Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/190

 social revolution, but the determining factor will always be the demands of economics.

But beside law and ethics psychology also comes into consideration. Will not problems arise therefrom for the proletarian regime and those of great significance? Does not the socialist society presuppose extraordinary people, actual angels in unselfishness, joy in labor, and intelligence? Will not the social revolution with the present race full of egoism and brutality be the signal for a raging battle for spoils or lead to a universal idleness? All transformations of economic foundations amount to nothing so long as mankind is not ennobled.

The treatment and the text are not new. They were sung a hundred years ago as the song arose of the crushed oppressed classes. The gentle landlords of the Holy Alliance would gladly have given their beloved children all possible freedom, but these children must first attain the necessary ripeness.

I do not intend to deny that every system of production demands certain definite technical and also psychological preliminary conditions in order to enable it to be realized. What shall be the necessary forms of these psychological conditions of a given manner of production depends upon the character of the economic tasks which it sets forth.

No one will claim that in my investigation I have presupposed mankind of an angelic character. The problem that we have to solve