Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/178

 Today it often takes scores, or even hundreds, to produce a finished product. Thus does industry teach co-operation.

Perhaps modern uniformity of conditions is even more effective in this direction than the necessity for co-operation. In the Medieval gilds there were the beginning of internationalism, but the various trades were sharply divided. Among the menial, as we have seen, divisions in rank were endless. But in the modern factory there are practically no gradations. All the employes work under nearly the same conditions, and the individual laborer is powerless to change them. Under the influence of machinery, moreover, the distinctions among the trades are rapidly disappearing. This is indicated by the fact that apprenticeships are constantly being shortened. Whole trades are often rendered unnecessary by some new invention, and those employed in them are forced to turn to another form of labor. This tends more and more to make an individual worker forget his craft and fight for his entire class.

Uprisings against employers are nothing new. They occurred in plenty during the Middle Ages. But only during the nineteenth century did these uprisings attain the character of a class-struggle. And thus this great conflict has taken on a higher purpose than the righting of temporary wrongs; the labor movement has become a revolutionary movement.