Mein Kampf
cultural distress of the great masses at all. Otherwise, after all, there would have been danger that the masses, their desires satisfied, might not be permanently useful as an army with no will of its own.
Intuitively scenting this development, the leaders of the class struggle fell into such a panic that eventually they simply refused to bring about any really beneficial social improvement, nay took a decided stand against it.
They had no need to be embarrassed for an explanation of such seemingly incomprehensible behavior. By constantly increasing their demands, they made any proposed betterment seem so trifling that they could always convince the masses this was but a diabolical attempt at cheaply-bought weakening or even crippling of the workers’ impact by such a ridiculous sop to their most sacred rights. Considering the slight thinking-power of the masses, the Social Democratic success is not surprising.
The bourgeois camp were outraged at these obviously untruthful Social Democratic tactics, but quite without drawing from them the slightest conclusions to guide their own actions. The Social Democrats’ very fear of any real step in raising the working class from its previous abyss of cultural and social misery ought to have led their opponents to make supreme efforts in this direction, thus gradually twisting the weapon from the hands of the conductors of the class struggle.
But this did not happen.
Instead of attacking and capturing the enemy position themselves, they preferred to be squeezed and jostled, finally resorting to quite insufficient palliatives, which remained ineffective because too late, and which were easily rejected because too trifling. Thus everything remained actually just as formerly, only dissatisfaction was greater than before.
Even then the “free trade-union” already hung like a menacing storm-cloud on the political horizon and over the existence of the individual.
It was one of the most fearful of terrorist instruments against
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