Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/57

Rh and torn by the bitterest competition. It has never been able to organise itself, and in so doing to control production and regulate it according to the variable needs of society. In this state of anarchical disorder, capital is only warned of its mistakes through crises, the terrible consequences of which often fall upon the proletariat. So, by the extreme of injustice, the working classes are socially responsible for the carrying on of production which they have no share in regulating.

To have responsibility without authority, to be punished without having been even consulted, such is the paradoxical fate of the proletariat under the capitalist disorder. And if capital were organised, if by means of vast trusts it were able to regulate production, it would only regulate it for its own profit. It would abuse the power gained by union to impose usurious prices on the community of buyers, and the working class would escape from economic disorder only to fall under the yoke of monopoly.

All this misery, all this injustice and disorder result from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life, and imposes its law on another class and on society as a whole. The thing to do, therefore, is to break down this supremacy of one class. The oppressed class must be enfranchised, and with it the whole of society. All difference of class must be abolished by transferring to the whole body of citizens,