Karl Johann Kautsky

“ Action implies continual choice between various possibilities, and be it only that of doing or not doing, it means accepting or rejecting, defending or opposing. Choice, however, assumes, in advance, the possibility of choice, just as much as the distinction between the acceptable and inacceptable, the good and the bad. The moral judgment, which is an absurdity in the world of the past—the world of experience, in which there is nothing to choose, where iron necessity reigns—is unavoidable in the world of the unknown future—of freedom. ”

“ It is almost inconceivable with what rapidity the mass of the people reach a clear consciousness of their class interests at such a time. Not alone their courage and their belligerency, but their political interest as well, is spurred on in the highest degree through the consciousness that the hour has at last come for them to burst out of the darkness of night into the glory of the full glare of the sun. ”

“ Thus the moral ideal of the uprising classes in historical times has always had the same appearance, always that which the French Revolution summed up with the words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. It would seem as if this were the ideal implanted in every human breast, independent of time and space, as if it were the task of the human race to strive from its beginning for the same moral ideal, as if the evolution of man consisted in the gradual approach to this ideal which continually looms before him. ”

“ It must always be one of the aims of the thinking proletariat to deprive the possessing classes of the monopoly of culture. It is self-evident that the new regime would increase and improve the schools and pay their teachers better. But we would go still further. To be sure the victorious proletariat, no matter how radically minded it may be, cannot at a single stroke abolish class differences, for these have risen from many centuries of development and these causes and their results are not swept away as easily as a chalk mark is wiped from a slate with a sponge. ”

“ The last decade has certainly increased the hatred of the small capitalists for the proletariat. The latter must henceforth direct its policy with the expectation of fighting the coming battle unaided. But Marx has already shown that the little capitalist, as an intermediate thing between the capitalist and proletarian, wavers back and forth between the two, now the man of one and now of the other. We dare not reckon upon him, he will always be an uncertain ally—as a body. Individuals may well become very excellent party comrades, or their enmity to us may grow still greater. ”

“ The individual is so small compared to society that he has not the strength to defy their unanimous voice. This has so crushing an effect that it needs no further means of compulsion or punishment to secure the undisturbed course of the social life. Even to-day in the class society we see that the public opinion of their own class, or, where that has been abandoned, of the class or party which they join, is more powerful that the compulsory weapons of the State. Prison, poverty and death are preferred by people to shame. ”

“ So long as capitalist exploitation is small, the watchword of capital is economy, and it seeks to introduce this into the administration of government also. The small capitalists are forced, willy-nilly, to remain true to this watchword. The big capitalists, on the contrary, as the degree of exploitation rises practice ostentation and extravagance, that finally reaches such a mad pace as finds its extreme in insane forms of competitive armament. ”

“ On the 12th of August, 1893, Engels could rejoice at a new, a stronger and an unconquerable International—the Zurich International Socialist Congress. When, after fifty-two years, he for the first time again looked upon the cities of Vienna and Berlin, they testified to him that Marx and he "had not fought in vain, and could now look back upon their work with pride and satisfaction."
Full of pride and joy he could cry out: "There is no land, no great state, where the Social Democracy is not a power with which all must reckon. ”

“ This idea is transplanted from the economic life into the field of art and science and politics. Just as in earlier days people clung without reason to the old, so to-day one gladly throws the old aside without reason just because it is old. And the time which is necessary in order to make a machine, an institution, a theory outgrown becomes ever shorter. And if in former days men worked with the intention of building for eternity with all the devotedness that flows from such a consciousness, so to-day one works for the fleeting effect of a moment with all the frivolity of this consciousness. ”

“ The proletariat alone, who have no share in the capitalist exploitation, fight it, and must fight it, and they will, on the foundation laid down by capital of world intercourse and world commerce, create a form of society, in which the equality of man before the moral law will—instead of a mere pious wish—become reality. ”

“ Long ago this situation would have led to war, as the only alternative except revolution by which to escape from this crazy situation of reciprocal screwing up of the national burdens, had it not been for the fact that this alternative would have brought the revolution that stands behind the war—nearer than even behind an armed peace. It is the rising power of the proletariat which for three decades has prevented every European war, and which today causes every government to shudder at the prospect of war. ”

“ It is wholly different to-day, when Socialism has become a fad. It no longer demands any especial energy, and no break with capitalist society to assume the name of Socialist. It is no wonder then that more and more these new Socialists remain entangled in their previous manner of thought and feeling.
The fighting tactics of the intellectuals are at any rate wholly different from those of the proletariat. To wealth and power of arms the latter opposes its overwhelming numbers and its thorough organization. The intellectuals are an ever diminishing minority with no class organization whatever. ”

“ The means of production have become so enormous, that they burst to-day the frame of private property. The productivity of labour is grown so huge that to-day already a considerable diminution of the labour time is possible for all workers. Thus grow the foundations for the abolition, not of the division of labour, not of the professions, but of the antagonism of rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, ignorant and wise. ”

“ It will make the proletariat master in the factory. That the laborer of to-day is compelled to sell himself to the employer and that the latter can exploit and enslave him is because of the ghost of the unemployed and the hunger whip that swings above his head. If the laborer can once be secure of existence even when he is not working, nothing would be easier than for him to overthrow capital. He no longer needs capitalists, while the latter cannot continue his business without him. ”

“ I can say definitely that a revolution brought about by a war will happen but once. Nothing whatever can be said on this point concerning the revolution springing from sharpening class antagonisms. It may be a long-drawn-out process, while a revolution as the result of war must take on more the character of a single event. It is impossible to say in advance whether a revolution as the result of war would be successful. The revolutionary movement springing out of class antagonisms, on the contrary, cannot meet with anything more than temporary defeats, and must ultimately win. ”

“ Although the world of freedom and of the moral law is thus certainly another than that of recognised necessity, it is not a timeless, spaceless and supersensual world, but a particular portion of the world of sense seen from a particular point of view. It is the world as seen in its approach to us ; the world on which we have to work, which we have to rearrange above all. But what is to-day the future will be to-morrow the past; thus what to-day is felt to be free action will be recognised to-morow as necesary action. ”

“ The more the Socialist party maintains an indestructible power in the midst of the destruction of all authority, the more the Socialists will increase their authority. And the more they persevere in their irreconcilable opposition to the corruption of the ruling class the more complete the trust that will be vested in them by the great masses of the population in the midst of the universal rottenness which has today seized the bourgeois democracy, which has completely surrendered its principles for the purpose of gaining governmental favors. ”

“ Shall we not find there an unbroken advance for the protection of laborers, and does not every session of Parliament bring us new restrictions on capitalism, and does not every recurring election increase the number of our representatives in Parliament? And is not thereby our power in the State and our influence upon the government slowly and surely but interruptedly growing, and does not this carry with it a corresponding dependence of capital upon the proletariat? Certainly the number of laws for the protection of labor grow from year to year. ”

“ As the animal so also the social organism survives so much the better in the struggle for existence the more unitary its movements, the stronger the binding forces, the greater the harmony of the parts. But society has no fixed skeleton which supports the weaker parts, no skin which covers in the whole, no circulation of the blood which nourishes all the parts, no heart which regulates it, no brain which makes a unity out of its knowing, its willing, and its movements. ”

“ The will to live of the capitalists meets with conditions that force it to bend the will of the workers and to make use of it. Without this bending of the will there would be no capitalist profit, and no capitalist could exist. The will of the laborer to live, on the other hand, forces him to rebel against the will of the capitalist. ”

“ If the socialists demand any advance in civilization, whether that advance be a direct benefit to proletarian class interests or not, the reactionary democracy is driven by its whole being to oppose it, even if it does not directly threaten the interests of the small property owner. Just as the Socialist party is the most progressive party, so the reactionary democracy is the most retrograde party, in that to the hatred of progress which they share with other reactionary parties they add the most gross ignorance of everything that takes place outside their narrow circle of thought. ”

“ It need only study the history of the last generation, to see how it has moved forward everywhere uninterruptedly. It has only to trace the course of evolution in present society to be convinced that its victory is inevitable. It is not, therefore, to be expected that in those countries where it is most highly developed, the proletariat will easily lose its head and its self-control and enter upon any adventurous policy. And the danger of this is lessened just in proportion to the simultaneous height of culture, the insight of the working class and the democratic development of the state. ”

“ History, as a whole, appeared simply as a rise and fall, a repetition of the same circle, and just as the simple individual can set himself continually higher aims than he arrives at, because as a rule he fails, so did this circle appear as a horrible tragi-comedy in which all that was most elevated and strongest was doomed to play wretched parts. ”

“ Social peace inside of the capitalist system is a Utopia that has grown out of the real needs of the intellectual classes, but has no foundation in reality for its development. And no less of a Utopia is the imperceptible growth of capitalism into socialism. We have not the slightest ground to admit that things will end differently from what they begun. Neither the economic nor the political development indicates that the era of revolution which characterizes the capitalist system is closed. Social reform and the strengthening of the proletarian organizations cannot hinder it. ”