Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/64

 armies tend to grow rapidly, but during recent years the latter has oustrippedoutstripped [sic] the former. Furthermore, the application of modern science to warfare has enormously increased its cost. As a result, the military expenditures of the great world-states have increased incredibly.

The state is becoming constantly more expensive, its burdens ever heavier. Capitalists and landowners try everywhere to foist these burdens upon the other classes. But the poorer classes grow constantly less able to pay, and so despite their cunning, the exploiters are obliged to increase the share of profits which they turn over to the state.

Simultaneously with this development, the quantity of the capital which the capitalist class applies productively shows a tendency to increase more rapidly than the exploitation of the working-class, that is to say, more rapidly than the mass of surplus which the latter creates.

To illustrate: Compare a spinner of a hundred years ago with a machine-weaver of today. How enormous is the capital required to enable the latter to work! On the other hand, the capital which the capitalist invested in hand-weaving was trifling in comparison. The exploited hand-spinner may have worked at home. In that case the capitalist paid him his wages and gave him the cotton or flax which he needed. In point of wages there has not been much change, but a machine-weaver consumes today in production a hundred times more raw material than the