Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/20

16 the other hand, a practical interest in the cause had its effect in sharpening the critical insight of the opposing parties, so that there were not a few who came on the right track at the beginning. Thus the fog began slowly to dissolve, until the latest publication of documents by the Austrian and German Foreign Offices dispersed it altogether. We are now in a position to see clear.

And yet one cloud lies still before our eyes. It is alleged to be a profound piece of Marxian philosophy. Marx taught that the course of history is guided not by particular persons or institutions, but in the last resort by economic conditions. Capitalism in its most developed form, that of finance, everywhere creates imperialism—the impulse towards forcible extension of the territory of the State. This law governs all States—all are warlike by nature, and from this condition the world-war proceeded. No individual persons or institutions are guilty, but Capitalism as a whole: this it is that must be combated.

That sounds very radical, and yet it works in a very conservative sense wherever this idea governs practical effort. For Capitalism is merely an abstraction, derived from the observation of numerous individual phenomena, and affording an indispensable aid in the attempt to investigate these in the law of their mutual relations.

But one cannot fight an abstraction except theoretically. It cannot be fought in the field of practice. Practically, we can only fight the individual phenomena. The theoretic comprehension of the nature of Capital does not relieve us from the necessity of this practical struggle—on the contrary, its function is to further it, inasmuch as it enables us to bring together the details of the struggle in a systematic connection, and thereby to shape it more effectively. At the same time it always