Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/110

 clearness to examine the problems that will grow out of the conquest of political power by us. This is also valuable for propaganda since our opponents frequently assert that our victory will give us unsoluble problems, and we have in our own ranks also people who are unable to paint the results of our victory black enough. According to these people the day of our victory is also the day of our downfall. Therefore it is important to investigate and know how far this is the case.

But if one wishes to attain definite results in this direction and not get lost in endless windings, then we must investigate these problems in a simple form such as never exists in reality and abstracted from all complications. This is a customary process in science whereby one remains entirely conscious that in reality things are never so simple, or develop so smoothly as is the case in the abstraction. I have already said that the social revolution is a process of many years. But to reduce things to their simplest forms we must proceed from the idea that on some fine day the proletariat captures entire political power without restrictions at one stroke and is enabled to exercise it in strict accord with its class interests. The first certainly could not occur and the latter can never be completely the case. The proletariat itself is not sufficiently united nor enough of a uniform