Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/7



present pamphlets are the outcome of a suggestion made to me by the Socialist Reading Union in Amsterdam—an association consisting mainly of "Intellectuals"—which invited me to speak there and in Delft. Among the subjects which I proposed was also the "Social Revolution." As the comrades in both towns accepted the same subject, I, in order not to repeat myself, divided it into two lectures, which, though externally independent of each other, are nevertheless connected with one another internally.

The union wished then to publish these two lectures in the form of a pamphlet. To that I had no objection; nevertheless, for the sake of a wider circulation, not to speak of other reasons, I preferred that they should appear in the German Party press. To this our Dutch comrades readily assented.

What is given here is no verbatim report. In writing down what I had said, I have introduced several new ideas, which at the time of delivery I was obliged to omit for the sake of brevity. Nevertheless, I have kept well within the bounds of the lectures and have not made a book of them.

The object of the work will be plain to the reader and needs here no explanation. A special interest, however, is attached to it in the case of Holland, as shortly before my lectures, which took place on April 22 and 24, the late Minister, Mr. Pierson, made a public statement to the effect that a proletariat Revolution is of necessity bound, for reasons inherent in it, to come to grief. My lectures were a direct reply to that. The Minister was so good as to attend the second one. He diligently took notes but unfortunately did not rise to reply to me.

Apart, however, from general as well as local propaganda