CONSERVAT/VE SOC/AL/STS. 
85 
represented by President von Gerlach, who, under the name 
of Rundschauer (Spectator), treated the social question in the 
Kreuzzeiiung (Journal of the Cross), the organ of the feudal 
party. He endeavoured to show that landowners and labourers 
are alike sacrificed to the errors of economic liberalism and to 
the art of usury ( Wucherkunst), which characterize our times 
He wished, above all, to maintain the land system still in vogue 
in Eastern Prussia, where the peasants live and work as 
formerly, under the rod of their seigneurs; and he demanded 
that the artisan class, at once workers and owners of the 
instruments of their labour, should be protected against the 
encroachments of the large system of industry, which is dividing 
the world of production into two distinct and hostile classes, 
capitalists and wage-earners. 
One of Marx’s principal arguments consists in showing how 
competition for low prices brings about the fatal triumph of 
g eat establishments, which, rising upon the ruins of small 
manufactures, reconstruct a feudalism of finance and industry 
a-Ä s,Äx.i r-% 
but he draws a different conclusion from Marx. The only 
' beheve that if it should be necessary to