Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/27

 industries, ever more and more industries are concentrated in a single hand. Today we have reached the point where banks and promoting organizations control and direct the greater part of the capitalist undertakings in the various countries. So it is that the road is being prepared for the social organization of production.

Hand in hand with this centralization of business goes the growth of great fortunes, something that is in no way hindered by the appearance of the corporation. On the contrary, the corporation not only makes the control of production by a few banks and industrial combines possible; it also furnishes a means by which the very smallest fortunes can be transformed into capital and thereby be made to contribute to the centralizing process on capitalism.

Through the corporation the savings of even the poor are placed at the disposal of the great capitalists, who are enabled to use those savings as if they were a part of their great capitals. As a result the centralizing power of their own great fortunes is increased still more.

The corporation renders the person of the capitalist wholly superfluous for the conduct of capitalist undertakings. The exclusion of his personality from industrial life ceases to be a question of or of. It is purely a question of.

This preparation for Socialism through the concentration of capital is meanwhile only one side of the process of gradual growth into the future state. Along with it there is proceeding an evolution within the working class that is no less of an indication of growth in the direction of Socialism.

With the growth of capital goes also an increase in the number of proletarians within society. They become the most numerous class. Simultaneously grows their organization. The laborers create co-operatives that abolish the middle men and establish production directly