Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/24

 to convince the mass of the people of the necessity and utility of socialism. These socialists were very peaceable people, who saw only misfortune in the necessary conflict between the laboring class and capitalists and not a lever of historical advance. They hoped to avoid this antagonism by educating the capitalist class concerning its true interests. As a means to this end their "Propaganda of the Deed" was very harmless, consisting for the most part in the founding of productive associations, socialist colonies and the like.

The great achievement of Marx and Engels lay in their bridging over the chasm between the theoretical socialism and the practical, political labor movement. They sought to utilize every power of the struggling proletariat to bring in the new society. In place of the exertions of individuals they substituted the power of the whole laboring class; for the good will of "friends of humanity" they substituted natural necessity, which forced the laboring class on pain of destruction to oppose the capitalist oppression. Opposed to individual efforts on a small scale they maintained that the new form of industry could only be secured through the common united efforts of the class-conscious proletariat of all lands. They pointed out that the new manner of production could not arise from individual autonomous associations, colonies or communities, but could only come through the appropriation of the means of production and the systematic organization of labor in the united nations of present capitalistic civilization.

They gave expression to this opinion in the Communist Manifesto, which also formed the foundation of the "International."

The time for the old unpolitical socialism appeared past. Labor parties were everywhere adopting socialist and political programs. The year 1848 had destroyed, for all thinking laborers, the illusion that only a misunderstanding existed between them and the bourgeoisie. The class struggle sprang up all along the line in Europe. There was no longer any place for peaceful, unpolitical socialism. The question of political action for the laboring class was no longer a question of doctrine, but a question of life and death.

But the unpolitical socialism continued to appear, especially in economically backward lands, where the laborers had just begun to move, or in those where the little bourgeois element still predominated, as in Paris, or in countries where the laboring class were politically helpless, as in Belgium, or, finally, in