Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/36

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MILITARISM

the economic position of the various groups of interests (classes), whilst the social and political condition presents itself rather as a consequence—as a consequence, it is true, which also has strong reactions—as an expression of social domination.

The purely economic superiority also helps to cause directly a shifting and confusing of that numerical relation, inasmuch as economic pressure not only influences the mental and moral stage of development and therefore the ability to recognize class-interest, but also produces a tendency to act in opposition to a class-interest which is more or less recognized. That also the political machinery provides that class in whose hands it is with further means of domination with which to "correct" that numerical relationship in favor of the ruling group of interests is shown by four institutions well known to all—police, law courts, schools, and church, which latter must also be reckoned among these institutions which the political machinery creates in its legislative function in order to exploit them for the application of the