Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/55

Rh with the proletariat. But they prove not unfrequently very untrustworthy allies and are all more or less incapable of appreciating the weapon from which the proletariat derives its greatest strength, namely Organisation.

If previous revolutions were thus uprisings of the mass of the people against the Government, the coming revolution, apart perhaps from Russia, will probably assume rather the character of a struggle of one portion of the nation against the other, and in that, but only in that, resemble less the French Revolution and more the Reformation Wars. I might almost say, it will be less like a sudden revolt against authority and more like a prolonged civil war, if we did not associate with the latter actual war and slaughter. But we have no reason to assume that armed insurrection, with barricades and similar warlike incidents will nowadays play a decisive part. The reasons for that have already been too often set but for me to need to dwell on that point any longer. Militarism can only be overcome through the military themselves proving untrustworthy, not through their being defeated by the revolted people.

No more than from armed insurrections can we expect the collapse of the existing order of society from financial difficulties. In this respect, too, the situation is very different from that of 1789 and 1848. At that time capitalism was still weak, the accumulation of capital unimportant, capital rare and difficult to obtain. Besides, capitalism was then in part hostile to absolutism; in part, to say the least, suspicious of it. The Governments at that time were still independent of capital, that is, of the industrial capital, and occasionally, though for the most part unwillingly, stood much in the way of its development. The decay of feudalism, however, led to the drying up of all material resources, and the Governments were thus able to squeeze less and less money out of their countries, and more and more compelled to have recourse to borrowing. That was bound to lead to a financial collapse, or to concessions to the rising classes, which, just as much as the former, brought a political break-up in its train.

It is quite different to-day; capitalism does not, like feudalism, lead to under-production, but to over-production; it is smothered in its own fat. The drawback is not any lack of capital, but, on the contrary, a superfluity of capital, which seeks profitable investment, and is not afraid of risk. The Governments are fully dependent on the capitalist class, and the latter have every reason to support and protect the former. The growth of national debts can become a revolutionary factor only in so far as it increases the burden of taxation, and, with it, the exasperation of the population. It can, however, hardly—here, too, Russia forms, perhaps, an exception—lead to a direct financial collapse, or even to serious financial difficulties of the governments. There is as little prospect of a revolution from a financial crisis as from an armed insurrection.