Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/16

x military achievements, but in brutal destruction. The West European champions of culture and order regard that with enthusiasm as the restoration of legal conditions. But just as little as the hirelings of the Hapsburgs succeeded, despite temporary successes in conquering North Germany and Holland for Catholicism, will the Cossacks of the Romanoffs succeed in restoring the rule of Absolutism. This has only sufficient strength remaining to lay its country waste, not to rule it.

In any case the Russian Revolution is not by any means at an end—it cannot close so long as the peasants are not appeased. The longer it lasts so much the greater will be the disturbance in the ranks of the West European proletariat, so much the nearer financial catastrophes, so much the more probable that, even in West Europe, there should set in a period of class struggle.

This is not a time which calls for the theoretical labours of revolutionary writers. But this drawback for our theoretical labours, which will be probably felt in the next few years, we need not lament. The Materialist Conception of History is not only important because it allows us to explain history better than has been done up to now, but also because it enables us to make history better than has been hitherto done. And the latter is more important than the former. From the progress of the practice our theoretical knowledge grows, and in the progress of the practice our theoretical knowledge is proved. No world conception has