Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/170

 among the few the greater portion have hitherto soon grown tired, recognized the "indiscretions of their youth," and finally turned "sensible."

The idealists among the upper classes are the only ones whose support it is at all possible to enlist in favor of socialism. But even among these the majority are moved by the insight which they have acquired only far enough to wear themselves out in fruitless searchings for a peaceful solution of the social problem; that is to say, in searching for a solution that will reconcile the interests of the capitalist class with their more or less developed knowledge of socialism and their consciences.

Only those bourgeois idealists develop into genuine socialists who have, not only the requisite theoretical insight, but also the courage and strength to break with their class.

Accordingly, the cause of socialism has little to hope from the property-holding classes. Individual members may be won over to socialism, but only such as no longer belong by convictions and conduct to the class to which their economic position assigns them. These will ever be a very small minority, except when, during revolutionary periods, the scales incline to the side of socialism. Only at such times may the socialists look forward to a stampede from the ranks of the property-holding classes.

Thus far the only favorable recruiting ground for the socialist army has been, not the classes which still have something to lose, however little that may be, but the class of those who have nothing to lose but their chains, and a world to gain.