Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/49

 which the increase of exploitation can be made perceptible to the laborers. In the same degree that the mass of profit rises, the standard of living of the bourgeoisie rises also. But the classes are not divided from one another by impenetrable walls. The rising standard of life of the upper class oozes down through to those beneath and wakens in them new needs and demands to the satisfaction of which the slowly growing wage is by no means satisfactory. The bourgeoisie whine about the disappearance of modesty in the lower classes and about their increasing enviousness, and forget that the growing demands from below are only the reflex of the rising standard of life above, which furnishes the example and rouses the envy of the lower class.

That the capitalist standard of living grows faster than that of the proletariat is self-evident. The laborer's dwelling has not been greatly improved in the last fifty years. But the dwelling places of the bourgeoisie are gorgeous in comparison with the average capitalist house of fifty years ago. The third-class railroad carriage of to-day and the one of fifty years ago differ but little in their interior equipments. But when we compare the first-class railroad carriage of the middle of the nineteenth century with the palace car of the modern train! I do not believe that the sailors in the Transatlantic ships are much better cared for to-day than fifty years ago, while the luxuries to be found in the