Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/60

 what he did. Formerly he was indifferent to the struggle between the industrial capitalist and his laborer and indeed he often followed them with malignant rejoicings at the predicament of the capitalists with which indeed there was often a certain sympathy for the proletariat. It was not the latter that then stood in his road, but rather the capitalist who demanded protection while he needed free trade, and who on the other hand saw in ground rents an invasion of his profits and who sought to take away from the land owners the monopoly of the higher places in the army and bureaucracy.

To-day things are wholly different. The day of the labor friends, such as the Tories and Junkers, of Disraeli, Rodbertus, Vogelsang, is long gone by. Like the class of little property owners and the class of medium and large farmers, the class of land owners is becoming more and more antagonistic to the laborers.

But the capitalist class? They are to-day the deciding class. Are they not at least like the "intellectuals" becoming more and more friendly to labor?

I regret to say that I can see no sign of this friendship.

Certainly the capitalist class also is changing. It does not remain always the same. But what are the most important changes that it has undergone in the last decade?

Upon the one side we find a diminution,