Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/75

Rh its full value, and then confiscated by the tax collector? The difference between this method and the direct method appears to be merely a formal one.

To this I will reply, the distinction is not so unimportant as it seems. The direct confiscation of capital affects all, the small and the great, those unable to work and the able-bodied, everybody in an equal way. It is difficult by this method, often quite impossible, to separate the large property from the small invested with those money capitals in the same undertakings. The direct confiscation would also proceed too quickly, often at one stroke, while confiscation through taxation would permit the abolition of capitalist property being made a long-drawn process, working itself out further and further in the measure as the new order gets consolidated and makes its beneficent influence felt. It renders it possible to extend the process of confiscation over a number of decades, so that it attains its full effect not before the younger generation, which had grown up under the new conditions, and is no longer compelled to reckon with capitals and interest, reaches maturity. Thus confiscation loses its acerbity, becomes more adaptable and less painful. The more peacefully the conquest of political power by the proletariat is accomplished, the better organised and the more enlightened the latter is, the sooner may we expect that it will prefer the more refined method of confiscation to the more primitive.

I have dwelt somewhat longer on this question, because it forms one of the principal objections of our opponents, not because its solution constitutes the greatest difficulty we have to deal with. The great difficulties begin rather after the proceedings in question. The expropriation of the means of production is relatively the simplest process in the great transformation of the Social Revolution. Only the necessary amount of power is required for that, and that is the first and indispensable assumption of our entire enquiries. The difficulties for a proletarian government lie not in the domain of property, but in that of production.

We have seen that the social revolution makes the continuation of the capitalist mode of production impossible, that the political domination of the proletariat is necessarily bound up with an economic revolt against the capitalist mode of production, which would hinder the continuation of the latter. Production, however, must continually go on, it must not be allowed to stand still, not