insist on it because of what might be termed its social or ideological importance. For it is not the mere fact of the creation by one class of surplus-value or a surplus-product and its absorption by another class, but the way in which it is done that gives its character, including its ideology, to society as a whole and to each and every class and subdivision of a class therein. In examining, therefore, the influence of the development of the corporation on the fortunes of the capitalist class, it is not only the effect upon its numbers, but also and mainly the effect upon its character that is to be considered, for on the latter may depend the character of the whole social system. Upon the latter may also depend the durability of the social system and its speedy transformation into another. We shall, therefore, examine the question from both aspects.
And first as to numbers. Does the substitution of corporate for individual effort arrest the shrinkage of the numbers of the capitalist class or develop a tendency to its expansion, as Bernstein asserts? Decidedly not. And even Bernstein's empirical-statistical method, poor as it is, shows this. Bernstein does not deny the absolute and relative growth of the working class. And as the working class and capitalist class can only grow, aside from their proportional growth with the growth of population, at the expense of each other, they evidently cannot both grow at the same time. But this is just what is evidently happening if Bernstein is to be believed. Both the capitalist class and the working class are simultaneously growing at the expense of each other! Only the uncritical handling of mere figures could betray him into such an absurdity. A careful examination, on the other hand, of the actual phenomena under consideration would have shown him that while the corporation may arrest the rapidity of progress in the shrinking process of the capitalistic ranks, it cannot do away with the process itself. The capitalist class must shrink!
In this connection we must, in the first place, consider the fact, already noted by Marx, that the corporation itself
