Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/29

Rh shows that the transition from capitalism to Socialism cannot be accomplished imperceptibly. The rule of the exploiting classes cannot be undermined slowly without those latter perceiving it, putting themselves on the defensive, and employing all their power in order to keep down the proletariat growing in strength and influence.

If, however, the insight into the correlation of social phenomena was never so widely spread as to-day, on the other hand the power of the State was also never so great as to-day, its military, bureaucratic, or economic means never so wonderfully developed. This means that the proletariat, if it conquers the political power, acquires with it the power to at once be able to carry out the most far reaching social alterations; it means, however, also that the ruling classes of to-day, with the help of this power, can continue their existence and their exploitation of the toiling masses long after their economic indispensability has ceased. The more, however, the ruling classes rely on the machinery of the State and misuse it for the purposes of exploitation and oppression, the more must the bitterness of the proletariat against them rise, the more the class hatred grow, and the endeavour to conquer the machinery of State increase in violence and strength.

It has been objected that this conception does not take into consideration the latest social phenomena, which clearly show that the development is proceeding quite differently. The antagonism, it is said, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat does not increase, but tends to become milder; and in every modern State we see a sufficient number of democratic institutions which allow the proletariat to gain, if not the power, at least some power, that can be increased little by little, slowly and gradually, so that all necessity for a social revolution disappears. Let us see how far these objections are justified.

Let us examine in the first place the first objection: The social antagonism between the middle classes and the proletariat tends to diminish. I will here pass over the question of commercial crises, of which it was predicted some years ago that they would become weaker. This view has since then been so emphatically refuted by undisputed facts, that I am in the position to forego on that head all further discussion, which otherwise would have taken us too far out of our way. Nor am I going to make any further contribution to the debate on the already ad nauseam discussed theory of the progressive increase of misery, which, with a little ingenuity, could be debated for ever, and in which the debate turns more on interpretation of the word "misery," than on the recognition of certain facts. We Socialists are unanimous in this, that the capitalist mode of production, when left to itself, has for its result an increase