struggle, and it is true
that a larger proportion of the national wealth is owned by a minority
of the population than ever before, that minority being proportionately
less numerous than ever before. Further, the peculiar financial
organization of modern capitalist society enables the ruling capitalists
to control and use to their own advantage the wealth of others invested
in industrial and commercial corporations. Thus to the concentration of
ownership must be added the concentration of control, which plays an
increasingly important part in capitalist economics.

Whatever defects there may be in the Marxian theory, as outlined by Marx
himself, and whatever modifications of his statement of it may be
rendered necessary by changed conditions, in its main and essential
features it has successfully withstood all the criticisms which have
been directed against it. Economic literature is full of prophecies, but
in its whole range there is not an instance of prophecy more literally
and abundantly fulfilled than that which Marx made concerning the trend
of capitalist development. And Karl Marx was not a prophet--he but read
clearly the meaning of certain facts which others had not learned to
read, the law of social dynamics. That is not prophecy, but science.

FOOTNOTES:

[94] _Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society_, by R. T. Ely,
page 95.

[95] _Capital_, Vol. I (Kerr edition), page 837.

[96] _Briefe und Auszuege aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos.
Dietzgen, Friederich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere_,
Stuttgart, 1906.

[97] H. W. Macrosty, _The Growth of Monopoly in English Industry_
(Fabian Tract).

[98] _Our Benevolent Feudalism_, by W. J. Ghent, pages 17-21.

[99] A factor of tremendous importance in the maintenance of petty
industries and business establishments in this country, which Marx could
not have anticipated, has been the unprecedented volume of foreign
immigration. Not only have some menial personal services--such as shoe
cleaning, for example--been transformed into regular businesses by
immigrants from certain countries, but the massing together of
immigrants, aliens in language, customs, tastes, and manners, provides a
very favorable soil for the development of small business enterprises.

[100] _The Social Revolution_, by Karl Kautsky, Part I, page 144. See
also the argument by Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law, that Socialism
will not oppose petty agriculture by pr