Page:Zelda Kahan - Karl Marx His Life And Teaching (1918).pdf/14

 The last section points out that whilst the communists fight for the attainment of immediate aims and the enforcement of the momentary interests of the workers, they nevertheless, do not lose sight of their real aim—the complete emancipation of the working class and the Manifesto ends with the historic words: "The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!"

This was written seventy years ago, and except in minor details, every word rings even more true to-day when industry and commerce have made far more gigantic strides than they had up to 1848. The development of the working class conversely has kept apace. Its extension and its increasingly conscious political organisation into a definite class party, carrying on even if only a semi-conscious struggle against the capitalist class and the capitalist system have been Marxian in essence, even though many of its leaders may have repudiated Marx with their lips. On the other hand, the comparative slowness of its progress and the mistakes it has made have undoubtedly been largely due to its ignorance of the theory of its own development in particular, and of that of society in general. To that also may be attributed the mental aberration which has led sections of the socialist parties of the world to throw in their lot in the present war with the deadly foe of the workers, the capitalist classes of the world. But Marx himself never maintained that the historical laws of society discovered by him worked smoothly and evenly to their logical conclusions. On the contrary. There are bound to be many ups and downs, and it must necessarily take a long time before the slave class of any community can completely throw off the ideology, the ethics, the modes of thought and opinions of the ruling classes which have been inculcated in it for generations. But the law works surely, if slowly, and the day must come sooner or later when the workers will at last free society from the millstone of capitalism hanging