State.

Now, the pamphlet in question is so strictly scientific and objective
in its method, so far removed from all personal bias, that I therein
go on to show that the institution of the territorial State was, in
its time, historically a legitimate and revolutionary feature; that it
was an ideal advance, in that it embodied and developed the concept of
a State independent of relations of ownership; whereas the peasant
wars sought to place the State, and all political power and standing,
on the basis of property.

I then, further, go on to show how the period of feudalism is
succeeded by a second world-historic period. I show how, while the
peasant wars were revolutionary only in their own delusion, there
begins almost simultaneously with them a real revolution, namely, that
accumulation of capitalistic wealth which arose through the
development of industry. This wrought a thoroughgoing change in the
whole situation,--a change which reached its final act, achieved its
legal acceptance, in the French Revolution of 1789, but which had in
point of fact for three hundred years been imperceptibly advancing
toward its consummation.

I show in detail, which I need not here expound or recapitulate, what
are the economic factors that were destined to push landed property
into the remotest back-ground and leave it relatively powerless,
by making the new industrial activity the great lever and the bearer
of modern social wealth. All this took place by force of the new
industrial activity the great lever and the bearer of methods which
they brought in.

I show how this capitalized wealth, which has come forward as an
outcome of this industrial development and has grown to be the
dominant factor in this second period, must in its turn attain the
position of prerogative as the recognized qualification of political
competence, as the condition of a voice in the councils and policy of
the State; just as was at an earlier time the case with landed
property in relation to the public law of feudalism. I show how,
directly and indirectly in the control of opinion, in the requirement
of bonds and stamp duties, in the public press, in the growth of
individual taxation, etc., capitalized wealth, as a basis of
participation in public affairs, must work out its inherent tendency
with the same thoroughness and the same historical necessity as landed
property had done in its time.

And this second period, which has completed its three hu