Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/52

 To expect the transformation of society and the social revolution to accomplish itself without taking part in the political struggle is childish foolishness. Whoever thinks this has no conception of the difficulty and greatness of our struggle for emancipation.

I spoke in Halle on "The Growth of the Present Society into Socialism." In many ways that expression has become suspicious to me. I have designated therewith merely the organic character of the evolution of society, which is no machine, hut a collective living organism. I have on every occasion, and also at that time, clearly stated that men are not the playthings of fate, and that they dare not stand inactive, anticipating a blessing from above; that circumstances, it is true, dispose of men, hut are also in turn through men determined, and that, as the class struggle is a continual strife, so also the realization of our end can only he the fruit of the uninterrupted conflict in which all fight together and every one throws his whole being unreservedly into the balance scale, joyfully setting at stake possessions and life.

"They (the laboring class) cannot expect the transfer of the means of production to the community without being first invested with political power," it reads further in this paragraph. That is to say, we struggle for the power in the state for the "latch to legislation" that is now monopolized by our opponents for their class interests. "It must be the aim of social democracy to give conscious unanimity to this struggle of the working class to indicate the inevitable goal." It is not our task to hold enticingly before the workers a picture of the future state, but to inform them of the process of development and the laws that actuate present society; to point out to them what is necessary in order to bring exploitation and slavery to an end; to show them how