combinations and these clever manipulators we see the socialisation of production; but the immense progress thus attained by humanity only profits a small minority of speculators. We shall see later on how the reactionary, petty bourgeois critique of capitalist imperialism dreams "on this basis" of taking a step to the rear, of a return to "free," "peaceful" and "honest" competition.
"The continued raising of prices," says Kestner, "which results from the formation of combines, has hitherto only been observed in relation to the most important means of production, such as coal, iron and potassium, and has never been remarked in relation to manufactured products. The consequent increase in profits has similarly only applied to the industries which produce means of production. This observation yet has to be completed in the sense that industry operating with raw materials (not semi-finished goods) does not confine itself to obtaining big profits through the trusts to the detriment of industry using semi-manufactured materials, but into the bargain it has acquired, with regard to this latter, a dominating position, which did not exist in the age of free competition."15
The words which we have italicised show the essential feature; that which the bourgeois economists recognise so rarely and so unwillingly, that which the modern defenders of opportunism especially Kautsky, will not see, and will by no means mention.
The dominating position of big capital and amount of pressure which it can bring to bear—this is the most typical fact in the "modern phase of capitalist development"; this is what must in-
