THE WORLD REVOLUTION 85 



in the first period of the twentieth century. The 

 case, moreover, which we see being put forward on 

 behalf of the proletariat a case which is based on 

 the voting power of labour and which orientates 

 itself in the last resort to the armed forces of civiliza- 

 tion has become more uncompromising. It has 

 come to take the form of a determined frontal 

 attack on the whole cause of capitalism. 



It amounts, as we see it put forward now, to the 

 arraignment by labour before public opinion of the 

 entire system of modern capitalism on the ground 

 that it is inherently and fundamentally anti-social 

 and therefore impossible. The attack has closely 

 followed the lines I foreshadowed in 1908 in the 

 Herbert Spencer Lecture to the University of Oxford. 1 

 Everywhere in the struggle we see capital in the 

 West essaying to defend itself on the old lines. 

 The modern tendency to gigantic concentration and 

 control by the few is taken to be a development 

 quite inevitable and in the public good. The circle 

 of shareholders of its joint-stock companies will, 

 it is maintained, become ever wider and wider. 

 Its Companies and its Trusts will tend, therefore, 

 to become at length identified with the general 

 public itself. Its Corporations will tend more and 

 more to become governing industrial republics rest- 



1 Individualism and Afier. 



