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epublic became the great imposer and collector of taxes, payingto the states each a share. Slowly the central government absorbedthe powers of the states. The problems of the individual states andcommunities, the problems of business groups and social groupswere all brought to Berlin. The republican Reichstag, unlike itsimperial predecessor, was now charged with the vast duty of managingalmost every energy of the social and economic life of therepublic. German states were always filled with bureaus, so that longbefore World War I travelers referred to the "bureaucratic tyrannies"of the empire. But now the bureaus became great centralizedorganisms of the federal government dealing with the multitude ofproblems which the Reichstag was completely incapable of handling.Quickly the actual function of governing leaked out of theparliament into the hands of the bureaucrats. The German republicbecame a paradise of bureaucracy on a scale which the old imperialgovernment never knew. The state, with its powers enhanced by theacquisition of immense economic powers and those powers broughtto the center of government and lodged in the executive, was slowlybecoming, notwithstanding its republican appearance, a totalitarianstate that was almost unlimited in its powers.Germany, under the republic, was not moving toward the socialistidea of state ownership, but rather toward the syndicalist ideaof the organization of society into economic provinces, with propertyprivately owned and regulated tightly by private cartels—in a few of which labor was represented—but all under the paternalsupervision of the government. But it was under the supervisionof the political state which the old syndicalists abhorred. The state,as Sorel had predicted, with its powers enhanced by the acquisitionof immense economic powers, was becoming a totalitarian or despoticstate.VII · Machiavelli s MenIN ALL that has preceded this the economic factors have, perhaps,been unduly emphasized. This is owing to the fact that in the last"7