Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/57

 It is this division of the little property owners that is mainly responsible for the decadence of the bourgeois democracy. One of these divisions turns toward the proletarian Social Democracy; the other toward the reactionary democracy, where it appears under the most diverse colors as anti-semitism, nationalism, Christian democracy—factions of the conservative and central parties, but always with the same social content. This reactionary democracy has taken many of its ideas and arguments from the socialist thought, and many have therefore come to consider these as but beginnings which indicate an especial transition form from liberalism to socialism. The untenableness of this position is clear to-day. Socialism has no bitterer enemy than the reactionary democracy. If the socialists demand any advance in civilization, whether that advance be a direct benefit to proletarian class interests or not, the reactionary democracy is driven by its whole being to oppose it, even if it does not directly threaten the interests of the small property owner. Just as the Socialist party is the most progressive party, so the reactionary democracy is the most retrograde party, in that to the hatred of progress which they share with other reactionary parties they add the most gross ignorance of everything that takes place outside their narrow circle of thought. Another reason for this fact is that the little capitalists can maintain their position as exploiters only by the most inhuman