Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/57

Rh As with every other weapon, the use of the political strike must first be learnt. Not only is it not the cure-all which the Anarchists claim for it, but it is not even the under-all-circumstances-infallible remedy as they regard it. It cannot be my task here to investigate the requisite conditions under which it can be used; only with reference to the recent events in Belgium I may point out that they showed to what a great extent it demands methods of its own that cannot be combined just at mere wish with others, such as, for example, co-operation with the Liberals. I do not object to the latter under all and any circumstances. It would be foolish on our part if we were not to take advantage of the disagreements and splits among our opponents. But one must not expect from the Liberals more than they can give* In the sphere of Parliamentary activity, when a certain measure is concerned, the antagonism can under circumstances well be greater between them and their bourgeois opponents than between them and us. Then a temporary working agreement may well be in order. But a fight outside Parliament for a proposal of revolutionary importance cannot be fought with the help of the Liberals. To wish to increase, in case of such an action, the strength of the proletariat by an alliance with the Liberals means to neutralise one of the employee's weapons by the other. The political strike is a purely proletarian weapon, which can only be used in a fight which the proletariat fights alone. It therefore only comes into account in a fight against the entire bourgeois society. In this sense it is, perhaps, the most revolutionary of all the weapons of the proletariat.

In addition, still other weapons and methods of warfare may, perhaps, develop of which we cannot even think to-day. There is between the knowledge of the methods and organs and that of the direction of the social struggles, yet that difference that the latter can be theoretically investigated in advance, while the former are, in the first place, created by the practical workers, and only then observed by the theoricians, and examined by them from the point of view of their importance for the further development. Trade unions, strikes, joint stock companies, trusts, &c., sprang from practical life, not from theory. In this field there may yet be many surprises in store for us.

War may also become a means to hasten the political development and to place political power in the hands of the proletariat. War has already proved frequently a great revolutionary factor. There are historical situations in which a revolution becomes necessary for the further development of society, and yet the revolutionary classes are too weak to overthrow the ruling classes. The necessity of a revolution must not be understood in the sense that the revolutionary classes necessarily attain at the right moment also the right strength for it. Unfortunately, the world is not arranged so fitly. There are situations where it is absolutely necessary that a ruling class should be supplanted by another, and