Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/44

 process has not been accomplished suddenly, but goes steadily forward. It is to be traced back through the middle ages, even into remote antiquity. In the industrial society, with which we have to deal and with which the platform is concerned, it proceeds with additional speed according to the degree in which the means of production have become concentrated and the monopoly or property of a small minority, and according as the productivity of the means of production has become steadily more perfect. A simple tool has grown into a machine; the machine becomes more and more perfect; capital, and with it the intensification of production, continually increases. Out of the small business develops the great business, which marks the beginning of great industry from which arose the modern giant industry, and this is not sufficient—the giant industry unites itself into trusts agreements, etc.

And with this concentration of capital the means of production take on in equal manner; on one side the intensification of production, that rises to unending height, and on the other side the intensification of exploitation, of expropriation of the middle classes, the uncertainty of existence of the proletariat, the lower grade of misery, of oppression, of slavery.

The process of historical social development and the laws according to which it proceeds must be set forth in the platform; it must be shown how present conditions have their origin in the separation of the laborer from his product; how exploitation has grown and must grow with the greater concentration of the means of production; how the root of the evil lies in the fact that the means of production have become private property; how out of this fact exploitation results as an absolute necessity. Every one who possesses labor power, but has not the means with which to use it, must, if he will