.SOCIAL EVOLUTION 269 



creasing mass, their slaves, become the miserable poor, 1 



1 " When we reach the heart of the matter we find it to be, accord- 

 ing to Marx, a system by which the capitalist is enabled to appro- 

 priate the surplus value of the work of the labourers, these being able 

 to retain as wages only what represents the average subsistence 

 necessary for themselves and their children in keeping up this supply 

 of labour. There is thus an inherent antagonism between the two 

 classes. 



" As the conflict takes shape it begins to develop remarkable 

 features. At the one pole we have the continued appropriation and 

 accumulation, of surplus value, with the ever-increasing wealth and 

 power of those in whose hands it is concentrated. At the other end 

 we have the progressive enslavement and degradation of the exploited 

 classes. As the development continues, the workers, on the one 

 hand, gradually come to recognise their position as a class and become 

 possessed of a sense of their common interests. On the other hand, 

 the competition amongst the capitalist class is great and continually 

 growing ; the larger capitalists gradually extinguish the smaller ones, 

 and wealth becomes accumulated in fewer and fewer hands. To quote 

 M arx's words : ' Along with the constantly diminishing number of 

 the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages, 

 of this process of transformation, grow the mass of misery, oppression, 

 slavery, degradation, exploitation ; but with this, too, grows the 

 revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers and 

 disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process 

 of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a 

 fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and 

 nourished along with and under it. Centralisation of the means of 

 production and socialisation of labour, at last, reach a point when 

 they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This- 

 integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property 

 sounds.' * That is to say, the state of things becomes at length in- 

 tolerable ; there is anarchy in production, accompanied by constantly 

 recurring commercial crises ; and the incapacity of the capitalist 

 classes to manage the productive forces being manifest, public opinion 

 at last comes to a head. The organized workers seize possession of 



* " Capital," Karl Marx, English translation (Swan Sonnenschein 

 & Co., 1887), vol. ii. pp. 788, 789. 



