Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/50

 methods is to be found in the fact, which has been often pointed out, of the colossal superiority of the weapons of the present standing armies, as compared with the weapons in the possession of civilians, and which makes any resistance of the latter practically doomed to failure from the beginning.

On the other hand the revolutionary sections of today have better weapons for economic, political and moral resistance than was at the disposal of the revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. Russia is the only exception to this rule.

Freedom of organization and of the press and universal suffrage (under certain circumstances universal military duty) not only place weapons in the hands of the proletariat of modern nations which give them an advantage over the classes which fought the revolutionary battles of the bourgeoisie; these institutions shed a light upon the relative strength of the various parties and classes and upon the spirit that animates them, and this light was wholly lacking under absolutism.

At that time the ruling classes as well as the revolutionary ones were groping about in the dark. Since every expression of opposition was rendered impossible neither the government nor the revolutionists could gain any idea of their strength. Each party was in danger of overestimating its strength so long as it had not measured it against an opponent. It was, on the other hand, inclined to underestimate it as soon as it suffered the slightest defeat.

This is one of the principal reasons why, during the bourgeoisie revolutions, so many uprisings were suppressed with a single blow, and why so many governments were overthrown at a single stroke, and why revolution was so generally followed by a counter revolution.

It is wholly different today in those countries having any democratic institutions. Such institutions have been