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