84 THE CLASS STRUGGLE DETERMINISM 85 the one class system will then be more productive since it does away with a system of production based on artificial curtailment.
This interpretation sins in overlooking the fact that when the capitalist class is forced to limit production, it does not see the error of its ways and abdicates; it is then in a situation where the world is too small for all the bourgeois groups or nations; this ends the international harmony of the Bourgeoisie and splits it into two contending forces. Each of these will attempt to avoid the need of limiting production at home by expanding the outlet abroad; each will aim to maintain the condition of its further existence at the expense of the other, by the defeat of the competing group so as to attain world domination, e. the largest possible sphere for the distribution of its products and its capital.
And after that they would have nothing better to offer than to play the same game over again from the beginning, by another splitting up and another era of military glory.
Besides in this process of self preservation, by splitting the Bourgeois world into two camps, the forces of society are employed destructively on a maximum scale, so that during the contest itself the forces of production are engaged to their fullest capacity. Thus instead of abdication on account of limitation of the forces of production, we get war and the fullest expansion of production.
Furthermore, Socialism, when it is installed, will not be automatically more productive than capitalism, but will have to use its forces for protection in order to defend itself against capitalism invading from without, with its forces of production fully employed and organized to destroy the Socialist state. In the course of this struggle, too, the capitalist state will not be undermined by compulsory limitation of production.
Another contention to be dealt with is that as Russia still consists of many small units of production and few large ones, the conditions for social ownership and operation are not yet present.
This means that there is still a good sized middle class in Russia and a small sized big capitalist class. But here as elsewhere the middle class has been ground into impotence between the upper millstone of modern big capital and the nether millstone of an industrial proletariat with a constructive program. No middle class anywhere can offer even a temporary solution at this late date; for it is a declining class, and cannot perform a socially useful function, as it did in days gone by before production on a large scale by big capital had taken the lead, and also before a permanent industrial proletariat was fully developed and had become conscious of its destiny of social emancipation. The middle class principle and middle class ideals are utterly unsocial and useless to day, quite irrespective of the industrial stage or degree of development.
Presumably, the Menshevik position, therefore, is that the proletariat should perform the role of watchful waiting while the big capitalist class wipes out small capitalist production; for only after this has taken place in the emancipation of society by the proletariat indicated according to the inevitable laws of economic science. Apparently that means that the highest form of production must be introduced by the Bourgeoisie and cannot be installed by any other agency. If that is the inference, nothing could be further from the truth.
The biggest enterprises of late have grown altogether beyond the capacity of privately owned capital and have been undertaken by the political state, with the backing not of individual capitalists but of the nation as a whole. The Panama Canal is a shining example, but since then, in the course of the war period, cases of this kind are sufficiently frequent not to require detailed enumeration.
It is not clear, therefore, why the Russian proletariat should lengthen the time of its industrial slavery as a means of social emancipation. The abolition of private ownership of social property, the abolition of the class control of industry and production should be the means of installing the biggest and best forms of production and distribution by the industrial state. And this will then be done by a one class government instead of by mass agony. The state will have to perform the work that was done elsewhere by the big capitalist class, and it will do this much more quickly and thoroughly