Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/131

 professors who are crying about the prisonlike character of the future state.

The victorious proletariat will never be satisfied with any prison or barrack-like regulations. Moreover it has no need of anything of the kind since it has other means at its command to hold the laborer to his labor.

In this connection the great power of custom must not be forgotten. Capital has accustomed the modern laborer to work day in and day out and he will not long remain wholly without labor. There are people who are so much accustomed to their work that they do not know what to do with their free time and that feel themselves unhappy when they are not working, and there will be few people who will feel themselves happy for any length of time without any work. I am convinced that when once labor loses the repulsive character of over-work and when the hours of labor are reduced in a reasonable degree, custom alone will suffice to hold the great majority of workers in regular work in factories and mines.

But it is self-evident that we cannot trust to this motive alone as it is the weakest. Another much stronger motive force is the discipline of the proletariat. We know that when the union declares a strike the discipline of organized labor is sufficiently strong to make the laborers freely take upon themselves all the dangers and horrors of unemployment and to remain hungry for months in order to secure a victorious