Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/114

112 Production being the origin of and maintaining element in social life; production also being solely carried on by the workers; furthermore, exploitation or the appropriation of surplus value also taking place at the point of production; and, again, the point of production being also the seat of the capitalists' economic power, it logically follows that the class organization of the workers will first marshal and organize its forces at this point. The organization of the workers along class-conscious lines at the point of production is synonymous to rearing and developing the economic power in the proletariat. Consequently, this power increases as the class-consciousness increases amongst the workers, and their economic and political organizations will grow in the same proportion.

To sum up: The economic power of the worker rests not in some form of ownership or property prerogative, as is the case with the capitalists, but in the recognition of his status as a worker, in the recognition of his economic worth or indispensability—in his class-consciousness. In order to assert itself effectively, this class-consciousness must take on certain organized forms on the industrial as well as political field, i.e., must express itself in accord with the requirements of capitalist development in particular and social evolution in general. This phase of the problem will be dealt with in the second part of this article.