Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/97

 Such a strike would, however, at one stroke render impossible the existence not simply of existing society but all existence, and That of the proletarians long before that of the capitalist, and must consequently collapse uselessly at just the moment when its revolutionary virtue began to develop.

The strike as a political weapon will scarcely ever, certainly not in any time now visible, take on the form of a strike of all the laborers of a country. It can also not have the purpose of displacing the other means of political struggle but only of supplementing and strengthening them. We are now entering upon a time where opposed to the overwhelming power of organized capital an isolated non-political strike will be just as hopeless as is the isolated parliamentary action of the labor parties opposed to the pressure of the capitalistically dominated governmental powers. It will be ever more necessary that both should grow and draw new strength from co-operation.

As is the case with all new weapons the best manner to use a political strike must first be learned. It is not a cure-all as the anarchists announce it, and it is not an infallible means, under all conditions, as they consider it. It would exceed my purposes to investigate here the conditions under which it is applicable. Considering the latest events in Belgium I might observe that these have shown how very much it demands its own peculiar methods