Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/191

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THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.
185

supposes intelligence, discipline and talent for organization. These are the psychological foundations of a socialist society. Those are just the ones that the capitalist society has created. It is the historical task of capital to discipline and organize the laborers, and to widen their intellectual horizon beyond the boundaries of the workshop and the church door.

For socialism to rise on the basis of hand work or agricultural industry is impossible, not simply on economic grounds because of the low productivity of industry, but also for psychological reasons. I have already shown how small bourgeois psychology inclines towards anarchy and opposes the discipline of the social industry. It is one of the greatest difficulties that capital meets in the beginnings of capitalist production, in that it must take its first laborers directly from hand work or from agriculture. It had to fight with this in the eighteenth century in England and to-day in the Southern States of America which renders very difficult the rapid advance of the great industry notwithstanding the nearness to raw materials greatly favors such industry.

Not discipline alone but also the talent for organization is difficult of development in little bourgeois and agricultural positions. There are no great bodies of men to be united in systematic co-operation. On this economic stage it is only the soldiers who offer the opportunity to organize in great bodies. The great gen-