These same immediate demands also give the voter a chance to find fault with our present system of government and to criticise it, thereby rendering it less able to withstand successive Socialist assaults. The immediate demands are, of course, meant for the present day and even if they should materialize, under our present system, they could not be continued in a Socialist state, that would be necessarily weak, poverty-stricken, strife-ridden, politically corrupt and chaotic. It is one thing to make demands, quite another thing to be able to grant them. A highway robber can demand a million dollars from the person whom he attacks, but that doesn't make the one assaulted able to surrender the sum; nor would it prove that the robber himself could afford to pay a like amount if he should afterwards be held up for a million.
The immediate demands of the 1918 Congressional Platform of the Socialist Party are entirely too many conveniently to enumerate. They are classed under
/P A--International Reconstruction. Peace Aims. Federation of Peoples. B--Internal Reconstruction. Industrial Control. Railroads and Express Service. Steamships and Steamship Lines. Telegraph and Telephone. Large Power Scale Industry. Democratic Management. Demobilization. The Structure of Government (i.e., of the present system of government). Civil Liberties. Taxation. Credit. Agriculture. Conservation of Natural Resources. Labor Legislation. Prisons. The Negro. P/
The immediate demands are so numerous as to require a booklet of 24 pages, published by the National Office, Socialist Party, Chicago, Ill. It is very hard to find a single reference to Socialism itself in the entire 24 pages of the Congressional Platform.