Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution and On the Morrow of the Social Revolution - tr. John Bertram Askew (1903).djvu/76

12 even for a few weeks, otherwise the whole society breaks to pieces. Thus there arises for the victorious proletariat the urgent problem of securing the undisturbed progress of production, and of leading the workers who had turned away from the factory back again into their many places of work and of keeping them there so that production might go on uninterruptedly.

What means then, are there at the disposal of the new régime for the solution of this problem? Certainly not the hunger-whip, still less physical compulsion. If there are some who think that the domination of the proletariat would lead to despotism, that to everybody there would be allotted his work by those in authority, then they have very little knowledge of the proletariat; indeed, the proletariat which would then make its own laws, has a far stronger feeling for liberty than those servile Professors who thunder against the barrack or prison character of the future State.

A victorious proletariat will never tolerate a prison or a barrack-like system of regulation. Indeed it has no need of them at all, it has other means at its disposal to keep the workers at their work.

First of all, we must not forget the force of habit. Capitalism has accustomed the modern worker to work day in, day out, so that he is absolutely unable for a length of time to do without work. There are some who are so used to work, that they do not even know what to do with their spare time, and feel most unhappy when they cannot work. There are few who would feel happy going about permanently without work. I am convinced that were work to lose its repulsive character of overwork, were the hours of labour to be reduced to a reasonable limit, the force of habit would alone suffice to keep a large number of workers in the factories and mines at regular work.

But naturally we must not rely on this inducement alone, it is after all the weakest. Another, and a still stronger motive, is the discipline of the proletariat. We know that when a trade union resolves on a strike, the discipline of the organised workers is strong enough to induce him freely to face all the dangers and horrors of unemployment, and to starve, often for months at a time, in order to bring the common cause to a victorious end. Now, I believe that if it is possible, by this power of discipline, to take the workers out of the factories, it will be possible, by the same power, to keep them there. If a trade union recognises the necessity of a continuous and regular progress of production, we may be sure that in the interest of the community scarcely any of its members will leave his post. The same power which the proletariat, by bringing production to a temporary standstill, turns into an effective engine of war will be used by it as a no less effective means of securing the regular progress of the social labour. The higher to-day the trade union organisation of the workers the better the prospects for an undisturbed progress of production after the conquest of political power by the proletariat.