Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/95

 directed toward social reform and protection for labor. In these fields, however, there is almost universal stagnation, which with the present relative forces on the basis of the present governmental foundations cannot be overcome.

By stagnation we do not necessarily understand a complete cessation of movement. That is impossible in such a wildly agitated society as ours. There may be, however, such a slow rate of advance, that it amounts to a complete cessation, or even to a backward movement in comparison with the rate of technical and economic transformation and the increase in exploitation. And this unspeakably slow progress must be secured only through great economic battles, carefully prepared for and fought out. The burdens and sacrifices of such battles tend to rapidly increase and ever more to overbalance the definite results.

It must not be forgotten that our "positive" and "reformatory" work not only strengthens the proletariat, but also arouses our opponents to more energetic resistance to us. The more the battle for social reforms becomes a political battle the more do the employers' associations seek to sharpen the antagonism of parliaments and governments toward the laborers, and to cripple their political powers.

So it is that once more the battle for political rights is being forced into the foreground, and constitutional questions that touch the very foundations of governmental life are becoming live questions.

The opponents of the proletariat are constantly seeking to limit the political rights of the workers. In Germany every electoral victory of the proletariat is followed by threats to substitute a system of plural voting for the present universal suffrage. In France and Switzerland the militia are turned upon the strikers. In England and America it is the courts that are restricting the freedom of