ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the patterns of economic and social development in European societies over the past century or more. In Germany there was a military plutocracy aided by landed interests, especially those in Prussia. The German military plutocracy has now been destroyed by rival Western plutocracies. Leaders of the plutocracies initially believed that World War I would be short and inexpensive. The military plutocracy in Germany was defeated by a foreign force. That was the demagogic plutocracy that is now spreading into Germany and has completely triumphed in the countries of the Entente. The plutocracy has invented countless makeshift programs, such as generating enormous public debt that plutocrats know they will never be able to repay, levies on capital, taxes which exhaust the incomes of those who do not speculate, sumptuary laws which have historically proven useless, and other similar measures.
