Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/21

 No one would claim on the ground of external similarity to transfer without change a law which applied to one of these spheres to the other. One would not seek to solve the problem of sexual reproduction and heredity by the laws of chemical affiliation. But the same error is committed when natural laws are applied directly to society, as for example when competition is justified as a natural necessity because of the law of the struggle for survival, or when the laws of natural evolution are invoked to show the impossibility of social revolution.

But there is still more to be said in reply. If the old catastrophic theory is gone forever from the natural sciences, the new theory which makes of evolution only a series of little, insignificant changes meets with ever stronger objections. Upon one side there is a growing tendency toward quietistic, conservative theories that reduce evolution itself to a minimum, on the other side facts are compelling us to give an ever greater importance to catastrophes in natural development. This applies equally to the geological theories of Lyell and the organic evolution of Darwin.

This has given rise to a sort of synthesis of the old catastrophic theories and the newer evolutionary theories, similar to the synthesis that is found in Marxism. Just as Marxism distinguishes between the gradual economic development and the sudden transformation of