Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/45

 realize upon this activity, bring himself into the "play of economic forces"; without this he cannot live.

He is inseparable from his labor power and if he is not to starve he must betake himself to the service of another who has private possession in the means of production. From this arises and develops economic dependence, economic exploitation, and out of this political dependence and slavery in every form, a process that, as we have seen, goes on with increasing rapidity.

The division of society will ever become deeper and more complete. That which stands between the two extremes—capitalist and proletariat—the so-called middle classes of the population, who still have a small possession in the means of production, but must themselves work, even if they also utilize the labor of others; these middle classes disappear more and more. The whole process of development in the present society goes on irresistibly by virtue of its essential character to this end—that the means of production concentrate themselves in fewer hands, and that the possessors, the monopolists of these means, exploit the propertyless and rob them of their property, so that the whole history of industrial society is a history of expropriation in perpetuity. The possessor of the means of production expropriates those who have nothing, but who must labor for him for wages; he pays them only a part of the value produced for him. The surplus value, the unpaid-for labor, becomes in the hands of the possessor of the means of production, capital, and puts him in a position to draw the fetters of the laborer closer and more firmly and to complete his slavery and exploitation. So the laborer forges for himself the chains of slavery while he works and creates wealth. In this process optimistic dreams can change nothing. All criticisms of capital that do not go to the heart of the matter are