and therefore the mode of production, have determined
and will determine human customs, ethics, and institutions--social,
economic, political, juridical, etc.

"As soon as one part of society has monopolized the means of
production, the other part, upon whom the burden of labor falls, is
obliged to add to the labor-time necessary for its own support, a
certain surplus-labor-time, for which it receives no
equivalent,--time that is devoted to supporting and enriching the
possessors of the means of production. As an extractor of unpaid
labor, which, by means of the increasing surplus-value whose source
it is, accumulates every day, more and more, in the hands of the
proprietary class the instruments of its dominion, the capitalist
regime surpasses in power all the antecedent regimes founded on
compulsory labor.

"But to-day, the economic conditions begotten by this regime,
trammelled in their natural evolution by this very regime,
inexorably tend to break the capitalist mould which can no longer
contain them, and these destroying principles are the elements of
the new society.

"The historic mission of the class at present exploited, the
proletariat, which is being organized and disciplined by the very
mechanism of capitalist production, is to complete the work of
destruction begun by the development of social antagonisms. It
must, first of all, definitively wrest from its class adversaries
the political power--the command of the force devoted by them to
preserving intact their economic monopolies and privileges.

"Once in control of the political power, it will be able, by
proceeding to the socialization of the means of production through
the expropriation of the usurpers of the fruits of others' toil, to
suppress the present contradiction between collective production
and private capitalist appropriation, and to realize the
universalization of labor, and the abolition of classes."[33]

If the "educated and professional" socialists cannot break the chain of
this logic, they find themselves, as Nora did, face to face with the
necessity of making a choice. Behind them is the old doll's house life
with its manifold conventions--once useful, but through economic
evolution outgrown and thus become false and deadly--a life, easy
enough mayhap, but wholly devoid of ide