Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/8

 Bismarck, especially, was the great revolutionist of Germany, at least to the extent of throwing a few German princes from their thrones, favoring the unity of Italy, the dethroning of the Pope, and bringing about the overthrow of the empire and the introduction of the Republic in France.

This was the way in which the German bourgeois revolution, the early entrance of which Marx and Engels had prophesied in 1847, proceeded until it reached its end in 1870.

In spite of this Engels still expected a "political upheaval" in 1885, and declared that the "middle class democracy is even now the only party" that in case of such an uprising "must certainly come into power in Germany."

Again Engels prophesied truly in foretelling a "political upheaval," but again he was mistaken in expecting anything from the middle class democracy. This class failed completely when the Bismarckian regime collapsed. Consequently the overthrow of the Chancellor became only an act of the emperor, with no revolutionary consequences.

More and more it becomes evident that the only possible revolution is a proletarian revolution. Such a revolution is impossible so long as the organized proletariat does not form a body large enough and compact enough to carry, under favorable circumstances, the mass of the nation with it. But when once the proletariat comes to be the only revolutionary class in the nation, it necessarily follows that any crisis in an existing government, whether of a moral, financial or military nature, must include the bankruptcy of all capitalist parties, which as a whole are responsible, and in such a case the only government that could meet the situation would be a proletarian one.

Not all Socialists, however, draw these conclusions. There are some who, when an expected revolution does