Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/131

 yet some demand of the socialists a detailed description of the social forms that are to come into existence after the present system of production.

It does not follow, however, from the refusal of the socialists to draw up a plan of the future state and the measures which must lead up to it that they consider useless or harmful all thought about the socialist society. The useless and harmful thing is the making of positive propositions for bringing in and organizing the socialist society. Propositions for the shaping of social conditions can be made only where the field is fully under control and well understood. For this reason the Socialist Party can make positive propositions only for the existing social order. Suggestions that go beyond that cannot deal with facts, but must proceed from suppositions; they are, accordingly, phantasies and dreams which remain at best without result. In case their inventor is vigorous and intellectually gifted he may affect the public mind, but the only result will be a waste of time and energy.

We should not, however, confuse with these vagaries those inquiries to ascertain the tendencies that the economic development will or may take as soon as it is transferred from the capitalist to the socialist basis. In such inquiries there is no question of schemes for the future, but of the scientific consideration of results revealed by the investigation of definite facts. Inquiries of this sort are by no means useless; the more clearly we see into the future, the better