When revolutionary Socialism is not pure speculation, it takes the form of the present-day "class struggle" against capitalism. The view that existing society can be _gradually_ transformed into a social democratic one, Kautsky believes to be merely an inheritance of the past, of a period "when it was generally believed that further development would take place exclusively on the _economic_ field, without the necessity of any kind of change in the relative distribution of _political_ institutions." (Italics mine.)[191] "Neither a railroad [that is, its administration] nor a ministry can be changed gradually, but only at a single stroke," says Kautsky, to illustrate the sort of a change Socialists expect. The need of such a complete change does not decrease on account of any reforms that are introduced before such a change takes place. "There are some politicians," he says, "who assert that only _despotic_ class rule necessitates revolution; that revolution is rendered superfluous by _democracy_. It is claimed that we have to-day sufficient democracy in all civilized countries to make possible a peaceable revolutionless development." (My italics.) As means by which these politicians hope to achieve such a revolutionless development, Kautsky mentions the gradual increase of the power of the trade unions, the penetration of Socialists into local governments, and finally the growing power of Socialist minorities in parliaments where they are supposed to be gaining increasing influence, pushing through one reform after another, restricting the power of the capitalists by labor legislation and extending the functions of the government. "So by the exercise of democratic rights upon existing grounds, the capitalist society is [according to these opportunists] gradually and without any shock growing into Socialism."[192] "This idyl becomes true," Kautsky says, "only if we grant that but one side of the opposed forces [the proletariat] is growing and increasing in strength, while the other side [the capitalists] remains immovably fixed to the same spot." But he believes that the very contrary is the case, that the capitalists are gaining in strength all the time, and that the advance of the working class merely goads the capitalists on "_to develop new powers and to discover and apply new methods of resistance and repression_."[193]