advanced measures of democracy such as direct
legislation belong to "the future State," while no reforms of importance
to the workers are to be secured to-day except through the menace of
revolution. It would be perfectly consistent with this, doubtlessly
correct, view of present German conditions, if Kautsky said that after
Germany has overthrown Absolutism and Militarism, progressive capitalism
may be expected to conquer reactionary capitalism in Germany as
elsewhere, and to use direct legislation and other democratic measures
for the purpose of increasing profits, with certain secondary,
incidental and lesser (but by no means unimportant) benefits to labor.
But this he refuses to do. He readily admits that Germany is backward
politically, but as she is advanced economically he apparently allows
his view of other countries to-day and of the Germany of the future to
be guided by the fact that the large capitalists now in control in that
country (with military and landlord aid) oppose even that degree of
democracy and those labor reforms which, as I have shown, would result
in an increased product for the capitalist class as a whole (though not
of all capitalists). For he pictures the reactionary capitalists in
continuous control in the future both in Germany and other countries,
and the smaller capitalists as important between these and the masses of
wage earners. The example of other countries (equally developed
economically and more advanced than Germany politically) suggests, on
the contrary, a growing unity of large and small capital through the
action of the state--and as a result the more or less progressive policy
I have outlined. (See Part I.)

But Kautsky's view is that of a very large number of Socialists,
especially in Germany and neighboring countries, is having an enormous
influence, and deserves careful consideration. The proletariat, he says,
is not afraid of the most extreme revolutionary efforts and sacrifices
to win equal suffrage where, as in Germany, it is withheld. "And every
attempt to take away or limit the German laborer's right of voting for
the Reichstag would call forth the danger of a fearful catastrophe to
the Empire."[172] It is here and elsewhere suggested, on the basis of
German experience, that this struggle over the ballot is a struggle
between Capital and Labor. The German Reichstag suffrage was made equal
by Bismarck in 1870 for purely capitalistic reasons, and the number of
voters