In order for man, who can live only on condition that he works, to be
able to perform any sort of work, he must have at his disposition the
instruments and the subject of labor. Now, these tools and this
material, in one word, the means of labor, are, more and more,
becoming the property of the capitalists. Those who are despoiled of
the means of utilizing in work their own labor-power (or physical
capacity for work) are, henceforth, compelled, being unable to live
otherwise, to sell the use of that power to the capitalists who hold
in their possession the things indispensable for labor. Through their
possession of the things indispensable for the functioning of
labor-power, the capitalists are, in fact, masters of all who cannot
utilize their own power themselves, nor live without utilizing it.
From this economic dependence flows the existence of distinct classes,
distinct in spite of the civil and political equality of their
members; and, as the capitalist regime expropriates the Middle Class
more and more, it tends to accentuate the division of society into two
principal classes: on the one hand, those who control the means of
labor; on the other, those for whom the actual use of those means is
the sole possibility of life.
I will ask you to note that I speak of classes and not of orders or
estates, because these last expressions imply a legal demarcation
between the categories of persons which they indicate; while the word
_class_ simply denotes, according to Littre,[2] the "grades
established among men by the diversity and inequality of their
circumstances." This is the reason that some among us refuse to make
use of the expression "Fourth Estate." There are no longer any
Estates, it is true, but it is not the less true that there still are
classes. As no one among us any longer dares to approve of their
existence, to deny it is the only way to avoid combatting it. And so
it is this denial that is resorted to by those adversaries of
socialism whose only weapons are falsehood and hypocrisy. Socialists
are not the cause of the existence of classes because they recognize
their existence. They limit themselves to establishing that which has
been, that which is and that which is destined to be: the origin of
classes, their present persistence and their approaching
disappearance.
* * * * *
As soon as, thanks to the development of the faculties of man and to
his industrial discoveries, the productivity of labor became great
enough for an individual to be able to produce more than was
indispensable for his maintenance, the division of society into two
great classes, the exploiters and the exploited, was effected. And
this division had its justification, so long as production was not
sufficient to render comfort for all a possibility. But, thanks to
machinery and to scientific appliances which facilitate labor, while
vastly multiplying the supply of articles of consumption, the
exhausting labor of the masses and the monopolization of comfort by a
minority can henceforth give place, must henceforth give place, and
will give place in a future which no longer seems distant, to the
universalization of labor and its inevitable consequence, the
universalization of comfort and of leisure, that is to say, to social
conditions under which there will be no classes, because their
existence will (as now) serve no useful end as it has done in the
past. We will soon see that our present ruling class, far from being
useful, is already becoming baneful.
To-day, if the existence of distinct classes has, apparently, lost all
legal sanction, it is just as real a fact as ever. To deny it, one
must have--pardon me the expression, but I can find no other defining
as accurately this state of mind--the desire to play the fool, or the
interest to do so. It is impossible to deny seriously that a part of
the population is, in fact, through the form of the economic
relations, through their material self-interest, through their need of
food, placed in a position of dependence upon another portion of the
population, and that there is an antagonism between those who must
struggle to exist by working and those who can bargain out to them the
means of labor.[3]
By proclaiming the existence of classes and their antagonism, by
divulging that antagonism, which is not their work, on the political
rostrum, socialists are not creating factitious distinctions, they are
not resuscitating and do not dream of resuscitating any of the social
forms so fortunately and so energetically annihilated by the French
Revolution, they are only adapting themselves to the situation as it
presents itself to them now.
In fact, modern industry is forcing the workers more and more every
day to comprehend the necessity of association or combination in their
disputes with the possessors of the means of labor, and thus the
interests to be defended have to the workers less and less the false
aspect of individual interests; they appear to them in their naked
reality as class interests. Born of strikes, of coalitions of every
kind imposed upon them by the customs and conditions of life in a
capitalist society, their class activity soon takes an a political
character. To this then are due the working-class agitations resulting
in the recognition of political equality and the establishment of
universal suffrage. In possession of political rights, the workingmen
are obviously led to make use of these rights in behalf of their own
interests. Inevitably, therefore, the political struggle is becoming
more and more a class struggle which cannot end until the political
power, in the hands of the workingmen, shall at last place the State
at the service of the interests of all the exploited, and thus enable
the latter to proceed to the economic reforms which will lead to the
disappearance of classes as a direct consequence.
Therefore, the Class Struggle is not an invention of the socialists,
but the very substance of the facts and acts of history in the making
that are daily taking place under their eyes.