ABSTRACT
It comes practically to the same thing when Georges Sorel classifies his “Revolutionary” Syndicalism, not as a breach with Marxian Socialism, but rather as a return to the true, the initial reading of Karl Marx’s doctrine. The distinction between “Revolutionary” and “Reformist” Socialism exists in Marxism itself, and it develops into a patent contradiction in its history. While the Marxism of 1848 is predominantly Revolutionary and Utopian, its application to the Parliamentary life of German Social Democracy is essentially reformist and scientific. Marx’s followers had to choose between the Utopian “Communist Manifesto” of 1847 and the Reformist “Erfurt Programme” of 1891, between Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle.1
