Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/222

 into the arms of the capitalist parties; that is, into coalition with one of the various groups of great property-owners. The capitalist parties themselves seek this coalition, in part because they need votes, in part because of more profound reasons. They know that today the private property of the small producers is the strongest support of the principle of private ownership in general, and therefore of their whole system of exploitation. To the good of the small producer they are indifferent. They are quick to burden him as a consumer; so far as they are concerned, it makes no difference how far he is shoved down, so long as his small business does not perish utterly and he thus remains in the ranks of the property-owners. At the same time all the bourgeois parties are interested in capitalist exploitation, hence in the progress of economic development. They desire, indeed, to maintain the farmer and independent craftsman, but as a matter of fact they do everything in their power to extend the domain of industry on a large scale and thus to suppress all forms of small production.

Quite different is the relation between the small producer and the socialist movement. Even if socialism can do nothing to maintain small production, the small producer has nothing to fear from it. It is the capitalists, not the proletarians, who expropriate the farmer and craftsman. The victory of the proletariat is, as we have seen in the previous chapter, the only means of putting an end to this exploitation. As consumers, moreover, the independent small