Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/34

 rights and special peculiarities. All were reduced to the same level, all were given the same laws, the same taxes, same courts, and were made subject to the same government. The modern State was thus forced to become a National State and added to the other equalities the equality of language.

The influence of governmental power upon the social life was now something wholly different from what it was through antiquity or the Middle Ages. Every important political change in a great modern State influences at once with a single stroke and in the profoundest manner an enormous social sphere. The conquest of political power by a previously subject class must, on this account, from now on, have wholly different social results than previously.

As a result the power at the disposal of the modern State has grown enormously. The technical revolution of capitalism reaches also to the technique of arms. Ever since the Reformation the weapons of war have become more and more perfect, but also more costly. They thus become a privilege of governmental power. This fact alone separates the army from the people, even in those places where universal conscription prevails, unless this is supplemented by popular armament, which is not the case in any great State. Most important of all, the leaders of the army are professional soldiers separated from the people, to whom they stand opposed as a privileged class.