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that it brings immediate material benefits to all and paves the way, either for capitalistic or for Socialistic progress, robs capitalism of all fear of the masses, and is ready to remove all undemocratic constitutional barriers and to do everything it can to advance popular government. These constitutional checks and balances prevent the small capitalists and their progressive large capitalist allies from bringing to time the reactionaries of the latter class, while they are so many that, in removing a few of them, there is little danger of that pure political democracy which would alone give to the masses any "dangerous" power. At a later stage, when "State Socialism" will have carried out its program, and the masses see that it is ready to go only so far as the small capitalists' interests allow and no farther, and when it will already have forced recalcitrant large capitalists to terms, and so have reunited the capitalist class, we may expect to see a complete reversal of the present semi-democratic attitude. But as long as the "State Socialist" program is still largely ahead of us, the large capitalists not yet put into their place, and full political democracy--in spite of rapid progress--still far in the distance, a radical position as to this, that, or the other piece of political machinery signifies little. So many reforms of this kind are needed before political democracy can become effective--and in the meanwhile many things can happen that will give ample excuse to any of the "progressive" classes that decide to reverse their present more or less democratic attitude, such as an "unpatriotic" attitude on the part of the masses, a grave railroad strike, etc. For there will be abundant time before democratic machinery can reach that point in its evolution, when the non-capitalist masses can make the first and smallest use of it _against_ their small and large capitalist masters. If, for example, the Supreme Court of this country should ever be made elective, or by any other means be shorn of its political power, and if then the President's veto were abolished, and others of his powers given to Congress, there would remain still other alternatives for vetoing the execution of the people's will--and one veto is sufficient for every practical purpose. Even if the senators are everywhere directly elected, the Senate may still remain the permanent stronghold of capitalism unless overturned by a political revolution
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