Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/30

 are beginning to see that the idea of a peaceable growth into the future state has a catch in it.

In this connection an article by Nauman, published in the October number of the "Neuen Rundshau" (1908) and later in the "Hilfe," on "The Fate of Marxism," is very significant. It is a pretty rough fate that the former leader of the National Social party pictures for us. He concludes that the concentration of capital and the formation of Employers' Associations have surprised us Marxians, and placed us in an unexpected dilemma. This good man has no suspicion of the fact that it was Marx who first set forth the existence of these very things upon the continent of Europe, and that he recognized their significance long before even other Socialists.

But we have become accustomed to ignorance of such things on the part of these gentlemen, and it does not require further attention here. It is worthy of notice, however, that Nauman, in his article, discovers the superiority of concentrated capital so that, according to him, economic evolution is not leading to Socialism, but to a "new feudalism, with inconceivably powerful economic means." Against the Employers' association, he says, co-operatives and unions cannot prevail.

"For any conceivable time the leadership of industry must be located where the trusts and the banks work together. There is growing up a rulership that cannot be thrown from the saddle by any social revolution, so long as there do not come times of unemployment that shall release the hunger rage of the masses, that will blindly throw everything overboard without being able to erect anything better in its place. The idea of a social revolution is practically at an end. All this is very painful for the old-style Socialists, and also for us social ideologists, who have been hoping for a swifter gait in the progress of