Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/45

Rh head of the bourgeoisie without any revolution and expropriate it without attracting any notice.

But the question appears quite different when the other side is also considered, and it is seen that the bourgeoisie also gains in strength and is spurred by every advance of the proletariat to develop new strength, to think out and apply new methods of opposition and of oppression. What from a one-sided consideration appears as a peaceful growth into Socialism turns out, then, to be but the organisation of greater and greater masses of troops, the fitting out and the application of ever more and more powerful weapons of war, the continual enlargement of the battle ground, consequently not the gradual abolition of the class war by the absorption of capitalism, but its reproduction on an even larger scale, and the intensification of the results of every victory and every defeat.

The most harmless are the co-operative societies, among which only the distributive societies are of any account. They are ranked very high by all the opponents of revolutionary developments on account of their peaceful nature. Undoubtedly they offer the workers a number of important advantages, but it is ridiculous to expect from them even a partial expropriation of capitalism. So far as they at all expropriate any class to-day, it is the class of small shopkeepers and many sections of hand workers, which have hitherto maintained their position, e.g., the bakers. It is in thorough keeping with this fact that nowhere do the big capitalists fight the co-operative stores, through whom they are said to be being driven out of existence. No, it is the petty bourgeoisie which is so rabid against them, and amongst it those very sections which depend on the workers, and which, therefore, are the easiest influenced in favour of a proletarian policy. If the co-operative stores offer to some sections of the workers material advantages and render them stronger, they at the same time repel from the movement sections of the community which are very near to them. The means which are intended for the peaceful absorption of capitalism, and for abolition of the class war, becomes itself a new objective in the class war, a means by which class hatred is inflamed. And the power of the capitalist remains at the same time undisturbed. The co-operative movement has up till now successfully fought the small tradesmen; the fight with the capitalist warehouse is still to be fought out. That will not be so easy.

Completely absurd, too, is the assumption that the dividends of the co-operative stores, even if they are not paid out, but accumulated, could grow quicker than the accumulation of capital, so that they are able to overtake it and thus gradually limit more and more the field of capitalism.

The co-operative stores can only acquire importance for the emancipation of the workers where the working-class is carrying on a determined class war; they are the means to lend the militant