Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/103

 time and therewith also the possibility of political convulsions that will end directly in proletarian uprisings or at least in opening the way to them.

Let no one misunderstand me. I am investigating here, not prophesying and still less am I expressing wishes. I investigate what may happen; I do not declare what will happen, least of all do I demand what should happen. When I speak here of war as a means of revolution, that does not say that I desire war. Its horrors are so terrible that to-day it is only military fanatics whose ghastly courage could lead them to demand a war in cold blood. But even when a revolution is not a means to an end but an end in itself, which even at the most bloody price could not be too dearly purchased, still one cannot desire war as a means to release revolution for it is the most irrational means to this end. It brings such terrible destruction and creates such gigantic demands upon the State that any revolution springing from it is heavily loaded with tasks that are not essential to it but which momentarily absorb all its means and energy. Consequently a revolution which rises from war is a sign of the weakness of the revolutionary class, and often the cause of further weakness, just because of the sacrifice that it brings with it, as well as by the moral and intellectual degradation to which war gives rise. It also increases enormously the tasks of the revolutionary regime and simultaneously