Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/29

 in their present direction. Then our victory is certain within a reasonable time. The worst to happen would be a leap into uncertainty, which, while having the appearance of an advance, would in reality set us still further back; or that some event should put the Social Democracy to an extreme test before its strength were sufficiently developed; or that the thoughts of the people should be given a new direction. Such an event would mean war, which would arouse race hate and destroy the international solidarity.

Such elementary events naturally cannot be advanced or hindered according to our desire. When they do occur we must seek as far as possible to exploit them in our interest. What we must seek to avoid at such times is an "adventurous policy" on the part of our own party. We must not attempt to forcibly surprise natural development or to diplomatically outwit it. "We have learned to wait," said Engels to me, "and you in turn must learn to wait your time." But by such waiting he did not mean waiting with folded arms and open mouth until one of the roasted doves of spontaneous development should fly down the throat, but a waiting in tireless labor—labor of organization and propaganda. Quietly and decisively, with faith in our own good cause, without either prophecy or hesitancy, we must toil on, without rest, to weld the mass of the proletariat more firmly and clearly together and to fill them with a more clear self-consciousness. We have not only to teach, but also to learn much—very much to learn.

When we wait in this manner, the waiting will not be long. When every moment is used in the best possible manner we can without unnecessary sacrifice become masters of the situation in a short time. Then it will surely be granted, to at least one of the fathers of modem socialism, to see with his bodily eyes that which the eyes of his intellect have so long looked upon.

So far Kautsky; death has destroyed the hope expressed in the closing sentence.

In the eight years that passed away since the composing of these sentences Engels had accomplished the greatest of the tasks to which he had set himself—the publication of the last volume of "Capital." He himself tells us something of the magnitude of this task in the preface to the third volume: "When the second book was issued in 1885 I thought that, with the exception of one very important section, the third