the long run with a dozen persons, their activity is nowadays more important for the public good than that of the majority of the Ministers of State." (The "interlacing" of the bankers, the ministers, the directors of industry, the bondholders, is here completely forgotten). "If we logically think out the course of development of the tendencies which we have noticed, we arrive at this conclusion, that the money capital of the nation is united in the banks; the banks are bound between themselves by combines; the capital of the investing nations has been cast in the shape of securities.
"Thus the brilliant prophecies of Saint-Simon are fulfilled. 'The present anarchy of production due to the fact that economic relations are developing without uniform regulation, must give place to organisation of production. Production will be directed not by chiefs of businesses independent of each other and and ignorant of man's economic needs, but by a special institution. The central committee of control, being able to consider the large field of social economy from a more elevated point of view, will regulate it in such a way that it will be useful to the whole of society, will be able to put the means of production into suitable hands, and above all will occupy itself more particularly with maintaining constant harmony between production and consumption. Certain establishments have assumed as part of their task a certain organisation of economic labour: these are the banks.' We are still far from the fulfilment of these prophecies of Saint-Simon, but we are on the way. It is Marxism, different from what Marx represents it, but different only in form."
