Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/101

 is not possible without great upheavals and they shrink back from these because they have learned to know the gigantic power of the proletariat which every such great upheaval threatens to set free.

I have referred above to the decay of the internal political life which finds its most striking expression in the increasing decadence of Parliaments. But hand in hand with this is the decay of external politics. One fears every energetic policy that may lead to an international conflict, not from an ethical dislike of war, but for fear of the revolution, whose forerunner it may be. Accordingly the statesmanship of our rulers consists simply, not alone internally, but also externally, in placing every question upon the shelf and thereby increasing the number of unsolved problems. Thanks to this policy there now exists a row of shadow States such as Turkey and Austria, which an energetic revolutionary race of a half century ago placed on the list of extinct States. On the other side, and for the same reason, the interest of the bourgeoisie has completely ceased to stand for an independent Polish national state.

But these social craters are not put out, they may burst out again any day in devastating war, like Mt. Pelee at Martinique. Economic evolution itself continually creates new craters, new causes of crises, new points of friction and new occasions for warlike developments, in that it awakens in the ruling classes a greed for the