Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/58

 torture of the weakest and most unresisting of the possessors of labor power—the women and children. As a consequence they are naturally the first opponents of the Socialists, when the latter seek by means of organization and compulsory legislation to abolish this brutal destruction of human life.

So it is that the class of small property owners, so far as it does not become Socialist, becomes, instead of an ally, or a conciliatory element midway between the proletariat and the ruling classes, a bitter enemy of the proletariat. In place of a softening of class antagonisms we see here the most harsh climax of class antagonism, and moreover a rapidly increasing one, for it is only within the last few years that it has become clearly noticeable.

What we have said of the class of small property owners applies with but few changes to the farming class. They are also divided into two camps, one the proletarian, composed of small farmers, and the other of capitalist proprietors. It is our task to accelerate this process of division, in order that we may make clear the overwhelming proletarian interests of the first class, and thereby lead them to socialism. The reactionary democracy in the country is as hostile to our existence as is the one in the cities even if this opposition is not always clearly recognized. Those comrades who look upon the agrarian confusion as only a transition state of the farmers from the old parties to the