Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/102

 These expectations have not been fulfilled. But we have here another illustration of how we Marxists, with our expectations and our "prophecies," were wrong when we overvalued the revolutionary sentiments of the small capitalists. We also see how much foundation there is for the reproach that Marxian dogmatic fanaticism drove these elements out of the party. When Engels in 1894 opposed the French farmers' program, and when I opposed the German one a year later, this was not because we considered the gaining of the farmers as superfluous, but because we considered these methods the wrong ones with which to win them. Since then the party membership in France, Austria, and Switzerland has tried their fortune among the farmers along these lines without success.

The same is true of the small capitalists. It must be granted that so far as large sections of the middle class are concerned, and whatever forms of propaganda have been used, that they are today more difficult to win than ever before.

This conclusion is not based on Marxian "orthodoxy"—we have already seen that Marxism has erred rather by expecting too much than too little at this point—it is the result of bitter experience during recent years.

Our Marxian "dogmatic fanaticism" therefore is not concerned in the matter, except in so far as it makes it easier for us to recognize and understand these experiences, and to lay bare their causes—the indispensable condition to any real "practical politics."

Here again we find that our "positive" work, as soon as it strengthens the proletariat, by just that very fact, sharpens the antagonism between it and other classes.

Many of us expected that the trusts and combines of the capitalists, together with the tariff policy, would lead the middle class, who suffer most from these things, into our ranks. The exact reverse has actually been the result.