Jean Jaurès

“ By our intermittent and purely rhetorical appeals to force, to the rifle, we weaken our hold on universal suffrage. We undoubtedly ought to make a decision, to ask ourselves whether it serves any useful purpose for us to mark the votes cast legally into the ballot-box with a few grains of powder, that, moreover, never explode. ”

“ Not that we wish to lessen the importance of tactics. But tactics are only a means of obtaining an end; and whereas the end presents itself before us firm and immovable, we can argue about tactics. Questions of tactics are practical questions and should be absolutely distinguished from questions of principle. ”

“ We have seen, especially, that it is absolutely unjustifiable to consider that the tactics of force are the only revolutionary tactics, and to say that he is a poor revolutionist who does not unconditionally approve these tactics. We have shown that force itself is not in its essence revolutionary, but rather belongs to the counter-revolution. ”

“ We have seen that it is impossible to decide beforehand on tactics for our Party which would hold good in every case. Tactics must depend upon circumstances. The interest of the Party is our only law, our only rule. ”

“ The great majority of the nation can be won over to our side by propaganda and lawful action, and led to complete Socialism, The whole nation, with the exception of a few refractory but powerless elements, will rise, if we are determined that it shall, by the roads that lead up from bourgeois individualism to State Socialism, and from State Socialism to Communistic, human, and proletarian Socialism. ”

“ We have seen the necessity of emancipating ourselves from the bondage of certain catch-words, and of developing the power of the Party in the direction of clear thought and brave and methodical action, instead of displaying it in phrases of revolutionary violence, which too often only serve to hide a lack of precise thought and vigorous action. ”

“ The right of the State to regulate production supposes the duty of the State to interest itself in labour, and State control of the labour of society leads directly to State organisation of the labour of society. ”

“ We have shown that the number of those whose interest forces them into the ranks of our enemies is so small that it is becoming almost negligible, and that the immense majority of those who have a hostile or at least hardly a friendly attitude toward us only take this position through ignorance of their own situation and of our efforts, and that we ought to exert all our strength to enlighten this majority and win it over. ”

“ In other words, since the pressure of events and the growing organisation of the Socialist party and the proletariat have finally induced even those classes and those parties which would be naturally most opposed to them to accept the projects of social legislation "which will lead inevitably straight to Socialism" ”

“ Here again we have a question of tactics, which will be decided by the very necessities of life and by the social and political evolution that will inevitably occur, a question hardly serious enough to call forth mutual recriminations and schisms in the party. ”

“ They disagree as to the means, as to the tactics. Some, who share Liebknecht's opinion, have thought that during the period of the slow dissolution of the capitalist system and of the slow elaboration of the Socialist régime, the Socialists would necessarily be called, at one time or another, to help form a government. ”

“ Some, on the other hand, object violently to any plan of action which would, as they express it, run the risk of weakening the class-consciousness of the proletariat by giving it a definite place in the present organisation. ”