Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/10

 difference of opinion, but because it means weal or woe to the struggling workers.

It is very easy to be led into false paths in discussing this question unless the boundaries of the subject are narrowly defined.

Therefore it is necessary to make clear, what has so often been stated before, that we are not discussing the question of whether labor legislation and similar laws in the interest of the proletariat, and unions and co-operatives are necessary and useful or not. There are no two opinions among us on that point. What is disputed is the view that the exploited class, who control the power of the state, will permit such a development of these factors, as will amount to abolishing capitalist oppression, without first making such a resistance, with all the means at its disposal, that it can be abolished only through a decisive battle.

Furthermore this has nothing to do with the question of utilizing quarrels among capitalist parties in the interest of the proletariat. It was not for nothing that Marx and Engels fought the use of the phrase "reactionary mass," because it tended to conceal the antagonism that exists between different factions of the ruling class, which may well be very important in securing the progress of the working class. Laws for the protection of labor and the extension of the suffrage are largely due to such differences.

What is opposed is the idea of the possibility that a proletarian party can during normal times regularly combine with a capitalist party for the purpose of maintaining a government or a governmental party, without being destroyed by the insuperable conflicts which must exist. The power of the state is everywhere an organ of class rule. The class antagonisms between the workers and the possessing class are so great that the proletariat can never share governmental power with any possessing