Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/26

 14 which, in the case of the feudal nobility, was the result of decadence, of the abdication by it of its social functions, arises in the case of the capitalist class precisely from its social functions, and is part of its very essence.

With the help of such an enormous political power a class can maintain its position long after it has become superfluous, nay, even mischievous. And the stronger the power of the State, the more will a ruling class rely upon it, the more obstinately will it cling to its privileges, the less will it be inclined to make concessions. The longer, however, they assert their supremacy in this fashion the sharper must the class antagonisms become, the more tremendous must the political catastrophe turn out when it finally takes place, the more radical must the social transformations be which proceed from it, the more readily must the conquest of political power through an oppressed class become a social revolution.

Simultaneously, however, the contending classes become more and more conscious of the social consequences of their political struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production the pace of the economic evolution is enormously increased. The economic transformation which the epoch of discoveries and inventions ushered in was carried further on by the introduction of machinery in the domain of industry. Since that time our economic conditions have become subject to constant change—not simply to the rapid decay of the old, but also to the quick building up of the new. The idea of the old, of the traditional, ceases to be synonymous with the tried, the worthy of respect, with the sacred. It has become synonymous with the imperfect, the inadequate, the antiquated. From the domain of economics this conception is transferred to those of art and science, to the sphere of politics. If people formerly clung blindly to the old, they now reject it just as blindly for the sole reason that it is old—and the period which suffices to make a machine, an institution, a theory, an artistic movement obsolete and antiquated becomes ever shorter and shorter. And if before people worked with the idea of creating things for ever, with all the earnestness which such an idea inspires, they now work for the passing effect of the moment, with all the hurry born of such consciousness. In consequence, the thing created nowadays frequently becomes soon useless and obsolete, not merely for the fashion, but as a matter of actual fact.

The new, however, is that which is observed the quickest and examined the closest. The traditional and the everyday fact pass for self-evident. Man certainly pondered much earlier over the causes of the eclipses of the sun than over sunrise and sunset. In the same way, the inducement to study the law of social phenomena must have been but slight, so long as they were the traditional, the self-evident, the "natural," and vice versa. It must have at once become strong when new and hitherto unknown formations arose in the life of society. Not the old traditional forms