to abandon their workshops and to submit to great sacrifices, during the strikes kept up against the capitalists, he thinks that they will then doubtless be strong enough to bring the workmen back to the workshops, and to obtain good and regular work from them, when once they see that this work is necessary for the general good.[1] Kautsky, however, does not seem to feel much confidence in the value of his own solution.
Evidently no comparison can be made between the kind of discipline which forces a general stoppage of work on the men and that which will induce them to handle machinery with greater skill. The error springs from the fact that Kautsky is more of a theorist than he is a disciple of Marx; he loves reasoning about abstractions and believes that he has brought a question nearer to solution when he manages to produce a phrase with a scientific appearance; the underlying reality interests him less than its academic presentment. Many others have committed the same error, led astray by the different meanings of the word discipline, which may be applied both to regular conduct founded on the deepest feelings of the soul or to a merely external restraint.
The history of ancient corporations furnishes us with no really useful information on this subject; they do not seem to have had any effect whatever in promoting any kind of improvement, or invention in technical matters; it would seem rather that they served to protect routine. If we examine English Trade Unionism closely, we find that it also is strongly imbued with this industrial routine springing from the corporative spirit.
Nor can the examples of democracy throw any light on the question. Work conducted democratically would be regulated by resolutions, inspected by police, and subject to the sanction of tribunals dealing out rewards or imprisonment. The discipline would be an exterior
- ↑ Karl Kautsky, La Révolution sociale, French translation, p. 153.
