ocialism"
nor to oppose it. In the last chapter of his "Karl Marx" Labriola traces
some of the tendencies to State socialism. He observes that the State is
gradually taking over all the great public utilities and that cities and
towns are increasingly municipalizing public services. In the more
liberal and democratic countries "the tendency to State property was
greeted," he says, "as the beginning of the socialist transformation.
To-day, in France, in Italy, and in Austria socialism is being
confounded with Statism (_l'etatisme_).... The socialist party, almost
everywhere, has become the party of State capitalism." It is "no more
the representative of a movement which ranges itself against existing
institutions, but rather of an evolution which is taking place now in
the midst of present-day society, and by means of the State itself. The
socialist party, by the very force of circumstances, is becoming a
conservative party which is declaring for a transformation, the agent of
which is no longer the proletariat itself, but the new economic organism
which is the State.... Even the desire of the workingmen themselves to
pass into the service of the State is eager and spontaneous. We have a
proof of it in Italy with the railway workers, who, however, represent
one of the best-informed and most advanced sections of the working
class.

" ... Where the Marxian tradition has no stability, as in Italy, the
socialist party refused to admit that the State was an exclusively
capitalist organism and that it was necessary to challenge its action.
And with this pro-State attitude of the socialist party all its ideas
have unconsciously changed. The principles of State enterprise (order,
discipline, hierarchy, subordination, maximum productivity, etc.) are
the same as those of private enterprise. Wherever the socialist party
openly takes its stand on the side of the State--contrary even to its
intentions--it acquires an entirely capitalist viewpoint. Its
embarrassed attitude in regard to the insubordination of the workers in
private manufacture becomes each day more evident, and, if it were not
afraid of losing its electoral support, it would oppose still more the
spirit of revolt among the workers. It is thus that the socialist
party--the conservative party of the future transformed State--is
becoming the conservative party of the present social organization. But
even where, as in Germany, the Marxian tradition still assumes the form