Page:Karl Radek - The Development of Socialism from Science to Action.djvu/14

 was a Utopia, not, to be sure, one that would give wings to the soul, that would stimulate the energies of the workers, that would make the journey of humanity seem shorter in the visions it presents, so that the sluggish ones might be encouraged to hasten their steps, but on the contrary one that would lame their stride, transforming them into creeping beasts.

Since the great strike in the Ruhr district, since the great fights of the electric workers in Berlin, and the violent agitation of the French workers for the attainment of the eight-hour day, the great faith of the workers in the peaceful evolution to Socialism disappeared. They saw now how the forces of Capitalism had been uniting against the proletariat in economic life as well as in political life, they saw how the bourgeois parties were solidifying more and more into a reactionary mass, they saw how the entire bourgeois society was moving toward the abyss of war, they saw how parliaments were becoming constantly less able to cope with the development, if for no other reason, then because they were themselves being forced in all countries to resign their powers in favor of secret cabinets in which bureaucracy in combination with the sharks of Capital settled the most vital affairs of the people.

The fires of the Russian Revolution of the year 1905 showed the masses of Europe what latent power can be summoned by the working class when it arises and when it is disposed to throw its personality into the fight for the cause. Since the year 1905 the problem of the struggle for power, i. e., the problems of the Socialist revolution, which were brought up in a theoretical way in the discussion of reformism (Kautsky's pamphlet on the "Social Revolution", published in the year 1903), were present in the consciousness of the masses of the people.

An anxious search began for the exit out of the blind alley into which capitalistic evolution had blundered. The first question before the toiling masses was, "Where are we going?"