Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/109

Rh in common. This fundamental difference of interests, functions and historic destinies breeds the class antagonism and the struggle for power.

To-day Capitalism is strongly fortified behind economic and political bulwarks. By virtue of its industrial powers, it has humanity the world over at the throat. To dislodge Capitalism from this powerful position, and to thus lay the cornerstone of the Socialist Commonwealth is the august mission of Constructive Socialism.

In this struggle between the capitalist class and the proletariat, the latter, being in the position of aggressor, is naturally at a disadvantage. It is a disadvantage, however, that compels a survey of the battlefield by the workers, the results of which contain the solution to the problem of how to overcome and eliminate this obstacle. This survey of the economic, political and social position of the capitalist class reveals, that the basic power or influence of this class resides not, as is so often erroneously assumed, in its political domination or control of government, but in its economic rule over society. History teaches and profusely illustrates: that the class in control of the economic resources of society in a given period has also been the class to exercise practical control over political society, i.e.—over society itself. History vindicates the contention that the economic life of society, the form of ownership and methods of production and exchange existing at a certain stage of social development, is the compelling factor, the preponderant form, which determines, influences and shapes all other ethical, moral, intellectual and political, in short—cultural phases of life.

A casual study of the periods of Antique Slavery, Feudalism and Capitalism will serve to convincingly illustrate this contention. Such a study will reveal that the roots of Slavery rested in the absolute domination of a people by another; that the enslavement and exploitation of a people by Rome was made possible only by the superior and well organized economic resources and