While Socialists have not always conceded that the capitalists will themselves undertake, without compulsion, large measures of political democracy and social reform,--even of the capitalistic variety,--nearly all of the most influential are now coming to base their whole policy on this now very evident tendency, and some have done so for many years past. For instance, it has been clear to many from the time of Karl Marx that it would be necessary for capitalist society itself to nationalize or municipalize businesses that become monopolized, without any reference to Socialism or the Socialists. "These private monopolies have become unbearable," says Kautsky, "not simply for the wage workers, but for all classes of society who do not share in their ownership," and he adds that it is only the weakness of the bourgeois (the smaller capitalist) as opposed to capital (the large capitalist) that hinders him from taking effective action. Indeed, one of the chief respects in which history has pursued a somewhat different course from that expected by Marx has been in the failure of capitalist society to attempt _immediately_ this solution of the trust problem through government ownership. Marx expected that this attempt would necessarily be made as soon as the monopolies reached an advanced state, and that the resulting economic revolution would develop into a Socialist revolution. But this monopolistic period has come, the trusts are rapidly dominating the whole field of industry and government, and yet it seems improbable that they will be forced to any final compromise with the small capitalist investors and consumers for some years to come. In the meanwhile, no doubt, the process of nationalization will begin, but too late to fulfill Marx's expectation, for the large and small capitalists will have time to become better united, and their combined control over government will have had time to grow more secure than ever. The new partnership of capitalism and the State will, no doubt, represent the small capitalists as well as the large, but there is no sign that the working people will be able to take advantage of the coming transformation for any non-capitalist purpose. Nor did Marx expect national ownership to increase the relative strength of the workers _unless it was accompanied by a political revolution_.