Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/111

to be handed over to the arbitrary conduct of individuals. Along with the care for the poor, the young, the old, the infirm (schools, hospitals, poorhouses), the community reserved the functions of promoting and regulating commerce—i. e., building highways, coining money, superintending highways—and the management of certain general and important matters pertaining to production. In mediaeval society these several functions devolved upon the towns and sometimes upon religious corporations. The mediaeval state was little concerned with such functions. All this changed as the state took on its modern form, that is, became the state of office-holders and soldiers, the tool of the capitalist class. Like all previous states, the modern state is the tool of class rule. It could not, however, fulfill its mission and satisfy the needs of the capitalist class without either dissolving, or depriving of their independence, those economic institutions which lay at the foundation of the pre-capitalist social system, and taking upon itself their functions. Even in places where the modem state tolerated the continuance of mediaeval organizations, these fell into decay and became less and less able to fulfill their functions. These functions became, however, broader and broader with the development of the capitalist system; they grew with such rapidity that the state was gradually compelled to assume even those functions which it cares least to trouble itself about. For instance, the necessity of taking over the whole system of charitable and educational institutions has become so pressing upon the state that it has