Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/107

Rh But if the proletariat need not change so very greatly in order to become ripe for the Socialist society, we may certainly expect that the latter will itself alter considerably the character of men. What is usually set up as the prerequisite condition for a Socialist society, and what capitalist society is unable to produce, what therefore would thus be an impossible condition—viz., the creation of a higher type of mankind than the modern man, that will be the result of Socialism. It will bring security, rest and leisure to men; it will lift their thoughts above the every-day life, because they will not have need to think, day in, day out, where to get the bread for to-morrow. It will make the individual independent of other individuals, and so root out the slavish feeling, as well as the feeling of contempt for humanity. It will also equalise the difference between town and country, render the treasures of a magnificent culture accessible to all mankind, and return it back to Nature, from which to draw the strength and the joy of life.

Simultaneously with the psychological roots of pessimism, it will also exterminate its social roots, the misery and degeneracy of some who make a virtue of their need, and the surfeiting of others, who in their toil-less pleasure have emptied the cup of happiness to the dregs. Socialism abolishes need and surfeit, and all that is unnatural, and makes men joyous of life and of beauty, and capable of pleasure. And, in addition, it brings freedom of scientific and artistic creative activity for all.

May we not assume that under these conditions a new type of mankind will evolve which will surpass the highest type which culture has produced up till now? An overman, if you please, not as an exception, but as the rule; an overman compared with his ancestors, but not with his fellow men; an elevated man who seeks his satisfaction not in being great among crippled dwarfs but great among great, happy with happy, who draws his strength not by raising himself on the bodies of the crushed, but by gaining courage through the union with men of similar aspirations, the courage to venture on the grappling with the highest problems.

Thus, we can expect that a kingdom of strength and of beauty will arise which will be worthy of the ideals of our loftiest and noblest thinkers.