Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/118

 of completely abolishing the necessity of the unemployed whether this be through sickness or otherwise. An actually effective maintenance of all the unemployed must completely alter the relative strength of the proletariat and capitalist. It will make the proletariat master in the factory. That the laborer of to-day is compelled to sell himself to the employer and that the latter can exploit and enslave him is because of the ghost of the unemployed and the hunger whip that swings above his head. If the laborer can once be secure of existence even when he is not working, nothing would be easier than for him to overthrow capital. He no longer needs capitalists, while the latter cannot continue his business without him. Once things have gone thus far the employer would be beaten in every conflict with his employes and be quickly compelled to give in to them. The capitalists could then perhaps continue to be the directors of the factories, but they would cease to be their masters and exploiters. Once the capitalists recognized, however, that they had the right to bear only the risk and burdens of capitalist business, these men would be the very first ones to renounce the further extension of capitalist production and to demand that their undertakings be purchased because they could no longer carry them on with any advantage. We have already had similar results. This was the case, for example, in Ireland at the time the anti-rent movement