Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/158

 of the socialist paternal state" of which the opponents of socialism have so much to say. In the organizations of labor the rules under which each member is to work are laid down minutely and enforced strictly. Yet it has never occurred to any member of such an organization that these rules were an unbearable restriction upon his personal liberty. Those who have found it incumbent upon them to defend the freedom of labor against this "terrorism," and who have done so often with force of arms and bloodshed, were never the working-men, but their exploiters. Poor Freedom! which has to-day no defenders except slaveholders!

But in a socialist community the lack of freedom in work would not only lose its oppressive character, it would also become the foundation of the highest freedom yet possible to man. This seems a contradiction, but the contradiction is only apparent.

Down to the day when large production began, the labor employed in the production of the necessities of life took up the whole time of those engaged in it; it required the fullest exercise of both body and mind. This was true, not only of the fisherman and the hunter, but also of the farmer, the mechanic and the merchant. The existence of the human being engaged in production was consumed almost wholly by his occupation. It was labor that steeled his sinews and nerves, that quickened his brain and made him anxious to acquire knowledge. But the further division of labor was carried, the more one-sided did it make the producers. Mind and body