Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/116

 conspiracies, coup d'etats, insurrections, reactions and renewed insurrections and continuous transformations that will continue until the conditions of a peaceful development and a secured national independence is obtained for this portion of the world.

Thanks to world politics, however, the Orient (using this word in the widest sense) is so closely connected with the Occident that the political unrest of the East cannot but affect the West. The political equilibrium of nations that has been so carefully obtained is now confronted with wholly unexpected alterations, that stagger it, and upon which it can exercise no influence. Problems whose peaceful solution appears impossible, and that have consequently been avoided and put aside (such, for example, as the relations of the Balkan states) now suddenly arise and demand a solution. Unrest, mistrust, uncertainty everywhere, are forced to a climax through the nervousness already raised to a high degree by the competitive armament. A world war is brought within threatening proximity.

The experience of the last decade, however, shows that war means revolution, that it has as a result great changes in political power. In 1891 Engels still held that it would be a great misfortune for us if a war broke out which should bring a revolution with it, precipitating us prematurely into power. For some time, he thought, the proletariat could proceed more securely by the utilization of the present governmental foundations than by running the risk of a revolution precipitated by a war.

Since then the situation has changed much. The proletariat has now grown so strong that it can contemplate a war with more confidence. We can no longer speak of a revolution, for it has already drawn so great strength from the present legal basis as to expect that a transformation of this basis would create the conditions for its further upward progress.