Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/95

 to financial collapse or to concessions to the struggling class either of which events were able to bring about a political collapse.

It is wholly different to-day. Capitalism does not, like feudalism, lead to under-production, but to over-production, and chokes in its own fat. It is not a lack of capital, but superfluity of capital which to-day demands profitable investment and in pursuit of dividends draws back from no risk. The governments are completely dependent upon the capitalist class and the latter has every reason to protect and support them. The increase of public debts can only become a revolutionary factor in so far as it increases the pressure of taxes and therewith leads to an uprising of the lower classes, but scarcely (Russia perhaps must be excepted) to a direct financial collapse, or even to a serious financial embarrassment of the government. We have just as little cause to expect a revolution from a financial crisis as from an armed insurrection.

One means which is peculiar to the proletariat for battle and the exercise of influence is the organized withholding of labor—the strike. The more the capitalist manner of production develops and capital concentrates, the more gigantic the dimensions of the strike, and the more the capitalist manner of production presses the small industries, the more will the whole of society become dependent upon the undisturbed continuance of capitalist production