Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/445

Rh even while continuing to give lip-service to Kant's plea for perpetual peace.

This evolution of the liberal bourgeoisie will be more readily understood when it is remembered that the fourth estate, the working class, has become emancipated from liberalism, and has adopted socialism, above all Marxist socialism. The masses are now lost to liberalism. Modern capitalism and the plutocracy have come into existence. The parvenus of the plutocracy have been taken into favour by the old aristocracy; the dynasties are finding in the modern stockexchanges and in the Rothschilds something to replace their Jewish financiers of old days. The state is becoming an industrial state. The capitalist is not merely an entrepreneur, a director and organiser of labour; he is a wealthy man, often exceedingly wealthy, so that the abyss between riches and poverty widens; the worship of the golden calf tends increasingly to be the true religion of the bourgeoisie and of those who wield political power; militarism is now a lucrative economic system of enrichment; protective tariffs and agrarian duties bring about conciliation between the rival and hostile half-brothers, between the manufacturers of the great towns and the junkers of the rural areas. It need hardly be said that the question of protection is not really one of principle; prior to 1870, when the great landed estates still produced for export, the German conservatives were freetraders, but now they are protectionists. The liberal view of protection is similar, and it is only within national limits that modern liberals insist upon free competition as a matter of principle—free competition against the working classes.

The Chinese writer Ku-Hung-Ming, in China's Defence against European Ideas, says with considerable truth: "The European liberalism of the eighteenth century was civilised, but modern liberalism is no longer civilised. The liberalism of the past read books and understood ideas; modern liberalism reads nothing but newspapers, and uses the great liberal phrases of the past as catchwords, as a mere cloak for selfish interests. Eighteenth century liberalism fought on behalf of right and justice; the pseudo-liberalism of to-day fights on behalf of rights and trading privileges. The liberalism of the past fought on behalf of the cause of humanity; the pseudo-liberalism of to-day endeavours to promote the vested interests of capitalists and financiers."