ABSTRACT
The class State at the moment when, thanks to its machinations, the war broke out succeeded in enlisting the assistance of the guiding organisations of Social-Democracy to deceive the proletariat and draw it into the whirlpool. Kautsky explains at great length that democracy is of great importance for its political development and its education in organisation of the masses, and that through it the proletariat can come to complete emancipation. In the economic sphere, imperialism pre-supposed the final collapse of the rule of the middle class; in the political sphere, it signified the complete destruction of democracy by means of an internal molecular transformation, and a universal subordination of all democracy's resources to its own ends. The opportunist majority in the Constituent Assembly represented only the political reflection of the mental confusion and indecision which reigned amidst the middle classes in the town and country and amidst the more backward elements of the proletariat.
