And now to the modern social movement. How is it to be characterised? If we would hold fast to those elements which constitute every social movement, we must describe the modern social movement on two sides: according to its aim, and according to the class that supports the movement. The modern social movement is, from the standpoint of its aim, a socialistic agitation, because, as will be shown, it is uniformly directed to the establishment of communal ownership, at least of the means of production; that is, to a socialistic, communal order of society in place of the existing method of private ownership. It is characterised, on the other side, in accordance with the adherents of the movement, by the fact that it is a proletarian agitation, or, as we customarily say, it is a working-men's movement. The class which supports it, upon which it rests, which gives to it the initiative, is the proletariat, a class of free wage-workers. And now we ask the question: Is it possible to distinguish those circumstances which would make such a movement evidently a necessary historic development? I said that the social movement has, as its supporters, the modern proletariat, a class of free, lifelong wage-workers. The first condition of its existence is the rise of this class itself. Every social class is the result, the expression, of some specific form of production; the proletariat, of that form of production which we are accustomed to call capitalistic. The history of the rise of the proletariat is also the history of capitalism. This latter cannot exist, it cannot develop, without producing the proletariat. It is not now my purpose to give to you a history of capitalism. Only this much may be presented for the understanding of its nature: the capitalistic system of production involves the co-operation of two socially separated classes in the manufacture of material goods. One class is that which is in possession of the matter and means of production, as machines, tools, establishments, raw material, etc.--the capitalistic class; the other class is that of the personal factors of production, the possessors only of workman's craft--the free wage-workers. If we realise that all production rests upon the union of the material and the personal factors of production, then the capitalistic system of production distinguishes itself from others in that both the factors of production are represented through two socially separated classes which must necessarily come together by free consent, the "free wage compact," so that the processes of production may take place. The method of production thus formed has entered into history as a necessity. It arose in that moment when demand had become so strong that the earlier methods of production could not longer satisfy the enlarging conditions, in the time when new and large markets were opened. It appeared originally solely with the historic task of implanting the mercantile spirit of manufacture