Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/63

 grow gradually worse, the greater becomes the need of a strong state power to enforce the law. For example, the constantly increasing opposition between exploiters and exploited, propertied and propertyless, steadily augments the slum element in our population and thus increases the necessity for a large police force. On the other hand, as each capitalist becomes more and more dependent on the co-operation of others of his class, the more he becomes dependent on the decrees of the courts.

But the capitalist is concerned not only with peaceful manufacture and trade within his own country. Foreign trade has from the beginning played an important part in our industrial system, and the greater the extent to which it becomes the controlling interest, the more does the securing and developing of foreign markets become one of the chief concerns of the entire nation. But in the world-market the capitalists of one nation meet those of another as competitors. In order to oppose these competitors, they call upon their government to maintain their rights, or, better yet, to drive out their foreign competitors altogether. Thus as states and monarchs become more and more dependent on the capitalist class armies and navies become more exclusively the tools of this class. Wars are no more dynastic, but commercial, and finally national; they result from economic competition between the capitalists of different nations.

Thus the capitalist system needs, not only an army of officials to operate courts and police departments, but also an army of soldiers. Both