Page:Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois (1912?).pdf/3



Marxian Socialism predicates the formation of what is called the proletarian class. The process of the organization and development of that class is, in fact, the most striking phenomenon of the present industrial age, for on its organization and development depend the break up of the existing system, and the substitution for it, as a successor, of another industrial system, which for want of a better name is called socialism.

The term socialism at the present time has two distinct concepts, the one standing for the process by which the proletariat develops its political and industrial independence of the existing capitalistic regime, and the other a more or less hazy objective, which is sometimes called socialism and often the co-operative commonwealth.

We may ignore this latter as being a sort of apocalyptic vision.

How is the proletariat to obtain the supremacy?

According to Marx by the operation of two distinct processes—one, the growth of the proletariat itself, the rise and progress of class consciousness, with all the industrial and political manifestations flowing therefrom; the other, the automatic process of capitalism which necessitates ever more involved and complex industrial machinery, the coming into being, the development and the perpetuation of combinations.

This process of necessity implies the extinction of very large numbers of small competing capitalists, industrialists, and merchants, who formed the backbone of the present system in its earlier stages.

There can be no real doubt as to the correctness of the Marxian predictions with respect to capitalistic development, for we have now unquestionably the greater capitalism with all the legal and political problems which it involves. As a counterpart also we see the decline in