arge proportion of
the community. Here again it is impossible to expect any but a Socialist
government to go very far. As I have shown, it is to be questioned
whether any capitalistic administration, however advanced, would
increase real wages (wages measured by their purchasing power), except
in so far as the higher wages will result in a corresponding or greater
increase in efficiency, and so in the profits made from labor. And the
same law applies to most other governmental (or private) expenditures on
behalf of labor, whether in shortened hours, insurance, improved
conditions, or any other form.

The very essence of capitalist collectivism is that the share of the
total profits which goes to the ruling class should not be decreased,
and if possible should be augmented. In spite of material improvements
the economic gulf between the classes, during the period it dominates,
will either remain as it is, or become wider and deeper than before. On
the ground of the health and ultimate working efficiency of the present
and future generation, hours may be considerably shortened, and the
labor of women and children considerably curtailed. Insurance against
death, old age, sickness, and accident will doubtless be taken over by
the government. Mothers who are unable to take care of their children
will probably be pensioned, as now proposed in France, and many children
will be publicly fed in school, as in a number of the British and
Continental places. The most complete code of labor legislation is
practically assured; for, as government ownership extends, the State
will become to some extent the model employer.

A quarter of a century ago, especially in Great Britain and the United
States, but also in other countries, the method of allaying discontent
was to distract public attention from politics altogether by stimulating
the chase after private wealth. But as private wealth is more and more
difficult to attain, this policy is rapidly replaced by the very
opposite tactics, to keep the people absorbed in the political chase
after the material benefits of economic reform. For this purpose every
effort is being used to stimulate political interest, to popularize the
measures of the new State capitalism, to foster public movements in
their behalf, and finally to grant the reforms, not as a new form of
capitalism, but as "concessions to public opinion." At present it is
only the most powerful of the large capitalists and the mo