Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/32

 oppressed class, and, moreover, in these oppressed classes, stubborn clinging to all privileges was the rule. As has already been noted this operated to confine political revolution almost wholly to the abolition of individual abuses and the removal of individual persons. This condition also assisted in the avoidance through compromise of all forms of revolution.

Among the great nations of modern times England is the one which most resembles the Middle Ages, not economically, but in its political form. Militarism and bureaucracy are there the least developed. It still possesses an aristocracy that not only reigns but governs. Corresponding to this, England is the great modern nation in which the efforts of the oppressed classes are mainly confined to the removal of particular abuses instead of being directed against the whole social system. It is also the State in which the practice of protection against revolution through compromise is farthest developed.

If the universal armament of the people did not encourage great social revolutions, it did make it much easier for armed conflict between the classes to arise at the slightest opportunity. There is no lack of violent uprisings and civil wars in antiquity and the Middle Ages. The ferocity with which these were fought was often so great as to lead to the expulsion, expropriation and oftentimes to the extermination of the conquered. Those who consider violence as a