Note 920 — Chapter II · : STATE SOCIALISM

“And so I believe that just as history is nothing but a series of compromises, the first problem that awaits economic science at the present moment is that of effecting some kind of a working compromise between labour, capital, and property.” (Kapital, p. 187.) In a letter written on September 18, 1873, to R. Meyer, he declares that the great problem “is to help us to pass by a peaceful evolution from our present system, which is based upon private property in land and capital, to that superior social order which must succeed it in the natural course of history, which will be based upon desert and the mere ownership of income, and which is already showing itself in various aspects of social life, as if it were already on the point of coming into operation.”