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 just now by the way Opportunism is gaining ground in the Social-Democratic press. Fearing a renewal of the anti-Socialist laws, or remembering some premature declarations made when those laws were in force, some people desire now that the party should recognize the present legal order in Germany as sufficient for the peaceful realization of all its demands."

Engels brings out as of prime importance the fact that German Social-Democracy was acting in fear of the renewal of the Exceptional Laws, and, without hesitation, calls this Opportunism, declaring that just because of the absence of a Republic and freedom in Germany, the dreams of a "peaceful" path were quite absurd. Engels is sufficiently careful not to tie his hands in advance. He admits that in Republican oy very free countries "one can conceive" (only "conceive") a peaceful development towards Socialism, but in Germany he repeats:

"In Germany, where the Government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power, to proclaim anything of that sort, and that without any need, is to take off the fig leaf from Absolutism and to screen its nakedness by one's own body. …"

The great majority of official leaders of German Social-Democracy who "stowed away" this advice, have indeed proved the screen of Absolutism.

"Such a policy can only, in the end, lead the party on to a false road. General abstract political questions are pushed to the foreground, and in this way, all the immediate concrete problems which arise automatically on the order of the day at the first approach of important events, during the first political crisis, are hidden from sight. What else can result from this than that the party may suddenly, at the first critical moment, prove helpless, that on decisive questions confusion and division will arise within the party-because these questions had never been discussed?

"This neglect of great fundamental considerations for the sake of the momentary successes of the day, this chase after momentary success, and this race after them without account of ultimate results, this sacrifice of the future movement for the present is, perhaps, the result of 'honest' motives, but is and remains, none the less, Opportunism, and 'honest' Opportunism is, perhaps, more dangerous than any other. … If there is anything about which there can be no doubt, it is that our party and the working class can only gain supremacy under a political regime like a Democratic Republic. This latter is, indeed, the specific form