Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/64

 In opposition to the great land owner and to the financier, he inclines rather to liberalism, because its half-heartedness accords with his own position. His profits are limited upon the one side by ground rent, interest and taxes, and upon the other side an aspiring proletariat threatens the whole profit system. When the proletariat becomes too threatening, he prefers to adopt the peaceable method of "divide and govern," of corruption, and of compromise by benevolent establishments, etc., rather than the method of forcible suppression. Where the proletariat has not yet entered the field of independent politics the industrial capitalist willingly serves it as bellwether in order to increase his own political power. To the little bourgeois Socialist the opposition between industrial capital and the proletariat appears less than that between profit upon the one side and ground rent and interest upon the other. For him the solution of the social question consists in the abolition of interest and ground rent.

The opposition between finance and industry continually decreases since with the progressive concentration of capital, finance ever more and more dominates industry. A powerful means to this end is the continuous replacement of private employers by stock companies. Well meaning optimists have seen in this a means of "democratizing" capital so that after a while, in the most peaceable manner without any one noticing it, capital would be transformed into