r and foul, to limit and to weaken
the power of the State. What difference is there between the theory of
_laissez-faire_ and the antagonism of the anarchists and the
syndicalists to every activity of the State? However, it is noteworthy
that antagonism to the State disappears on the part of any group or
class as soon as it becomes an agency for advancing their material
well-being; they not only then forsake their anti-Statism, they even
become the most ardent defenders of the State. Evidently, then, it is
not the State that has to be overcome, but the interests that control
the State.

It must be admitted that Labriola sketches accurately enough the
prevailing tendency toward State ownership, but he misunderstands or
willfully misinterprets, as Bakounin did before him, the attitude of the
avowed socialist parties toward such evolution. When he declares that
they confuse their socialism with Statism, he might equally well argue
that socialists confuse their socialism with monopoly or with the
aggregation of capital in the hands of the few. Because socialists
recognize the inevitable evolution toward monopoly is no reason for
believing that they advocate monopoly. Nowhere have the socialists ever
advised the destruction of trusts, nor have they anywhere opposed the
taking over of great industries by the State. They realize that, as
monopoly is an inevitable outcome of capitalism, so State capitalism,
more or less extended, is an inevitable result of monopoly. That the
workers remain wage earners and are exploited in the same manner as
before has been pointed out again and again by all the chief socialists.
However, if socialists prefer monopoly to the chaos of competition and
to the reactionary tendencies of small property, and if they lend
themselves, as they do everywhere, to the promotion of the State
ownership of monopoly, it is not because they confuse monopoly, whether
private or public, with socialism. It is of little consequence whether
the workers are exploited by the trusts or by the Government. As long as
capitalism exists they will be exploited by the one or the other. If
they themselves prefer to be exploited by the Government, as Labriola
admits, and if that exploitation is less ruinous to the body and mind of
the worker, the socialist who opposed State capitalism in favor of
private capitalism would be nothing less than a reactionary.

Without, however, leaving the argument here, it must be said that ther