day, and so on. In Germany, for example, in the days of William II, there prevailed a fairly good system of State insurance for the workers. In England, the typically bourgeois minister Lloyd George introduced the Insurance Act and the Old-Age Pensions Act. In all bourgeois lands, there are hospitals, dispensaries, and sanatoriums for the workers; railways are constructed, and by these all can travel, rich and poor alike; waterworks are instituted for the supply of the towns, and so on. Such things are for the public service. This implies, many will say, that even in those countries where capital rules, the State is not run solely in the interests of capital, but is concerned likewise with the interests of the workers. The State actually punishes factory owners who infringe factory legislation.
These arguments are fallacious, for the following reasons. It is perfectly true that the bourgeois authority occasionally passes laws and regulations useful to the working class. They are, however, passed in the interest of the bourgeoisie. Let us take as an example the railways. The workers travel by them, and for this reason they are useful to the workers. But they are not built for the sake of the workers. Merchants and factory owners need railways for the carriage of their wares, for the transport of troops, for the conveyance of workers, etc. Capital needs railways, and builds them in its own interest. They are useful to the workers too, but that is not why the capitalist State constructs them. Again, let us take the cleaning of the towns, or urban sanitation as it is called, and let us consider the hospitals. In these cases the bourgeoisie is concerned about the working-class districts as well as about the others. It is true that, in comparison with the bourgeois quarters in the centre of the town, we find, in the working-class suburbs, dirt, the abomination of desolation, disease, etc. Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie does do something. Why? Because illness and epidemics sometimes spread all through the town, and if such a thing should happen the bourgeoisie, too, would suffer. Inthis matter, therefore, the bourgeois State and its urban instruments are simply pursuing bourgeois interests.