Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/34



The revisionists meet these conclusions with the claim that there is a much greater contradiction in Marx himself. They allege that, as a thinker, he recognized no such thing as a free will, but expected everything to come from inevitable economic evolution, which moves on automatically, but that as a revolutionary fighter he sought in the strongest manner to develop wills, and to appeal to the volition of the proletariat. This proves Marx to be guilty of an irreconcilable contradiction between theory and practice, declare the revisionists, anarchists and liberals in closest harmony.

In reality Marx is guilty of no such contradiction. It is a product of the confusion of his critics—a confusion that is incurable, since it recurs again and again. It rests in the first place in the making of will and free will identical. Marx has never failed to recognize the significance of the will and the "tremendous role of human personality" in society. He has only denied the freedom of the will, something very different. This has been explained so often that it scarcely seems necessary to restate it here.

Furthermore, this confusion rests upon a most remarkable conception of the meaning of economics and economic development. All these learned gentlemen seem to think that because this evolution proceeds according to certain definite laws it is automatic and spontaneous without the willing human personality. For them the human will is a separate element alongside of and above economics. It