Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/62



We have seen that the Marxists have shown themselves to be by no means as poor prophets as some people would like to make them appear. Many of them, to be sure, have been wrong in some point, as, for example, the setting of a date for the great revolutionary struggle that shall bring about important political alterations of power in the interest of the proletariat.

What reason have we to expect that now, at last, the long expected time is drawing close when the ban of political stagnation will be broken, and that once more the fresh, joyful life of battle and victorious progress on the road to political power will appear?

In his introduction to Marx's "Class Struggles in France," to which reference has already been made, Engels quite properly pointed out that, under present conditions, a great revolutionary struggle can be carried on only by great masses who know what they intend to do. The times are past in which a small minority, by a sudden energetic action, can overthrow a government and erect a new one in its place.

This was possible in a centralized state where all political power was concentrated in a capital city which dominated the entire country, and where the villages and smaller cities had no trace of political life and no power of co-operation. Whoever was able to cripple the military forces and the bureaucracy of the capital, or to win it to their side, could seize the powers of government,