Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/113

 No wonder that such workingmen believed that to overthrow the Manchester School was to overthrow capitalism itself. Nothing less true. The Manchester teaching was never anything more than a teaching which the capitalist class played against the workingman or the government whenever it suited its purposes, but from the logical practice of which it has carefully guarded itself. Today the Manchester School no longer influences the capitalist class. The reason of its decline was the increasing force with which the economic and political development urged the necessity of the extension of the functions of the state.

These functions grew from day to day. Not only do those which the state assumed from the start become ever larger, but new ones are born of the capitalist system itself, of which the former generations had no conception and which affect ultimately the whole economic system. Formerly, statesmen were essentially diplomats and jurists; today they must, or should, be economists. Treaties and privileges, ancient researches and matters of precedent, are of little use in the solution of modern political problems; economic principles have become the leading arguments. What are today the chief matters with which statesmen concern themselves? Are they not finance, colonial affairs, tariff, protection and insurance of workingmen?

Nor is this all. The economic development forces the state, partly in self-defense, partly for the sake of better fulfilling its functions, partly also for the purpose of increasing its revenues,