Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/25



There is no such thing as politics without prophesying. The only difference is that those who prophesy that things will always remain the same do not know that they are prophesying.

Naturally there can be no proletarian politician who is satisfied with present conditions and does not strive fundamentally to alter them. And there is no intelligent politician, of whatever faction, who possesses even a remnant of freedom of judgment who is not forced to recognize that political conditions cannot remain as they now are in the midst of the present rapid rate of economic transformation.

But if in spite of this he refuses to recognize the possibility of a political revolution, that is, of a decided re-arrangement of political power in the state, then there is nothing left for him to do but to seek in some way gradually and imperceptibly to do away with class antagonism without any great decisive battle.

The reformers dream of the establishment of social peace between the classes, between exploited and exploiters, without abolishing exploitation. They would bring this about by having each class exercise a certain self-restraint toward the other, and by the giving up of all "excesses" and "extreme demands." There are people who believe that the antagonisms which exist between the individual laborer and capitalist would disappear if they