Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/35

Rh parties. The theoretical bankruptcy of the bourgeois political economy and the theoretical superiority of Socialism must have become patent to them. In addition, they found that the other classes strive more and more to hold art and science in subjection. Many, finally, are also impressed by the success,- by the continual rise, of Social-Democracy, especially when it is compared with the continual decay of Liberalism. In this way, sympathy with Labour and Socialism become popular among the educated; there is hardly a drawing-room where one does not tumble across one or more "Socialists."

Were these circles of the educated identical with the bourgeoisie, then certainly we should have had the day won, and all Social Revolution would have been superfluous. With these classes one could discuss the matter peaceably; from them the slow, quiet development has no violent intervention to fear.

Unfortunately, however, they form only one section of the bourgeoisie, and that the one which, though writing and speaking in the name of the bourgeoisie, does not determine its action. And classes, like individuals, are to be known not by their words but their deeds.

Also it is the least energetic and militant section of the bourgeoisie which evinces a sympathy with the proletariat.

Formerly, of course, when Socialism, even in the ranks of the educated, passed for almost a crime or lunacy, bourgeois elements could only join the Socialist movement when completely breaking with the bourgeois world. Whosoever at that time passed from bourgeois circles to Socialism, required much greater energy, revolutionary enthusiasm, and force of conviction than a member of the proletariat. In the Socialist movement, therefore, these elements belonged as a rule to the most Radical and revolutionary.

Quite different is it to-day, when Socialism has become fashionable with the drawing-rooms. It requires no particular energy, no break with the bourgeois society, for anyone to call himself a Socialist. No wonder that an ever-growing number of new Socialists remain stuck in the traditional modes of thinking and feeling of their class. But the methods of warfare of the intellectuals are different to those of the proletariat. The latter can only bring against wealth and the force of arms its superior numbers and the solidarity of its class organisations. The Intellectuals, on the other hand, are insignificant in numbers and without class organisation. Their only weapon is that of persuasion by word of mouth and by pen; they fight with "intellectual weapons" and "moral superiority," and with these weapons the drawing-room Socialists would also wish to decide the proletarian class war. They declare themselves ready to lend the proletariat their moral support, but on condition that it gives up all idea of using force—and that not only where it has no prospect of success—there even the proletariat gives it up—but even where it has. Hence they try to bring into discredit the