o many from the time of Karl Marx
that it would be necessary for capitalist society itself to nationalize
or municipalize businesses that become monopolized, without any
reference to Socialism or the Socialists.

"These private monopolies have become unbearable," says Kautsky, "not
simply for the wage workers, but for all classes of society who do not
share in their ownership," and he adds that it is only the weakness of
the bourgeois (the smaller capitalist) as opposed to capital (the large
capitalist) that hinders him from taking effective action. Indeed, one
of the chief respects in which history has pursued a somewhat different
course from that expected by Marx has been in the failure of capitalist
society to attempt _immediately_ this solution of the trust problem
through government ownership. Marx expected that this attempt would
necessarily be made as soon as the monopolies reached an advanced state,
and that the resulting economic revolution would develop into a
Socialist revolution. But this monopolistic period has come, the trusts
are rapidly dominating the whole field of industry and government, and
yet it seems improbable that they will be forced to any final compromise
with the small capitalist investors and consumers for some years to
come. In the meanwhile, no doubt, the process of nationalization will
begin, but too late to fulfill Marx's expectation, for the large and
small capitalists will have time to become better united, and their
combined control over government will have had time to grow more secure
than ever. The new partnership of capitalism and the State will, no
doubt, represent the small capitalists as well as the large, but there
is no sign that the working people will be able to take advantage of the
coming transformation for any non-capitalist purpose. Nor did Marx
expect national ownership to increase the relative strength of the
workers _unless it was accompanied by a political revolution_.

Another vast capitalist reform predicted by Socialists since the
Communist Manifesto (1847) is nationalization or municipalization of the
ground rent or unearned increment of land. At first Kautsky and others
were inclined to expect that nothing would be done in this direction
until the working classes themselves achieved political power, but it
has always been seen from the days of Marx that the industrial
capitalists had no particular reason for wishing to be burdened with a
parasitic class of lan