Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/24

 revolution as the result of war is only one of many possibilities, as the result of class antagonisms, it is inevitable.

It is evident that each sort of "prophecy" demands its own especial method, and its own especial study, and that the significance of the "prophecy" depends upon the thoroughness of such study, instead of being, as some people who have no conception of the amount of such studying seem to think, mere empty phantasies.

It would be very much of a mistake, however, to conclude that we Marxians are the only ones that prophesy. Even bourgeois politicians, who are standing on the basis of the present state of affairs, are not without their visions of a distant future. The whole force of colonial politics, for example, rests on this fact. If we were dealing with colonial policy for today only it would be easy in do away with it. For every country but England it is a miserable business. But it is the only field inside capitalist society from which great hopes for the future at least appear to beckon. And therefore, because of the glittering future which our colonial fanatics prophesy, and not because of the miserable present, colonial politics exercise such a fascinating attraction to such minds as are not convinced of the coming of Socialism.

Nothing is more foolish than the idea that distant ideals have no practical significance in present politics that immediate interests always rule, or that we will be successful in our electoral agitation in proportion as we are "practical"—which signifies insipid and insignificant, and the more we talk only of taxes and tariffs, police graft and sick insurance and similar things, and the more we treat our future goal as a youthful love affair, to be cherished in nur hearts and looked back to with longing, but to which it is best not to make any reference in public.