Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/122

 prevails. As a matter of course the first socialists, who appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were under the influence of it. They, also, imagined that the institutions of the capitalist state had sprung from the brain of the philosophers of the previous century. But it was clear to these socialists that the capitalist system was not the perfect thing which the eighteenth century expected. Accordingly this system appeared to them as still falling short of the true one; the philosophers of the eighteenth century must have made a mistake somewhere. The early socialists addressed themselves to the task of finding the mistake, and, in their turn, finding the true social system, that is, the one that would perfectly suit human nature. They realized that it was necessary to elaborate their plan more carefully than any of their illustrious predecessors had done, lest some untoward influence should nullify their work also. This method of procedure was, moreover, dictated by circumstances. The early socialists did not stand, as did their predecessors, in the presence of a social system near its downfall, nor did they have, as did their predecessors, the encouragement of a mighty class whose interests demanded the overthrow of the existing order. They could not present the social order for which they strove as inevitable, but only as desirable. It was a necessity of their situation, then, to present their ideal in as clear and tangible a form as possible to the end that the mouths of people should water after it, and none should entertain a doubt either as to its practicability or desirability.