If then "State Socialism," like the benevolent despotisms and oligarchies of history, sometimes offers the purely _material_ benefits which it brings in some measure to all classes, as a _substitute_ for democratic government, it also favors democracy in those places where the small capitalists and related classes form a majority of the community. The purpose of the democratic policy, where it is adopted, is to stimulate new political interest in the "State Socialistic" program, and by increasing cautiously the political weight of the non-capitalists--without going far enough to give them any real or independent power--to check the reactionary element among the capitalists that tries to hold back the industrial and governmental organization the progressives have in view. It was in order to shift the political balance of power that the reactionary Bismarck introduced universal suffrage in Germany, and the same motive is leading Premier Asquith, who is not radical, to add considerably to the political weight of the working classes in England, _i.e._ not to the point where they have any power whatever for their own purposes, but only to that point where their weight, added to that of the Liberals, counterbalances the Tories, and so automatically aids the former party. The Liberals are giving Labor this almost valueless installment of democracy, just as they had previously granted instead such immediate and material benefits as we see in the recent British budgets, _as if_ they were concessions, only hiding the fact that _they would soon have conferred these benefits on the workers through their own self-interest, whether the workers had given them their political support or not_. Mr. Lloyd George has said:-- "The workingman is no fool. He knows that a great party like ours can, with his help, do things for him he could not hope to accomplish for himself without its aid. It brings to his assistance the potent influences drawn from the great middle classes of this country, which would be frightened into positive hostility by a _purely class organization_ to which they do not belong. No party could ever hope for success in this country which does not win the confidence of a _large portion_ of this middle class.... "You are not going to make Socialists in a hurry out of farmers and traders and professional men of this country, but you may scare them into reaction.... They are helping us now to secure advanced Labor legislation; they will help us later to secure land reform and other measures for all classes of wealth producers, and we need all the help they give us. But if they are threatened with a class war, then they will surely sulk and harden into downright Toryism. What gain will that be for Labor?" (My italics.)[44]