"The economic development of middle-class society leads by a necessity of nature to the extinction of that economic order, production on a small scale, which rests upon the private ownership of the workman in his means of production. It separates the workman from his means of production, and changes him into a possessionless proletarian; while the instruments of production become the monopoly of a small number of capitalists and landowners, etc." As you see, this programme proceeds from the fundamental thought that economic development completes itself in a specific way; hence follow all the other matters with which the programme deals. This special Marxian thought, that an economic evolution is involved, has become the central point of the Erfurt programme. It shows, further, how out of the economic development a conflict emerges in the form of class strife; and then it concludes that only a change to communal ownership of the means of production can quiet this conflict. The party for which the platform was created takes hold of the communistic thought of the Erfurt programme in this sense, that the duty of a political party can only be to bring to the consciousness of the workman the existing economic revolution. These are the words: "To bring this warfare of the working classes to consciousness and unity, to show the natural and necessary goal--that is the duty of the Social-Democratic Party." This is the point that is especially important for us--the German agitation becomes completely saturated, rapidly and uninterruptedly, with Marxian ideas, and thus this spirit spreads gradually into other lands.