Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/17

 tabula rasa to erect a fantastic structure upon the ruins. We only wish to remove whatever hinders the sound, intelligent development of society and to bring about a condition in which the interests of the great majority shall no longer be sacrificed to those of the minority. And instead of privileged individuals, instead of political social monopolies, we would establish the rights and interests of all and justice as the highest law of state and society. Whatever has outlived itself and no longer satisfies the growing cultured needs of society shall cease to withhold air and sun from the struggling new life. We will make possible the organic evolution of our culture that is prevented by the present class rule.

Whoever would propose to-day to abolish machinery in order to re-establish the small industry of mediæval times would be considered insane, for every one knows that the small industry has been succeeded by a higher, more productive method, the great industry. Whoever in the middle ages, however, or even the first half of the present century, had said that the system of small industries was too costly, too unproductive, and must be wiped from the earth through an industrial revolution that should bring another system of production to the ruling position, would have been considered as—well, much as the fanatics of the present' social order, or, more properly, disorder, consider us.

Whoever in fifty years from now should recommend the introduction of our present conditions would be in danger of making the acquaintance of the insane asylum. And we who demand the reform of these present conditions are slandered and persecuted. Yet it is just as certain and just as necessary as the present manner of production should be supplanted by a higher, as that the mediæval manner of production should he supplanted by the present one. It is not we who are