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VISIONS OF VICTORY 347
the inevitable, and realizing that potentially at least the
Much as we may
suffrages of the immense majority stand over them as a
menace, they are beginning to seek other methods of
action. Of course, in all the more democratic countries
the power of democracy has already made itself felt, and
in America, at any rate, the powerful have long had resort
to bribery, corruption, and all sorts of political conspiracy
in order to retain their power.
deplore the debauchery of public servants, it nevertheless
yields us a certain degree of satisfaction, in that it is eloquent
testimony of this agreeable fact, that the oldest
anarchists are losing their control over the State.
They
and more feebly, and even
hold their sway over more it
when the State is entirely obedient to their will, it is
not infrequently because they have temporarily purchased
that power.
When the manufacturers, the trusts, and the
beneficiaries of special privilege generally are forced periodically
to go out and purchase the State from the
Robin Hoods of politics, when they are compelled to
finance lavishly every political campaign, and then abjectly
go to the very men whom their money has put
into power and buy them again, their bleeding misery
becomes an object of pity.
This really amounts to an almost absolute transposition
of the classes. In the early nineties Engels saw the
beginning of this change, and, in what Sombart rightly
says may be looked upon as a kind of "political last will
writes: "The
and testament" to the movement, Engels
time for small minorities to place themselves at the head
of the ignorant
masses and resort to force in order to
bring about revolutions is gone. A complete change in
the organization of society can be brought about only by
the conscious cooperation of the masses; they must be
alive to the aim in view; they must know what they