ding, whose conclusions Kautsky on many occasions and notably in April, 1915, declared have been "unanimously adopted by all Socialist theoreticians."
"It is not the business of the proletariat," wrote Hilferding, "to set up in opposition to progressive capitalist policy, the era which has passed of free trade and of a hostile attitude towards the State. The reply of the proletariat to the economic policy of finance-capital, of imperialism, cannot be free trade, but Socialism alone. It is not an ideal such as the restoration of free trade—now become a reactionary ideal—which should be the object of proletarian policy, but solely the complete abolition of competition by the overthrow of capitalism."96
Kautsky broke away from Marxism by defending, in the period of finance-capital, the "reactionary ideal" of "peaceful democracy," "the simple action of economic factors," etc.—for this ideal is objectively retrogressive from monopoly capitalism to the non-monopolist stage, and is a reformist swindle.
Trade with Egypt (or with any other colony or semi-colony) would have been "better developed" without a military occupation, without imperialism, and without finance-capital . . . What does this mean? That capitalism would develop more rapidly if free trade were not restrained either by monopolies in general or by the "connections" or the yoke, (i.e., again the monopoly) of finance capitalism, or yet again by the colonial monopoly of certain countries?
Kautsky's reasoning can have no other meaning. Admitting that this is so, admitting that free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would
