Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/200

 difficult became socialist propaganda among the ruling classes, and the more well-defined became the opposition of these classes to the socialist movement.

So long as socialists were of the opinion that the means of attaining the objects of socialism must come from the capitalist class, they were compelled, not only to look with suspicion upon the labor movement, but often to assume an attitude of direct opposition to it. As a result they came to regard the class-struggle as the enemy of socialism.

This naturally reacted upon the laboring classes, tended to make of them enemies of socialism. The ambitious, struggling proletarians discovered nothing but opposition among, the socialists and nothing but discouragement in the socialist teachings. As a result, there was born among them a distrust of the whole body of socialist doctrine. This feeling was favored by the ignorance even of the militant proletariat at the beginning of the labor movement. The narrowness of their view made it impossible for them to grasp the purposes of socialism, and as yet they were unconscious of their economic position and of the tasks which confronted their class. They felt only an indefinite class instinct which taught them to distrust everything that had its origin in the capitalist class. Under the circumstances they were naturally as much opposed to socialism as to any other form of bourgeois philanthropy.

Among certain groups of working-men, especially in England, distrust of socialism took