Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/68

 It seems to me, to the contrary that, as you have said it yourself, the present economic development is continually strengthening and fortifying monopolism?

Just so. This is one side of the development: but the other one, going hand in hand with this, is the enormous decrease of the middle classes whose elements are sinking to the level of the proletarian, of the non-possessing class, very fast. With every new factory smoke-stack part of the old system of producing by hand is being replaced by a new branch of the modern system of production, by steam and machinery; the opening of every new store and emporium of gigantic proportions means ruin and bankruptcy to hundreds of small business men and shop keepers; whenever a capitalist buys up several hundreds of thousands of acres of land for the purpose of modern farming upon a grand scale, hundreds of farmers who cannot compete with the gigantic monopolist are doomed; every new invention by which more workmen are made superfluous, ruins so many more manufacturers who are unable to acquire the new machines; the great monopolies like the Standard Oil Co., the Telegraph and Railroad Companies, are continually confiscating the labor and the property of the smaller capitalists, and in this way the army of the disinherited ones, of the wage-slaves, of those who have an interest in seeing the present system destroyed is constantly increased, while the number of those in whose interest the preservation of the system would be, must necessarily decrease. And finally—as the mass of the people will no longer tolerate such a state of affairs—the crash must inevitably come; and, as the entire economic organization is evolving towards co-operative production at an immense scale, as the victorious revolutionists will find it, so to speak, ready made for them to take possession of—as I have already described it to you in the instance of that great factory—there is no doubt but that not alone that revolution will take place, but that its tendency also, that the way in which it will shape things in the future, will be clearly defined.


 * Then, the Socialists refrain from influencing the development of society altogether?


 * Not at all! I told you that we could not materially accelerate the development toward a sudden social crash