Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/47

 side are hurled into the proletariat, while thousands and hundreds of thousands fall into the abyss and miserably perish. But this bottomless chasm is not filled by their bodies, and it remains—it is the dividing line which separates us from all other parties. Every one who would pass this dividing line must give up small industrial Utopias and have clearly before his eye that only the removal of the cause—that is, the removal of private ownership in the means of production, and the whole present manner of production for sale, can make an end to misery, exploitation and slavery. He who believes that through compromise he can gradually, with little industrial ointments and palliative measures, make the evils of present society so mild that one will at least be able to bear them for a time—whoever cherishes such a view has forsaken the revolutionary foundation of the party. It is this we have to bear in mind when we ask: Do you belong to us or not? The most beautiful phrases about improving the condition of the laborer are of no use to us. In that way there is no help for us.

It lies in the nature of present society and production that exploitation must ever become more intense. Can we, through the legislation of the state, be it ever so powerful, be unnaturally set back into the middle ages? Can the great industry be sacrificed to the small business, as the guild enthusiasists would have it? No; it is simply impossible. The present class state, the servant of capitalism, that has never yet had the power in the simple question of the protection of the laborer to tear itself loose from the ruling class—this state is designated by the dreamers as a "social kingdom and empire"! Society cannot be forced back into strange, early, historical forms of production and the new form leads irresistibly to ever greater concentration of the means of production, to ever greater exploitation of its