Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/16

` change his master, in any regard more free than the ancient slave? Does not hunger fasten him more firmly and more mercilessly to labor than the strongest iron chain? Yet our opponents often rejoin: "The worker is in a better condition to-day than in the last century." Whether the assertion is true or false we leave undebated. Even if true, it would prove nothing. It is not better position the socialist worker demands, but equal position. He will work no longer for another; he insists that each shall enjoy in equal measure the fruits of labor and the blessings of culture. He has enough logic and sense of justice to lay no claim to a favored place; he will also, however, accept no inferior one.

The continuance of the present manner of production is not consistent with the continuance of society. The great capitalist production was an advance. It has, however, become an obstruction. It no longer satisfies the economic needs of society, and by society we mean not the small minority of privileged persons who are pleased to call themselves "society," but the whole people.

Wholly aside from the unjust distribution of the products of labor, capitalist production is incapable of providing all members of society with the things requisite to an existence worthy of mankind and must be displaced by a higher form of production which fulfills these conditions. And this is possible only through communistic, social production, and the socialist organization of labor which turns the concentrated capital of the community to the advantage of society.

It is an error which arises from the confusing of society with the privileged minority, that is with the ruling classes, that we are charged with the intention of overthrowing all existing things and proceeding