Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/181

 of charity proved inadequate. To care for all the poor was soon felt to be a work that greatly exceeded the powers of the community. Then there arose a new problem: how to abolish poverty? A great many solutions were offered. These ranged from schemes to get rid of the poor by hanging or deportation to elaborate plans for communistic colonies. The latter met with great applause among people of culture, but the former were the only suggestions ever really tried.

By degrees, however, the question of poverty took on a new aspect. The capitalistic system of production developed rapidly and finally became the controling one. As this development went on, the problem of poverty ceased to exist for the thinkers in the capitalist class. Capitalist production rests upon the proletariat; to put an end to the latter were to render the former impossible. Colossal poverty is the foundation of colossal wealth; he who would eliminate the poverty of the masses assails the wealth of the few. Accordingly, whoever attempts to remedy the poverty of the workers is pronounced "an enemy of law and order."

True enough, neither fear nor compassion has ceased, even under this changed aspect of things, to be felt in capitalist circles, and to tell in favor of the proletariat. For poverty is a source of danger to the whole social fabric ; it breeds pestilence and crime. Accordingly a few of the more clear-headed and humane among the ruling classes are willing to do something for the working-class; but to the bulk of them, who neither