Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/113

Rh of the land; and the capitalist is in undisputed possession of the ship of state, by virtue of his absolute control over all the agencies of production in society. The working class, mustering its forces to give battle to the advocates and upholders of the present system, finds itself the only class in the long chain of social development that seeks to acquire the economic and political supremacy in society without possessing or attempting to fortify this supremacy with some property prerogative.

The working class being toolless and stripped of every vestige of property can not organize its economic forces along the lines of ownership. The economic power of the proletariat rests not, as it is and has been the case with all parasitic ruling classes, in the power of ownership, but in the power of production: not in its problematical indispensability as a possessing class, but in its actual indispensability as a producing class. The physical and intellectual productive faculties of the working class form the groundwork of present day society and symbolize the pulsating blood of our social organism. Consequently, these faculties organized on a class-conscious basis and in line with the dictates of economic development; in other words, these physical and intellectual productive forces of the workers organized in the interest of the proletariat represent and form the structure of working class economic power. As, can be readily seen, the seat of working class power, different from that of previous ruling classes, does not rest in the usurpation and possession of rights and property respectively, but in the consciousness of the proletariat's indispensability as a productive agent—in the consciousness of being the working class. This class-consciousness of the workers is the generator of the economic power of the proletariat. Recognizing the economic indispensability of the workers in the process of production, and thereby appreciating the role played by the proletariat in the maintenance of society, it is now a simple matter for the class-conscious worker to translate these conceptions into proper forms of organization.