Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/136

 moral law is a product of the social nature of man; certainly the moral code of a time is the product of particular social needs; certainly have neither the one nor the other anything to do with religion. But that code of morals, which must be maintained for the people in the interests of the ruling class, requires religion badly, and the entire ecclesiastical organism for its support. Without this it would soon go to pieces.

The longer, however, the outlived moral standards remain in force, while the economic development advances and creates new social needs, which demand new moral needs, so much the greater will be the contradiction between the ruling morals of society and the life and action of its members.

But this contradiction shows itself in the different classes in different manners. The conservative classes, those whose existence rest on the old social conditions, cling firmly to the old morality. But only in theory. In actual practice they cannot escape the influence of the new social conditions. The well-known contradiction between moral theory and practice begins here. It seems to many a natural law of morals, whose demands seem as something desirable but unrealisable. Here again, however, the contradiction between theory and practice in morality can take two forms. Classes and indivdualsindividuals [sic], full of a sense of their own strength, ride roughshod over the demands of the traditional morality, whose necessity they certainly recognise for others. Classes and individuals who feel themselves weak transgress secretly against the moral code which they publicly preach. Thus this phase leads, according to the historical situation of the decaying classes, either to cynicism or hypocrisy. At the same time, however, there disappears very easily, as we have seen, in this very class, the power of the social interests in consequence of the growth of private interests, as well as the possibility of allowing their place in the coming battles to be taken