The worst reproach that Engels could make against the first English Marxists was that they were applying Marxism in a sectarian spirit. What would he… - Karl Kautsky

But if socialism is a social necessity, then it would be human nature and not socialism which would have to readjust itself, if ever the two clashed.

Ist aber der Sozialismus eine gesellschaftliche Notwendigkeit, dann wäre, wenn er in Konflikt mit der Menschennatur käme, diese es, die den Kürzeren ziehen würde und nicht der Sozialismus.

According to the laws of social development established by Marx, a backward agricultural country cannot show the way to Socialism to other countries. Its failure in this respect is foreordained. It is merely a question of when and how this failure will finally manifest itself. Until now the Bolsheviki have been skillful in disguising their failure under the mask of promises of a glorious future. The last such promise was the Five-Year plan. But the Bolshevist state economy has been in existence now more than fifteen years. For more than ten years the USSR <nowiki/>has been enjoying complete peace. And yet, contrary to all promises, things under the Bolshevist state economy have been getting worse every year, (excepting the short period of the Nep), and the day is not far distant when even the most credulous will become convinced that the Bolshevist way leads not upward, toward Socialism, but downward, to open ruin or slow disintegration.