Marx professes
to prove that Socialism must come, but scarcely concerns
himself to argue that when it comes it will be
a good thing. It may be, however, that if it comes,
it will be a good thing, even though all Marx's arguments
to prove that it must come should be at fault.
In actual fact, time has shown many flaws in Marx's
theories. The development of the world has been
sufficiently like his prophecy to prove him a man of
very unusual penetration, but has not been sufficiently
like to make either political or economic history
exactly such as he predicted that it would be.
Nationalism, so far from diminishing, has increased,
and has failed to be conquered by the cosmopolitan
tendencies which Marx rightly discerned in finance.
Although big businesses have grown bigger and have
over a great area reached the stage of monopoly,
yet the number of shareholders in such enterprises
is so large that the actual number of individuals
interested in the capitalist system has continually
increased. Moreover, though large firms have grown
larger, there has been a simultaneous increase in
firms of medium size. Meanwhile the wage-earners,
who were, according to Marx, to have remained at
the bare level of subsistence at which they were in
the England of the first half of the nineteenth century,
have instead profited by the general increase
of wealth, though in a lesser degree than the capitalists.
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