ABSTRACT
Social democrats indulged in day-to-day parliamentary politics and petty reforms, and never produced a coherent doctrine of socialism or the transition to it, beyond the vague phrases of more egalitarian income distribution and social justice. If socialism means the expropriation of private productive property, complete proletarianization of the society, state ownership, central planning, job security, and social services— which is how the proponents of the revolutionary doctrine describe their own socialisms— then there is a lot of socialism in contemporary developed capitalist countries. Revolutions do not break out when the oppression of exploited classes reaches its maximum. They break out when the feasible alternatives to oppressive circumstances become clearly perceived. Victorious revolutions are generally triggered by unsuccessful wars that seriously weaken the power of resistance of the old ruling class, or by national liberation wars in which an awareness of the possibility for removing the hated foreign domination generated as well the will for a radical improvement of economic and social conditions.
