Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/132

 for the common cause. Now I believe that when it is possible by the strength of discipline to keep the laborers out of the factories it will also be possible to hold them in by the same force. If the union once recognizes the necessity of the unbroken regular progress of labor we may be sure that the interest of the whole will be so great that scarcely a single member will leave his post. The same force that the proletariat uses to-day as a weapon to destroy production will then become an effective means to secure the regular continuance of social labor. The higher the economic organization develops to-day the better the outlook for the undisturbed progress of production after the conquest of political power by the proletariat.

But the discipline which lives in the proletariat is not military discipline. It does not mean blind obedience to an authority imposed from above. It is democratic discipline, a free will submission to a self-chosen leadership, and to the decisions of the majority of their own comrades. If this democratic discipline operates in the factory, it presupposes a democratic organization of labor, and that a democratic factory will take the place of the present aristocratic one. It is self evident that a socialist regime would from the beginning seek to organize production democratically. But even if the victorious proletariat did not have this point in view from the beginning they would be driven to it by the necessity of ensuring the