by no means sure of their position. We have already shown that the rate of profit has a tendency to fall. With the falling of the rate of profit falls that portion of it which is paid as interest, directly or in the shape of dividends, to bond and stockholders of corporations. This makes a capital which is sufficient to maintain a man independently to-day insufficient for that purpose to-morrow. Thus the falling-out-at-the-bottom process increases as capitalism progresses.
Some of the causes and processes noted above are slow in their operation. But one thing is certain, they are there and working their deadly havoc in the ranks of the capitalistic cohorts constantly and surely. The tendencies of capitalistic development cannot, therefore, be mistaken. Not only can not the capitalist class, that is, its lower stratum which is commonly called the middle class, grow, but it must surely and constantly diminish.
This diminishing process in the capitalist ranks, the passing from the capitalist class into the proletariat, may, however, and, owing to certain circumstances which will be considered later, frequently does assume such forms that the whole process becomes veiled and not easily recognizable. Here again the corporation plays a part, although not a very important one. Its part here consists in furnishing some additional folds for the veil which covers this process.
Some Marx critics, and Bernstein is among them, talk as if Marx saw only one process, and that one the constant passing of former capitalists of the middle class into the ranks of the proletariat. No doubt there are some passages to be found in Marx's writings which at first blush give such impression. And as a general statement of a tendency this is true too. But that does not necessarily exclude some cross-current which may affect the original and prime tendency described by him, although it cannot completely negative it. Hence the danger of relying on single passages in Marx without careful examination as to their connection, and the immediate purposes for which they are used in the connection in which they are found. Hence, also, the ease
