Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/62

 through the capitalist class, just as, in turn, it has become the most powerful support of this class. Each has promoted the interests of the other. The capitalist class cannot forego the assistance of the state. It needs the powerful hand of government to protect it against foes within and without.

The further the capitalist system of production develops, the sharper become the contrasts and contradictions which it brings forth, the more complex becomes its operation, the greater the dependence of individuals upon each other, and consequently the more imperative the need of an authority which will see to it that each fulfills his economic functions. A process so sensitive as modern production can endure less easily than any previous one the strain attendant on the settling of differences by individual trials of strength. In place of self-dependence appears now a legal system fostered by the state.

The capitalist system is by no means the product of political rights or laws. It is, on the contrary, the needs of the system that have brought forth the laws that are now in force. These laws do not create the exploitation of the proletariat; they only provide for the smooth running of the system of exploitation, together with all the other processes pertaining to the existing social order. Competition being styled the mainspring of production, law may be designated as a lubricating oil, the object of which is to diminish as much as possible the friction produced by the present social mechanism.

As the conditions which produce this friction