Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/59

 Rh much reservation, or they will convey very false meanings.

We are now in a position to summarise the processes of the evolution of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, and to state the law of that evolution.

Capitalist industry begins with competition, and the law of the survival of the fittest comes at once into operation. From this emerges the law of concentration and co-ordination. Competition ends in the domination of the surviving few, and in the widening of the sphere of control of the capitalist unit. Trades which depend upon each other tend to be organised together and to be controlled as one unit.

But whilst this concentration of control is proceeding, the employer working with his own capital tends to disappear; the investor comes upon the stage, industrial capital is drawn, not from one bank balance but from many bank balances, and the control of industrial capital, and hence of industry, passes into the hands of agents. The industrial mechanism ceases to be personal and becomes impersonal. It is a hierarchy of managers and directors.

That is the law of capitalist evolution, and at that point we now find ourselves. The problem with which we are faced is not how to maintain competition, but how to control monopoly.