the great numbers of this class the income statistics are certainly an indication. Those incomes which can not possibly be the result of wage-labor must be the incomes of this "new" middle class, unless they are the incomes of the property owning middle class, and the income statistics therefore certainly prove at least one thing, and that is that the "new," property-less middle-class, together with the old-propertied middle-class, certainly form at present quite a formidable class and diminish only slowly. Where is the difference, as far as the subject that interests us (the approaching transformation from capitalism to socialism), is concerned, between the old and the new middle classes? Isn't Bernstein right, after all, when he says that if the coming of socialism were dependent on the disappearance of the middle class the socialists might as well go to sleep, for the time being at least?
In answer to such questions we will say: As already pointed out, it is not part of the Marxian doctrine that all middle classes must disappear before the advent of socialism, and the fact, therefore, that there may be developing a new middle class is no warrant for the assertion that the Marxian theory needs revision. Provided, of course, that the new middle class is sufficiently different to make a difference. It was shown already that Marx's prognosis as to the centralization of wealth through the disappearance of the property-owning middle-class is correct. And this is one of the decisive moments in the evolution from capitalism to socialism. (It is not so much the merging of the persons who compose the middle class into the proletariat that is required as their severance from their property.) For the passing of our society from its capitalistic form of production to a socialistic form of production, that is, for the socialization of the means of production, the only things that are of paramount importance are, first, that these means of production should be social in their character, and the more social the better (the concentration of capital); and, second, that these means of production should lend themselves to
