Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/14

2 discovery of America. This transformation is the cause of the revolution, not the revolution itself.

But I would not adhere strictly to this definition of the Social Revolution. One can also interpret it in a narrower sense. In that case it is not every transformation of the juridical and political superstructure of society that constitutes a revolution, but some particular form or some particular method of it.

Every Socialist strives for the Social Revolution in the wider sense; yet there are Socialists who reject the revolution, and want to arrive at the social transformation through reform only. They oppose social reform to Social Revolution. This opposition it is which is discussed in our ranks to-day. It is only with the Social Revolution in this narrower sense, that is, as a particular method of the social transformation, that I will deal here.

The opposition between reform and revolution does not lie in the fact that in one case force is employed and in the other not. Every juridical and political measure is an application of force, a physical force measure which will be enforced by the power of the State. Nor do particular methods of employing physical force, such as street fights or executions, constitute the essential element of social revolution as opposed to reform. They arise from particular circumstances, are not necessarily bound up with a revolution, and may accompany a reform movement. The constitution of the delegates of the Third Estate as the National Assembly of France on June 17, 1789, was a revolutionary act without any apparent use of force. The same France had, on the the contary, seen in 1774 and 1775, great insurrections, for the sole and by no means revolutionary purpose of assizing the bread, and thus put a stop to the continued rise in its price.

The reference to the street fights and executions as characteristics of revolution affords, however, at the same time a clue to the source from which we can obtain information as to the essentials of a revolution. The great transformation which commenced in France in 1789 has become the classical type of all revolution. It is mainly this transformation which people have in mind when speaking of revolution. From it we can best study the nature of revolution, as well as of its opposition to reform. The revolution was preceded by a series of attempts at reform, among which the best known is that of Turgot—attempts which, in many respects, aimed at the very same thing which the revolution actually accomplished. What distinguished the attempts at reforms by Turgot from the corresponding measures of the revolution? Between the two lay the conquest of political power by a new class. It is here that the essential distinction between revolution and reform lies. Measures which have for their object to adapt the political and juridical superstructure of society to the new economic conditions are reforms, if they proceed from the class which has hitherto ruled society politically and economically—they are reforms even if they