If, since the productiveness of labor has made it possible, one part of society has, under various economic forms, been forced to add to the labor-time required for its own support, a certain amount of surplus-labor-time, for which it has received no equivalent and the benefit of which has been enjoyed by another part of society, it is likewise true that so long as the aim of production was to enable the privileged class to appropriate the means of consumption and enjoyment, the surplus-labor of the immediate producers reached its limit with the full satisfaction of those needs and desires, as extensive as they might be, to gratify which was the object of this appropriation. But as soon as it becomes a question of obtaining, instead of a certain mass of products, the production at any cost of surplus-value, the incessant multiplication of money, the possessor of the means of production strives relentlessly to make those means of production absorb the greatest possible quantity of surplus-labor. If this insatiable thirst for and headlong pursuit of surplus-value has been for the laborers and their families the cause of an exploitation of their labor-power, more burdensome than any form of exploitation previously known, it must be recognized that it has contributed to the development of the means of production. It is with capital as with slavery. Both, sources of sufferings for their victims, they have been, on the whole, sources of progress for humanity. The history of human progress is far from being an idyl. Our too forgetful and too proud civilization is the result of a long series of torments and miseries endured by the nameless and forgotten masses. Therefore capital has had its utility, and the era of capitalist production constitutes a great step forward in the evolution of the productive powers. Beginning with the enlargement of the small guild workshop, passing through action in common, the co-operation of a large number of laborers in the enlarged workshop through the manufacturing stage, by the division of labor within the workshop, by the introduction and general adoption of the machine-tool, by the employment of steam as a motive power, capitalist production has finally developed into modern mechanical industry which has revolutionized the mode of production more radically than had any previous change. It is its continuous and radical alteration of the technical processes which distinguishes the capitalist period from all the preceding periods, and prevents it from having the relatively permanent conservative character which they had. V. What are the results of these revolutions in industrial methods, and what are their tendencies?