Landmarks of Scientific Socialism · Friedrich Engels
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
It is clear that in face of these facts the arguments of Engels possess even greater force at the present day than when they were enunciated and that the old hard and fast method of arguing from absolute truths is dead and done for. Only statesmen see fit to still harp on the same phrases which have become as it were a part of the popular mental structure and by constant appeals to the old watchwords to obscure the fact of change. Were one not acquainted with the essential stupidity of the political mind and the lack of grasp which is the characteristic of statesmen, it might be imagined that all this was done with malice aforethought and that there was a sort of tacit conspiracy on the part of the politicians to delude the people. But experience of the inexcusable blunders and the inexplicable errors into which statesmen are continually driven forces the conclusion that they are in reality no whit in advance of the electorate and that only now and then a Beaconsfield appears who can understand the drift of events. Such a man is the "revolutionist" which Beaconsfield claimed himself to be. But what shall we say of the President of the country that has attained the highest place in industrial progress among the nations, whose whole history is a verification of the truth of the dialectic and who can still appeal to "individualism" as a guiding principle of political action? It is a wanton flying in the face of the experience of the last quarter of a century and such rashness will require its penalty. "Back to Kant" appears to be the hope of reactionary politicians as well as of reactionary philosophers.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.