Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/121

 clearer, asserted themselves in the government, and were felt in the social life, until finally the new classes that had been formed took possession of the state and shaped it agreeably to their own wants.

The philosophers who first endeavored to investigate the causes of social development thought they found them in the ideas of men. To a certain degree they recognized that these ideas sprang from material wants; but the fact still remained a secret to them that these wants changed from age to age, and that the changes were the results of alterations in economic conditions, that is, in the system of production. They started with the notion that the wants of man—"human nature"—were unchangeable. Hence they could see but one "true," "natural," "just" social system, because only one could correspond to the "true nature of man." All other social forms they pronounced the result of mental aberrations which came about only because mankind did not realize sooner what they needed; human judgment, it was thought, had been befogged, either, as some imagined, on account of the natural stupidity of man, or, as others maintained, on account of the willful machinations of kings or priests. Looked at from such a standpoint the development of society appears to be the result of a development of thought. The wiser men are, the quicker they are to dis- cover the social forms that suit human nature the juster and better does society become.

This is the theory of our so-called liberal thinkers. Wherever their influence is felt this view