Page:Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov - The Bourgeois Revolution- Its Attainments and Its Limitations - tr. Henry Kuhn (1926).pdf/31

 geoisie has almost purposely proceeded to demonstrate to the proletariat ad oculos (to the eyes) the economic possibility and necessity of a social transformation. The world exhibition gave it an excellent demonstration of the unprecedented development of the means of production in all civilized countries, which has outwinged the boldest fantasies of the Utopians of the preceding century. In keeping therewith, the emancipation of the proletariat, instead of the noble dream it was at the time of Babeuf, has become an historic necessity. The exhibition has shown, furthermore, that the modern development of the means of production, under the anarchic conditions governing production, must logically and necessarily lead to industrial crises ever more destructive to world economy. In order to escape the dangerous consequences of these crises, nothing is left for the European proletariat but to lay the foundation stone for the planful organization of social production which, for the sansculottes of the past century, was a thing impossible. Not only do the modern production