The political limitations of the situation are similar. Prof. Anton Menger says of Socialism as applied to municipalities, that "it is necessarily deferred to the time when the Socialist party will be strong enough to take into its hands the political power in the whole state or the larger part of it." It is obviously impossible to force the hands of an intelligent ruling majority merely by capturing one branch or one local division of the government. As such branches are captured they will be prevented from doing anything of importance, or forced to act only within the limits fixed by the ruling class. This is especially true in the United States. We have elaborate forms and external symbols of local self-government, and it may really exist--as long as the municipalities are used for capitalistic purposes. When it is proposed to use local self-government for Socialist ends, however, it instantly disappears. Not only do the States interfere, with the national government ready behind them, but the centralized judiciary, state and national, is always at hand to intervene. _This is potential centralization, and for the purposes of preventing radical or Socialist measures the government of the United States is as centralized as that of any civilized nation on earth._ Moreover, the semblance of local power given by municipal victories brings a second difficulty to the Socialists--it means the election of administrators and judges. Now even under the system of potential centralization through the courts, _legislators_ are useful, for they cannot be forced to serve capitalism. But government must be carried on and mayors and judges are practically under the control of higher authorities--in the new commission plan of government, they even do the legislating. In the words of the _New York Daily Call_:-- "The Socialist Legislator finds his task a comparatively easy and simple one. He proposes or supports every measure of advantage to the working class in particular and to the great majority of the people in general, barring such as are of a reactionary character. But the Socialist executive and the Socialist judge find themselves in no such simple situation. Their activities are circumscribed by superior and hostile powers, and by written constitutions adopted at the dictation of the capitalist class. How to harmonize their activities with the just demands of the working class for the immediate betterment of its conditions, as well as with the Socialist program which has for its goal the ultimate overthrow of the capitalist social order, and yet not come into such conflict with the superior and hostile powers as would result in their own removal from office--this question is bound to assume a gravity not yet perhaps dreamed of by the majority of American Socialists.