ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what influences are exercised on the economy by democratic, moral, and religious forces which presently impel the world into the path of agreement. Democracy is resolutely conservative, while, according to Karl Kautsky, socialism recognizes the necessity of allowing ills to be produced that are inseparable from economic progress. De Rousiers has understood with great perspicacity that behind democratic political forms there is an aristocracy of ability and of energy in civil society. While the American is consumed with ambition for power, the European democratic classes are inclined to simple tastes. For many years it was believed that capitalism was too powerful to have to take account of religious, philanthropic, or democratic fantasies. The United States became acquainted with the dangers presented by democratic instincts. European democracy finds repugnant one of the most important ideas on which modern capitalist production rests.
