Unless defended by definite groups in the community, "the rule of property," could be ended in a single election.

Nor can the group that maintains capitalist government consist, as radicals suggest, merely of a handful of large capitalists, nor of these aided by certain cohorts of hired political mercenaries--nor yet of these two groups supported by the deceived and ignorant among the masses.

Unimportant elections may be fought with such support, but not revolutionary "civil wars" or "the upheavals of the centuries." _In every historical instance such struggles were supported on both sides by powerful, and at the same time numerically important, social classes, acting on the solid basis of economic interest._ Yet non-Socialist reformers persist in claiming that they represent all classes with the exception of a handful of monopolists, the bought, and the ignorant; and many assert flatly that their movement is altruistic, which can only mean that they intend to bestow such benefits as they think proper on some social class that they expect to remain powerless to help itself.

Here, then, in the attitude of non-Socialist reformers towards various social classes, we begin to see the inner structure of their movement.

They do not propose to attack any "vested interests" except those of the financial magnates, and they expect the lower classes to remain politically impotent, which they as democrats, know means that these classes are only going to receive such secondary consideration as the interests of the other classes require.
Whether the radical of to-day, the "State Socialist," favors political democracy or not, depends on whether these "passive beneficiaries" of the new "altruistic" system are in a majority.