Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/96

 and the more will every important disturbance of this latter, as for instance, a strike of great dimensions, bring with it national calamities and political results. At a certain height of economic development the thought will at once occur to use the strike as a means for political struggle. It has already appeared as such in France and Belgium and has been used with good results. In my opinion it will play a great role in the revolutionary battles of the future.

That has been my view for a long time. In my articles on the new party programme of 1891 (Neue Zeit, 1890–1891, No. 50, page 757) I pointed out the possibility that "under certain conditions, when a great decision is to be made, when great events have moved the labor masses to their depths an extensive cessation of labor may easily have great political results."

Naturally, I am not using the idea of a general strike in the sense that the anarchists and the French trade unionists use the word. To these latter the political and especially the Parliamentary activity of the proletariat is to be supplemented by the strike and it is to become a means to throw the social order overboard.

That is foolish. A general strike in the sense that all the laborers of the country at a given sign shall lay down their labor presupposes a unanimity and an organization of the laborers which is scarcely possible in present society, and which if it were once attained would be so irresistible that no general strike would be