from below, and fol lowed the dictates of the rank and file, who, little interested in abstract theories, wanted their material conditions im proved.
This partisanship between the Marxian theorists and the practical politicians in the movement continued, now and then breaking out into violent party dissen tions. It remained for the recent World War to bring about an open split.
In the United States the Socialist La bor Party was organized in 1877. Its chief was Daniel De Leon, a true Marx ian, though he believed in political ac tivity for its propaganda value. As the
Socialist Labor Party met with little or no success at the polls, it was not tempted to deviate from its Marxian principles, since its chiefs were not elected to office.
In the late nineties, however, a grow ing number of native Americans were converted to Socialism, including Eugene Debs, a prominent labor leader, and dis satisfaction with the policy of the Ger man Socialists who had formed the bulk of the Socialist Labor Party began to manifest itself. In 1900 came a split; the Socialist Party was organized, and in the presidential elections of that year it polled nearly 100,000 votes. Hencefor ward the Socialist Labor Party dwindled in strength, while the Socialist Party developed rapidly, polling 901,361 votes in the presidential election in 1912. This later party frankly adopted a platform of reform measures, and while it did not repudiate the Marxian theories, it made the development of its political strength its chief aim. Its appeal has been openly to the people as citizens, or consumers, while its championship of the workers at the "point of production" has been chiefly confined to the editorials of its official organs. In 1912, at a national convention, held in Indianapolis, the "direct action ists," those who remained true to the old Marxian program of mass revolution, were definitely thrown out.
In 1899 the first international Socialist Congress was held, and thereafter a sim ilar international meeting was held every three years, for the purpose of formu lating common action. Needless to re mark, the politicians were behind these congresses, and of these the German So cialists were dominant. German Social ism, which had built up the biggest political party in Germany, remained the ideal of the Socialists in all other coun tries, with the exception of England, where, through the influence of the Fa bian Society (q. v.), the Labor Party had been gradually developed with a platform based simply on an extension of govern ment enterprise. The Continental parties, at least, still held that it would be use less to support state industrial enter prises until the government had been definitely captured by the Socialist votes.