ay for
socialism. Speaking of the compulsory insurance laws proposed by
Bismarck, he refers to such legislation as embodying "in a decisive
manner the principle of State regulation of production as opposed to the
_laissez-faire_ system of the Manchester school. The right of the State
to regulate production supposes the duty of the State to interest itself
in labor, and State control of the labor of society leads directly to
State organization of the labor of society."[24] Further even than this
goes Karl Kautsky, who has been called the "acutest observer and thinker
of modern socialism." "Among the social organizations in existence
to-day," he says, "there is but one that possesses the requisite
dimensions, and may be used as the framework for the establishment and
development of the socialist commonwealth, and that is the _modern
State_."[25]

Without going needlessly far into this subject, it seems safe to
conclude that the State is no more terrifying to the modern socialist
than it was to Marx and Engels. There is not a socialist party in any
country that has not used its power to force the State to undertake
collective enterprise. Indeed, all the immediate programs of the various
socialist parties advocate the strengthening of the economic power of
the State. They are adding more and more to its functions; they are
broadening its scope; and they are, without question, vastly increasing
its power. But, at the same time, they are democratizing the State. By
direct legislation, by a variety of political reforms, and by the power
of the great socialist parties themselves, they are really wresting the
control of the State from the hands of special privilege.
Furthermore--and this is something neither the anarchists nor the
syndicalists will see--State socialism is in itself undermining and
slowly destroying the class character of the State. According to the
view of Marx, the State is to-day "but a committee for managing the
common affairs of the whole capitalist class."[26] And it is this
because the economic power of the capitalist class is supreme. But by
the growth of State socialism the economic power of the private
capitalists is steadily weakened. The railroads, the mines, the forests,
and other great monopolies are taken out of their hands, and, to the
extent that this happens, their control over the State itself
disappears. Their only power to control the State is their economic
power, and, if that were entirely