ism" with which we are blessed. Hence, lastly, the "social unrest" in capitalistic quarters.
For it is a mistake to think that the "social unrest" comes wholly, or even mostly, from below. Of course there are moments of unrest in the working-class. But it will be found, upon close examination, that a good deal of it is merely the reflection of the unrest of the higher layers of society. Furthermore, it will be found that the more the working-class emancipates itself from the mental and moral tutelage of the upper class, the more it develops an ideology of its own, as we shall see in the next chapter, and the less the "unrest" in its midst: the more steady its thoughts and actions become. Before the working-class ideology is full-grown, however, and while it is yet under the tutelage of the middle classes, the changes in the ideology of those classes which we have described are of great importance, and even the very restlessness of that ideology and psychology is of importance. For it first creates restlessness below, thus calling out nervous activity, and when that nervous activity has resulted in a firm and clear ideology it cannot offer any effective resistance.
Whatever, therefore, has been saved of the middle class by the corporation with regard to numbers, has been destroyed, and very largely by this very agency, as to character. What was saved from the fire has been destroyed by water. The result is the same: the middle class, that middle class which Marx had in view, the middle class which was a factor obstructing the way towards socialism, is doomed.
This is not all, however. The corporation has not merely failed to save the middle class. It is performing a positive and great service in the work of transformation of our society from capitalism to socialism. That work is nothing less than the abolition of private property and the substitution of collective property in the means of production; the demolition of the basis of capitalism and the rearing of the ground work of a socialist system of society. It is hard to think of our capitalists as doing this work, but that is
