Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/214

 a common goal and lead them toward it by a common route. The first of these purposes was gloriously fulfilled, but the second was fulfilled only in part. The International was to bring about the union of socialism and the militant proletariat in all lands. It declared that the emancipation of the working-class could be accomplished only by the workers themselves; that the political movement was only a means to this end, and that the proletariat could not emancipate itself so long as it remained dependent upon the monopolists of the means of production. Within the International opposition to these principles developed in proportion to the clearness with which they were seen to lead to modern socialism. At that time there was still a comparatively large number of bourgeois and proletarian Utopians. These, together with the pure-and-simple unionists, dropped out of the International as soon as they understood its purpose. The fall of the Paris Commune, in 1871, and persecutions in various European countries, hastened its fall.

But the consciousness of international solidarity that had been generated could not be smothered.

Since then the ideas of the Communist Manifesto have taken hold of the militant proletariat of Europe and of many proletarian groups outside of Europe. Everywhere the class-struggle and the socialist movement have become one, or are in a fair way to do so. The principles, objects and means of the proletarian class-struggle tend everywhere to become the same. This in