Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/59

 social democracy are as badly deceived as those who expect the same thing from the anti-semitism in the cities. The medium and large farmers hate the Socialists, just because they struggle to secure a shorter work-day and higher wages for the laborers, and thereby furnish the principal cause for the farm laborers moving to the city and leaving the farmer in the lurch.

In the country also the social antagonism between the possessors and the proletariat grows sharper.

This is even more true of the antagonism between the great land owners and the wage-worker than of that between the farmer and the wage-worker.

In the great agricultural industries the wage-worker plays a more important role than in ordinary farming. For the great farmer also, the high price of provisions is much more important than for the farmer who consumes a large portion of his product. The antagonism between the producer and consumer of provisions is, to be sure, not the same as between the laborer and exploiter, but rather like that between the city and country. But in the city the proletariat is to-day the most numerous and the most combative class and consequently the seller of provisions sees in the proletariat his most energetic enemy.

It is therefore no wonder that the great land owner looks at the industrial laborer to-day from a wholly different point of view from