Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/43

 volition includes only their closest personal needs. The social transformations that proceed from the effort to satisfy these needs remain hidden from the fighters. As a process, therefore, the class struggle is for a long time an unconscious process. As such it is laden with all the waste of energy inherent in all unconscious processes. Only through a of the social process, its tendencies or aims can this waste be ended, the strength of the proletariat concentrated, the workers brought together into great organizations united upon a common aim, with all personalities and momentary actions subordinated to the permanent class interests, and those interests, in turn, placed at the service of the collective social evolution.

In other words, the theory is the factor that raises to the highest degree the strength which it is possible for the proletariat to develop. The theory does this by teaching the workers how to use the powers arising at any given stage of economic development in the most effective manner and by preventing the waste of those powers.

The theory does not simply increase the effective strength of the proletariat; it also increases the consciousness of that strength. This latter is something that is no less necessary.

We have seen that the will is determined, not alone by consciousness, but by customs and instinct. Relations that have been constantly repeated through decades, and indeed through centuries, create customs and instincts, that continue to operate after their material basis has disappeared. A class may have become weak that once ruled because of its superior strength, and a class that it exploits may become strong, that at one time was weak and permitted itself to be laden with an exploiting class. But the inherited consciousness of strength may long affect both sides until there comes a test of strength, such, for example, as a war, that exposes the whole weakness