ABSTRACT
Socialism seems to be divided into two fundamental and quite distinct questions—its degree of "probability" and its degree of "superiority" or "inferiority". This chapter outlines how these questions are presented by the various forms of socialism which now hold the field, and thus to handle the so-called "social question" in its most essential lines as synthetically as possible. The social question assumes to-day the typical form of a division of society into two main, antagonistic classes—the wage-earning classes, without the instruments and means of production, and the capitalists. "Legal" socialism is always seen compelled to defend intermediary transformations. There are plenty of transformations of the law of property adaptable to the realization on a vast scale of that nationalization of private capital which socialism in general has always deemed indispensable to the effective emancipation of a great part at least of the present proletariat.
