Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/23

 when the power of the army was broken and the nation was surfeited with the misery of war. The government would then be overthrown, not in order to prosecute the war more energetically, but to end a useless and accursed war with an opponent who also desired nothing more than the end.

Again, revolution as the result of war may arise as a result of a universal uprising against a disgraceful and especially injurious treaty of peace. Such an uprising might easily combine the army and the people.

In such cases the form of the revolution can be determined in advance. But it is impossible to form any picture of the revolution which I can foretell as a result of the increased sharpening of class antagonisms. I can state with certainty that a revolution brought on by war will take place during the war or immediately after it. On the other hand, when I speak of a revolution as the result of increased sharpening of class antagonisms, this tells us absolutely nothing as to the time it will appear.

I can say definitely that a revolution brought about by a war will happen but once. Nothing whatever can be said on this point concerning the revolution springing from sharpening class antagonisms. It may be a long-drawn-out process, while a revolution as the result of war must take on more the character of a single event. It is impossible to say in advance whether a revolution as the result of war would be successful. The revolutionary movement springing out of class antagonisms, on the contrary, cannot meet with anything more than temporary defeats, and must ultimately win.

On the other hand, the preliminary conditions to a revolution in the first case—that of war—are something which may or may not appear. No one can possibly say anything definite on this point. The sharpening of class antagonism, on the contrary, arises inevitably out of the laws of the capitalist method of production. While a