Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/120

 That the Social Democrats when they came into control would strive consciously for this solution is well recognized. On the other side, even a proletariat which was not governed by socialist ideas would proceed from the point of view of transforming into State or municipal property those industries which for natural reasons—for example, mines—or through the form of their organization—as, for example, trusts—have become monopolies.

These private monopolies have become unbearable, not simply for the wage-workers, but for all classes of society who do not share in their ownership. It is only the weakness of the bourgeois world, as opposed to capital, which hinders it from taking effective action against these monopolies. A proletarian revolution must from its very necessity lead to the abolition of private property in these monopolies. They are to-day very extensive and dominate in a high grade the whole economic life and develop with great rapidity. Their nationalization and communalization signifies simply the domination of the whole productive process by society and its organs,—the State and municipalities.

The industries which are most prepared for nationalization are the national means of transportation, railroads and steamships, together with those which produce raw material and partially produced goods; for example, mines, forests, iron foundries, machine manufactures