Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/117

 The proletariat hates war with all its strength. It would sacrifice everything rather than raise a cry for war. But if war should break out in spite of it, the proletariat is the only class that could confidently await its outcome.

Since 1891 it has not only grown greatly in numbers, not only been solidified by organization, it has also gained enormously in Two decades ago the Socialists of Germany were still confronted with the great prestige which the rulers of the empire had gained in the struggles for its foundation. Today that prestige is scattered to the winds.

On the other hand, the more the idea of imperialism becomes bankrupt, the more the Socialists become the only party that is fighting for a great ideal and a great object, that is capable of arousing all the energy and devotion that flows to such an object.

In the ranks of our opponents, on the contrary, hesitation and apathy is sown by the consciousness that incapacity and corruption has degraded their leaders. They no longer believe in their cause, nor in their leaders, who right now, in the face of the situation whose difficulties are increasing from day to day, must fail and continue to fail and to more and more expose their complete incapacity.

This also is no accident, no fault of any individual persons, but is a necessary consequence of conditions.

The causes of this condition are manifold in character. As soon as a class or a government passes out of the revolutionary into the conservative stage, as soon as it is no longer compelled to fight for its existence or its further progress, as soon as it is contented with the present, the intellectual horizon of its spokesmen and rulers is narrowed and confined. Its interest in great questions dies out, it loses the power to do and dare, bold thinkers and fighters become undesirable and are pushed aside.