Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/53

 and enter upon any adventurous policy. And the danger of this is lessened just in proportion to the simultaneous height of culture, the insight of the working class and the democratic development of the state.

On the other hand, the same assurance cannot be offered in regard to the ruling class. It sees and feels that it is growing weaker from day to day and is accordingly more and more nervous and uneasy, and consequently uncertain. It is more and more approaching a state of mind where it is evident that it is liable to be seized with a fit of desperate rage that will lead it to throw itself furiously upon its opponent, in a desperate hope of gaining a victory regardless of the wounds it may inflict upon the whole social body, and also of the irreparable destruction it may produce.

The political situation of the proletariat is such that it can well afford to try as long as possible to progress through strictly "legal" methods alone. The danger that these efforts to progress peacefully will be thwarted lies principally in just this nervous attitude of the ruling class.

The statesmen of the ruling class desire above everything else the commission of some insane act that would arouse, not only the ruling class itself, but the whole great indifferent mass of the population against the Socialists, and they desire this before the Socialists shall have become too powerful to be defeated. Such an occurrence offers the only possible hope of putting off the victory of the working class for at least a number of years. To be sure, they are staking everything on this game. If it is not successful and the proletariat is not overthrown in the act of rage that follows, then the collapse of the capitalist class will but be hastened, and the triumph of Socialism be brought so much nearer. But the politicians of the ruling class have reached a condition where they are ready to risk everything upon a single