Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/39

 and necessities. To be sure this scientific thought can err, many of its conclusions can be shown to be illusions. But however great these errors may be, it cannot be deprived of the characteristic of every true science, the striving after a uniform conception of all phenomena under an indisputable whole. In social science this means the recognition of the social whole as a single organism in which one cannot arbitrarily and for itself alone change any single part. The socially oppressed class no longer directs its theoretical criticism against individual persons and tendencies, but against the total existing society. And just because of this fact every oppressed class which conquers political power is driven to transform the whole social foundations.

The capitalist society which sprang from the revolution of 1789 and its outcome was foreseen in its fundamental outlines by the physiocrats and their English followers.

Upon this distinction between the modern states and society and the organizations of antiquity and the Middle Ages rests the difference in the manner of their development. The former was predominantly unconscious, split up into local and personal strifes and the rebellion of countless little communities at different stages of development; the latter grows more and more self-conscious and strives towards a great recognized social goal which has been determined and is propagated by scientifically