Karl Johann Kautsky

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is only gradually, through a course of slow evolution, that one may transform a factory from a place of monotonous, repulsive, forced labor into an attractive spot for the joyful activity of happy human beings. A socialist revolution can at a single stroke transform the great bonanza farms into social property. In that portion of agriculture where the little industry still rules, the organs of social and socialist production must be first created, and that can come only as a result of slow development. ”

“ Parliamentarism, far from making a revolution useless and superfluous, is itself in need of a revolution in order to vivify it.
I do not wish to be understood as holding democracy superfluous, or to take the position that cooperatives, unions, the entrance of social democracy into municipalities and parliaments, or the attainment of single reforms, is worthless. Nothing would be more incorrect. On the contrary, all these are of incalculable value to the proletariat. They are only insignificant as means to avoid a revolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now I believe that when it is possible by the strength of discipline to keep the laborers out of the factories it will also be possible to hold them in by the same force. If the union once recognizes the necessity of the unbroken regular progress of labor we may be sure that the interest of the whole will be so great that scarcely a single member will leave his post. The same force that the proletariat uses to-day as a weapon to destroy production will then become an effective means to secure the regular continuance of social labor. ”

“ And the stronger the power of the State, just so much the more does the governing class rest upon it, just so much more stubbornly will it cling to its privileges and all the less will it be inclined to grant concessions. The longer, however it maintains its domination in this manner, the sharper become class antagonisms, the more pronounced must be the political collapse when it finally does come, and the deeper the social transformation that arises out of it, and the more apt the conquest of political power by an oppressed class to lead to revolution. ”

“ But they have only so risen when they have remained in sharpest antagonism to the bourgeoisie; where the strife for political power has kept alive in them the consciousness that they are called to raise themselves together with the whole of society. Here, again, England offers us an illustration of a laboring class who renounce revolution and care only for practical politics, laughing scornfully at their ideals hung on a peg at one side and casting from them every goal of battle that they cannot express in pounds and shillings. ”

“ It is not by the proletariat that modern civilization is threatened. It is those very communists who to-day constitute the safe refuge of art and science, for which they stand in the most decisive manner.
So it is that the fear is rapidly disappearing, which after the Paris Commune dominated the whole capitalist class; the fear that the conquering proletariat would come into our culture like the Vandals in their race migrations and on its ruins found a government of barbaric ascetics. ”

“ Granted that exploitation increases, but wages increase also, even if not to the same degree as surplus values. How then shall the laborer discover this increasing exploitation if it is not plainly evident, but is only to be discovered by painstaking investigation? The mass of the laborers do not study statistics or think about theories of value and profit.
This may be granted. But there is a way in which the increase of exploitation can be made perceptible to the laborers. In the same degree that the mass of profit rises, the standard of living of the bourgeoisie rises also. ”

“ We will only investigate what a victorious proletariat, if it is to advance purposefully, will be compelled to do by the pressure of economic conditions.
There is one problem above all others with which the proletarian regime must primarily occupy itself. It will in all cases be compelled to solve the question of the relief of the unemployed. Enforced idleness is the greatest curse of the laborer. For him it signifies misery, humiliation, crime. The laborer lives only from the sale of his labor power and when he can find no purchaser for this he is delivered up to hunger. ”

“ Over and over again the great number of little industries that still exist is triumphantly pointed out. But the ripeness for Socialism does not depend on the number of little industries that yet remain, but upon the number of great industries which already exist. Without a developed great industry socialism is impossible. Where, however, a great industry exists to a considerable degree it is easy for a socialist society to concentrate production and to quickly rid itself of the little industry. ”

“ But the discipline which lives in the proletariat is not military discipline. It does not mean blind obedience to an authority imposed from above. It is democratic discipline, a free will submission to a self-chosen leadership, and to the decisions of the majority of their own comrades. If this democratic discipline operates in the factory, it presupposes a democratic organization of labor, and that a democratic factory will take the place of the present aristocratic one. It is self evident that a socialist regime would from the beginning seek to organize production democratically. ”

“ The dying feudalism, however, led to the drying up of all material sources of help so that the government received even less money from its lands and was ever more dependent upon the money lenders. This finally led to financial collapse or to concessions to the struggling class either of which events were able to bring about a political collapse.
It is wholly different to-day. Capitalism does not, like feudalism, lead to under-production, but to over-production, and chokes in its own fat. ”

“ Whoever seeks to-day to scientifically attack revolution does it in the name of the theory of evolution, demonstrating that nature makes no leaps, that consequently any sudden change of social relations is impossible; that advance is only possible through the accumulation of little changes and slight improvements, called social reforms. Considered from this point of view revolution is an unscientific conception about which scientifically cultured people only shrug their shoulders. ”

“ But not alone the pressure of capital in the exploitation of great bodies of labor, but the struggle of the proletarian against this exploitation develops the psychological conditions for socialist production; it develops discipline in every way, as we have already seen, of a wholly different character and from that given capital, and this struggle develops also a talent for organization, for it is only through the unanimous co-operation of the great body of mankind that the proletariat can assert itself against capital and the capitalist state. ”

“ This conquest of political power by the proletariat is of the highest value exactly because it makes possible a higher form of the revolutionary struggle. This struggle is no longer, as in 1789, a battle of unorganized mobs with no political form, with no insight into the relative strength of the contending factors, with no profound comprehension of the purposes of the struggle and the means to its solution; no longer a battle of mobs that can be deceived and bewildered by every rumor or accident. ”

“ Does the idea of social revolution belong with those antiquated ideas which are held only by thoughtless echoers of outgrown conceptions or by demagogical speculators upon the applause of the unthinking masses, and which every honest modern person who dispassionately observes the facts of modern society must put aside? ”

“ Formerly he was indifferent to the struggle between the industrial capitalist and his laborer and indeed he often followed them with malignant rejoicings at the predicament of the capitalists with which indeed there was often a certain sympathy for the proletariat. It was not the latter that then stood in his road, but rather the capitalist who demanded protection while he needed free trade, and who on the other hand saw in ground rents an invasion of his profits and who sought to take away from the land owners the monopoly of the higher places in the army and bureaucracy. ”

“ The bourgeoisie whine about the disappearance of modesty in the lower classes and about their increasing enviousness, and forget that the growing demands from below are only the reflex of the rising standard of life above, which furnishes the example and rouses the envy of the lower class.
That the capitalist standard of living grows faster than that of the proletariat is self-evident. The laborer's dwelling has not been greatly improved in the last fifty years. But the dwelling places of the bourgeoisie are gorgeous in comparison with the average capitalist house of fifty years ago. ”

“ They remain dumb, even when their hands are rendered powerless, dumb when their bread is made more costly. The English laborers to-day stand lower as a political factor than the laborers of the most economically backward country in Europe—Russia. It is the real revolutionary consciousness in these latter that gives them their great political power. It is the renunciation of revolution, the narrowing of interest to the interests of the moment, to the so-called practical politics, that have made file tatter a cipher in actual politics. ”

“ To give culture to all mankind under such conditions would simply make all material production impossible because then no one would be found who could or would carry it on. If we are to make the higher intellectual culture a common good without endangering the existence of society, then not simply pedagogical but economic necessity demands that this be done in such a manner that the growing generation will be made familiar in schools not simply with intellectual but also with physical labor and the habit of uniting intellectual and material production will be firmly rooted. ”

“ On the other hand, the railroad can suddenly be transformed from its function as the instrument to the enrichment of a number of capitalists, into a socialist enterprise having as its function the serving of the common good. And as at the birth of the child, all the functions are simultaneously revolutionized—circulation, breathing, digestion—so all the functions of the railroad must be simultaneously revolutionized at one stroke, for they are all most closely bound together. ”

“ When one considers, on the other hand, how remarkably fast the capitalist system of protection extends its sphere, how quickly it leaps from one calling to another, and from one man to another, it will be found that the extension of the protection of labor follows at a much slower pace; that it can never overtake the extension of capitalism, but always comes limping slowly on behind. ”

“ Such a strike would, however, at one stroke render impossible the existence not simply of existing society but all existence, and That of the proletarians long before that of the capitalist, and must consequently collapse uselessly at just the moment when its revolutionary virtue began to develop.
The strike as a political weapon will scarcely ever, certainly not in any time now visible, take on the form of a strike of all the laborers of a country. It can also not have the purpose of displacing the other means of political struggle but only of supplementing and strengthening them. ”

“ I am convinced that when once labor loses the repulsive character of over-work and when the hours of labor are reduced in a reasonable degree, custom alone will suffice to hold the great majority of workers in regular work in factories and mines.
But it is self-evident that we cannot trust to this motive alone as it is the weakest. Another much stronger motive force is the discipline of the proletariat. ”

“ When once the judicial manner of thought displaced the theological, a revolution was defined as a violent break with the existing legal order. No one, however, could have a right to the destruction of rights, a right of revolution was an absurdity, and revolution in all cases a crime. But the representatives of the aspiring class placed in opposition to the existing, historically descended right, the right for which they strove, representing it as an eternal law of nature and reason, and an inalienable right of humanity. ”

“ Is the time of social revolution past or not? Have we already the political conditions which can bring about a transition from capitalism to socialism without political revolution, without the conquest of political power by the proletariat, or must we still expect an epoch of decisive struggles for the possession of this power and therewith a revolutionary epoch? ”

“ But those who conceive social revolution as the conquest of political power by a previously subservient class and the transformation of the juridical and political superstructure of society, particularly in the property relations, will find no social revolution there. Social development proceeded piece-meal, step by step, not through single great catastrophies but in countless little broken-up, apparently disconnected, often interrupted, ever renewing, mostly unconscious movements. ”

“ The crises are the worst scourges of the modern productive system. To abolish them is one of the most important tasks of a proletarian regime. This can be done only through the systematic regulation of production and circulation as well as of re-production.
It has already been admitted that the object of socialism is the organization of production. But a portion of this problem is already solved by capital in that it substitutes for a number of little independent industries the organization of production into one great industry in which thousands of laborers are employed. ”