Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/94

 more the struggles of the Reformation than the type of the French Revolution. I might almost say that it will be much less of a sudden uprising against the authorities than a long drawn out civil war, if one does not necessarily join to these last words the idea of actual slaughter and battles. We have no ground to think that barricade battles and similar warlike accompaniments will play a decisive role to-day. The reasons for this have been given so often that I have no need of dallying longer concerning them. Militarism can only be overthrown by rendering the military itself faithless to the rulers, not through its being conquered by popular uprisings.

We have just as little to expect from a financial crisis as from an armed uprising in producing a collapse of existing conditions. In this respect the situation is also wholly different from that of 1789 and 1848. At that time capitalism was still weak, the accumulation of capital still slight and capital difficult to obtain. In this relation capital was partially hostile to absolutism or at least distrustful of it. The government was dependent upon capital and especially upon industrial capital and its development was impossible without it, or at least against its will. The dying feudalism, however, led to the drying up of all material sources of help so that the government received even less money from its lands and was ever more dependent upon the money lenders. This finally led