Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/60



However difficult it may be for a Socialist Government, supported by the political power of the proletariat, to be obliged to encourage capitalist industry, this is a problem which sooner or later confronts the Socialists in every European country. In the most important States the proletariat is already so strong and so matured in self-consciousness, that it will not be long before it attains to, political power, not in spite of democracy, but precisely because its strength is nourished by democracy.

A world revolution in the Bolshevist sense is of course, not to be reckoned with. Such a revolution signifies the dictatorship of a Communist party, which assumes power because it alone controls all armed forces and disarms all the non-proletarian classes and the sections of the proletariat which are not Communist. This situation arose after the military collapse, first in Russia, and then in Hungary. It will not be repeated in any country, least of all in the victorious States.

In these countries the proletariat cannot gain the upper hand by means of a monopoly of arms, but only as a majority by means of its preponderance among the democracy.

At the moment the democratic prospects of Social Democracy are in point of fact not favourable. The period of disillusionment and tension which follows upon every revolution has once more set in. Instead of a world revolution we stand on the threshold of a general reaction.