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The contention between Socialists and capitalists will then be reduced to its essential elements: Is progress under capitalism as great as it might be under Socialism? Is capitalist progress making toward Socialism by improving the position of the non-capitalists when compared with that of the capitalists, or is it having the opposite effect?
Those who have neither capital nor land unquestionably have a closer class interest than landlords or capitalists. If one of those who are in either of the latter classes is a spendthrift he loses his advantage. If the non-capitalists increase their numbers, they surrender themselves into the hands of the landlords and capitalists.
If, in other words, Socialism is a movement of non-capitalists against capitalists, nothing could be more fatal to it than a reputation due chiefly to success in bringing about reforms about which there is nothing distinctively Socialistic. For this kind of success could not fail ultimately to swamp the movement with reformers who, like Professor Clark, are not Socialists and never will be.
No advance can be permanently held until the organizations of non-capitalists have become superior to or at least as powerful as those of the capitalists. And if the governments of the various capitalistic countries are as interdependent as they seem, a number of them will have to be captured before the possession of any is secure.
And, finally, many of those small business men and independent farmers, the larger part of whose income is to be set down as the direct result of their own labor and not a result of their ownership of a small capital, or who feel that they are being reduced to such a condition, are commencing in many instances to look upon themselves as non-capitalists rather than capitalists and to work for equality of opportunity through the Socialist movement.
The essential problem before the Socialists under State capitalism, with every reform now under serious discussion already in force, will be fundamentally the same as it is under the private capitalism of to-day. The capitalists will be even more powerful than they are, the relative position of the non-capitalists in government and industry still more inferior than it now is.
The one thing they feel is that no such capitalist society will ever be willing to ameliorate the condition of the non-capitalists to such a degree that the latter will get an increasing proportion of the products of industry or of the benefits of legislation, or an increased influence over government. The capitalists will never do anything to disturb radically the existing balance of power.
"What was the general economic effect of competition?" "It operated in all fields of industry, and in the long run for all classes, the capitalists as well as the non-capitalists, as a steady downward pull as irresistible and universal as gravitation.
And because it militates against the politically powerful small capitalists as well as against the non-capitalists, it is doomed to an early end. Kautsky, in a word, actually fears that the present capitalist society will carry out, one by one, its own reforms.
In the reorganization of capitalism, the non-capitalists, the wage and salary earning class are not to be consulted. It is capitalist interests alone that really count in present-day politics, and it is for capitalists alone that government control would be instituted. Viewed in this light the statements of Mr.
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