Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/126

 has grown enormously. When Marx and Engels wrote the "Communist Manifesto" they saw before them only Western Europe as the battle field of the proletarian revolution. Today it has become the whole world. Today the battles in the struggle of the laboring and exploited class for freedom will be fought not alone upon the banks of the Spree and the Seine, but on the Hudson and the Mississippi, on the Neva and the Dardanelles, on the Ganges and the Hoangho.

Equally gigantic with the battle field are the problems that spring from it—the social organization of the world industry.

But the proletariat will arise from this revolutionary era, that may perhaps continue for a generation, wholly different from what it was when it went in.

If today the elite of the workers are the strongest, most far-seeing, unselfish, keenest, best and freest organized section of the nations of European civilization, then it will draw to itself in the fight and through the fight the most unselfish and far-seeing elements of all classes, and will organize and educate the backward elements within its own bosom and inspire them with the joy and hope of freedom. It will raise its elite to the height of civilization and make them capable of directing that tremendous economic transformation that shall forever make an end of the whole world round of all misery arising from slavery, exploitation and ignorance.

Happy he who is called to share in this sublime battle and this glorious victory.