Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/105

 nucleus of the little capitalist democracy, and energetic fighters in its revolution, and who had been at least somewhat indifferent allies of the revolutionary proletariat, now turned everywhere into its most violent enemies. This was still least true in "Marxian soaked" Germany, and much more in France, Germany and Switzerland.

In the great cities the enmity of the middle classes to the proletariat was increased still more by their antagonistic positions on the questions of imperialism and colonial policy. Whoever rejects the Socialist position has nothing left but despair unless he believes in the colonial policy. It is the only prospect before the defenders of capitalism. But along with it must go the acceptance of militarism and the big navy. Even those sections of the middle class that are not in the direct circle of interest of hand work, retail trade, or the production of necessaries of life, such as the intellectuals are also, in so far as they are not permeated with Socialism, being driven away from the proletariat and its far-seeing vision, by being thrown into the current of imperialism and militarism. All those who, like Barth, Brentano, and Naumann, once looked so favorably upon the trade union and co-operative organization of the proletariat and its democratic efforts, are today defenders of big fleets and expansion. Their friendship for the Socialists lasts only so long as imperialism and its consequences are not concerned.

These policies seem destined to complete the isolation of the proletariat and thereby doom it to political barrenness at the very moment when its political development is needed more than ever.

Yet it is possible that this very policy of imperialism may become the starting point for the overthrow of the present ruling system.