Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/90

 existence to a battle for the possession of dominion.

What will be the precise form under which the decisive battles between the ruling class and the proletariat will be fought out? When may we expect them to occur? What weapons will be at the service of the proletariat?

To these questions it is hard to give definite answers. We can to a certain degree suggest the direction of the development but not its form nor its velocity. The investigation of the direction of evolution concerns itself only with relatively simple laws. Here one can only isolate from the whole confused manifold, the phenomena which we recognize as not regular or necessary, or which appear to us as accidental. These latter on the contrary play an important part in the determination of the form and the velocity of the movement. For example, in all modern civilization the direction of capitalist development during the last century has been the same, but in every one of them the form and the velocity was very different. Geographical peculiarities, racial individualities, favor and disfavor of the neighbor, the restraint or assistance of great individualities, all these and many other things have had their influence. Many of these could not be foreseen, but even the most easily recognizable of these factors operate upon each other in such diverse ways that the result