Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/7

 and with a more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution."

The Manifesto was right in expecting a German revolution. But it was deceived when it believed this to be the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution.

Nearer to us in time lies another prophecy made by Engels in an introduction to these conditions of Marx's brochure on the trial of the Cologne Communists, published in 1885. In this he stated that the next European uprising "was almost due, since the period of European revolutions during the present century was between 15 and 18 years—1815, 1830, 1848–52, 1870."

This expectation was not fulfilled, and up to the present time the expected revolution has not arrived.

Why was this? Was the Marxian method, upon which this expectation was based, false? In no way. But there was one factor in the calculation that was valued altogether too highly. Ten years ago I said concerning these very prophecies: "Both times the revolutionary and oppositional power of the capitalist class was overestimated."—(Neue Zeit, XVII: 2, p. 45.)

Marx and Engels expected a far-reaching and violent revolution in Germany in 1847 similar to the great French upheaval that began in 1789. Instead of this, however, there was but a wavering uprising that served only to frighten the whole capitalist class so that it took refuge under the wing of the government. The result was that the government was greatly strengthened and the rapid development of the proletariat was stifled. The bourgeoisie then relinquished to individual governments such further revolutionary action as was necessary to its