f the few on the one hand and the
proletariat on the other grind face to face. So, at least, Karl Marx
taught in _Das Kapital_.

But when one says the middle class will disappear, one means that it
will disappear as a class. Its individuals and its children will
survive, and the whole process is not nearly so fatalistic as the
Marxists would have us believe. The new great organizations that are
replacing the little private enterprises of the world before machinery
are not all private property. There are alternatives in the matter of
handling a great business. To the exact nature of these alternatives
the middle-class mind needs to direct itself if it is to exert any
control whatever over its future. Take the case of the butcher. It is
manifestly written on the scroll of destiny that the little private
slaughter-house, the little independent butcher's shop, buying and
selling locally, must disappear. The meat will all be slaughtered at
some great, conveniently organized centre, and distributed thence to
shops that will necessarily be mere agencies for distributing meat.
Now, this great slaughtering and distributing business may either be
owned by one or a group of owners working it for profit--in which case
it will be necessary for the State to employ an unremunerative army of
inspectors to see that the business is kept decently clean and
honest--or it may be run by the public authority. In the former case
the present-day butcher or his son will be a slaughterman or
shopkeeper employed by the private owners; in the latter case by the
public authority. This is equally true of a milk-seller, of a small
manufacturer, of a builder, of a hundred and one other trades. They
are bound to be incorporated in a larger organization; they are bound
to become salaried men where formerly they were independent men, and
it is no good struggling against that. It is doubtful, indeed, whether
from the standpoint of welfare it would be worth the middle-class
man's while to struggle against that. But in the case of very many
great public services--meat, milk, bread, transit, housing and land
administration, education and research, and the public health--it is
still an open question whether the big organization is to be publicly
owned, publicly controlled, and constantly refreshed by public
scrutiny and comment, or whether it is to be privately owned, and
conducted solely for the profit of a small group of very rich owners.
The alternatives a