undifferentiated from the ordinary middle-class, considerably complicated the, in themselves, not very easy tasks of determining the influence of the corporation on the destinies of capitalism and the effect of this new departure in capitalism on the Marxian theoretical system.
Of course it can easily be seen that these matters do not in any way affect Marx's analysis of the working of capitalism and the laws governing that system while it lasts. As we have seen before, competition is of the essence of that system. This is recognized by the friends as well as the foes of that system. It has been embodied in its written as well as in its unwritten laws. "Restraint of trade," which is the legal term for restricting or abolishing competition, was illegal and punishable by the common law of England, that classic land of capitalism. All our anti-trust laws are based on the assumption that competition—which is "the life of trade"—is the basis of capitalism, and, therefore, one of the inalienable property-rights of every man living in a capitalistic society. They are nothing more than a statutory enactment of the common law of capitalism that to interfere with competition is to interfere with the life-blood of capitalism, and therefore mortal sin in the eyes of capitalistic law. It is, therefore, not a refutation of the Marxian analysis of the capitalist system to show that tendencies in the development of that system which Marx said would continue to exist as long as capitalism lived, disappeared in whole or in part when the basic principle of that system was abolished or modified. Naturally enough, the tendencies of capitalism cannot manifest themselves in a society where there is no capitalism, nor can they fully develop under limited capitalism if such a thing be possible.
What may be affected by the phenomenon which we discussed above is not Marx's analysis of capitalism, nor even his prediction that capitalism as it existed is going to destruction,—but his prediction that on the ruins of the capitalist system will be reared the edifice of a socialist so-
