As soon as this process of transformation has
sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom,
as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their
means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist
mode of production stands on its own feet, then the
further socialization of labor and further transformation
of the land and other means of production into so-
cially exploited and, therefore, common means of production,
as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors,
takes a new form. That which is now to be
expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself,
but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This
expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent
laws of capitalistic production itself, by the
centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills
many, and in hand with this centralization, or this
expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on
an ever extending scale, the co-operative form of the
labor-process, the conscious technical application of
science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the
transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments
of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all
means of production by their use as the means of production
of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement
of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with
this, the international character of the capitalistic regime.
Along with the constantly diminishing number of the
magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all
advantages of this process of transformation, grows the
mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation;
but with this, too, grows the revolt of the working-
class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined,
united, organized by the very mechanism of the
process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of
capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production,
which has sprung up and flourished along with, and
under it. Centralization of the means of production and
socialization of labor at last reach a point where they
become incompatible with their capitalist integument.
This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist
private property sounds. The expropriators are
expropriated,[8]
[8] Vol. i pp. 788, 789.
That is all. Hardly another word from beginning
to end is allowed to relieve the gloom, and in this
relentless pressure upon the mind of the reader lies
a great part of the power which this book has
acquired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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