Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/29

 for domestic economy, or for agricultural industries, such as those composed by Xenophon and Varro.

While the deeper social causes that gave rise to the condition of individual classes remained concealed and were veiled by the acts of individual persons and local peculiarities, it was not to be wondered at that the oppressed classes also, as soon as they had conquered political power, used it first of all to get rid of individuals and local peculiarities and not to establish a new social order.

The most important obstacle in the road to any revolutionary movements at this time was the slowness of economic development. This proceeded imperceptibly. Peasants and artisans worked as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers had been accustomed to work. The ancient, the customary, was the only good and perfect thing. Even when one sought to create something new, he endeavored to prove to others that it was really a return to some forgotten tradition. Technical progress did not in itself compel new forms of property for it consisted only in increasing social division of labor, in the division of one trade into many. But, in each of the new trades, hand work was still fundamental, the means of production were insignificant, and the decisive element was manual skill. To be sure, in the last years of antiquity, we find beside the peasants and the artisans great businesses (even industrial