Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/129

 from the small when these are united in the form of money capital in the same undertaking. Direct confiscation would complete this quickly, often at one stroke, while confiscation through taxation permits the disappearance of capitalist property through a long drawn out process proceeding in the exact degree in which the new order is established and its benevolent influence made perceptible. It makes it possible to extend the process of confiscation over a decade so that it will only be fully operative in the new generation that will have grown up under the new conditions and is therefore not accustomed to reckon with capital and interest. Confiscation in this way loses its harshness, it becomes more acceptable and less painful. The more peaceably the conquest of the political power by the proletariat is attained and the more firmly organized and enlightened it is, the more we can expect that the primitive forms of confiscation will be softened.

I have lingered somewhat longer with this question because it constitutes one of the main objections of our opponents and not because its carrying out is the greatest difficulty that we will meet. The greatest difficulties begin rather after all of the above events. The expropriation of the means of production is relatively the simplest incident among the great transformations of the social revolution. It requires only the necessary power and it is one of the inevitable presumptions of our whole investigation.