Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/96

 the proletariat, since parliament and congress lack the courage to openly attack the workers.

But the proletariat cannot be satisfied to simply guard itself against such attacks. Its condition will be more and more threatened if it is unable to conquer new positions in the national life, which will enable it to utilize the governmental institutions in the service of its class interests. In Germany especially is it in need of this, even more than any other country save Russia. Already the Reichstag suffrage is being turned more and more against the city proletariat. The distribution of districts for the Reichstag elections is today the same as it was in 1871. But we have seen to what extent the relation of city and country has changed since then. While in 1871 two-thirds of the population was in the country and but one-third in the cities, today that proportion is reversed, while the relative representation in the Reichstag remains the same. This more and more favors the open country at the expense of the city. In the last Reichstag election the Socialists received 29 per cent of all the votes cast, but only 10.8 per cent of the representatives. The Center party, on the contrary, received 19.4 per cent of the votes and 26.4 per cent of the representatives, and the Conservatives 9.4 per cent of the votes and 15.7 per cent of the representatives.

These two parties combined did not have as many votes as the Socialists, but they have four times as many representatives. Under proportional voting the Socialists would have had 116 instead of 43 representatives in 1907 and the Conservatives and Center together would have but 115 instead of 164.

The continuation of the present districting is equivalent to giving a plural vote to the more backward portion of the population, and this inequality increases from year to year in the same degree that the city proletariat grows.

Along with this we have a system of casting the votes,