Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/79

 lion's share of the railway building was not in the new colonies that have been established since the '80s, but in the old colonies and independent states, as is shown by the following table: Length of railroads in kilometers:

Only 7,000 kilometers, one-fourth of the railroad mileage of Africa, less than even one per cent of the railroads of the earth, was constructed in those districts which, to be sure not all but in large part, have been acquired through the recent colonial politics of the great European powers. It is evident how little this colonial policy has had to do with the extension of the world market which has taken place during the last twenty years, or with the revival of production.

But this revival is very plainly connected with the opening of foreign markets, which has taken place simultaneously with the development of modern colonial policy since the '80s. Consequently the mass of the bourgeoisie connect the colonial policy with the improvement in economic conditions. The result is that a new ideal has arisen for the bourgeoisie of the great European powers. During the '90s this ideal began to be placed in opposition to Socialism, the same Socialism that had captured so many of the thinkers of this same bourgeoisie a decade before. This ideal was the linking together of transoceanic territory with the European government the so-called