No one can read this statement of Marx's without realizing its essential truthfulness. But it should not be forgotten that Marx himself believed, and every prominent socialist believes, that the control of the parliaments of the world is essential to any movement that seeks to transform the world. The powerlessness of parliaments may be easily exaggerated. To say that they are incapable of constructive work is to deny innumerable facts of history. Laws have both set up and destroyed industries. The action of parliaments has established gigantic industries. The schools, the roads, the Panama Canal, and a thousand other great operations known to us to-day have been set going by parliaments. Tariff laws make and destroy industries. Prohibition laws have annihilated industries, while legality, which is the peculiar product of parliaments, has everything to do with the ownership of property, of industry, and of the management of capital. For one who is attacking a legal status, who is endeavoring to alter political, juridical, as well as industrial and social relations, the conquering of parliaments is vitally necessary. The socialist recognizes that the parliaments of to-day represent class interests, that, indeed, they are dominated by class interests, and, as such, that they do not seek to change but to conserve what now exists. As a result, there _is_ a parliamentary _cretinism_, because, in a sense, the dominant elements in Parliament are only managing the affairs of powerful influences outside of Parliament. They are not the guiding hand, but the servile hand, of capitalism.