d for them to perceive that the proletariat whom it pleases them
to despise as the great army of the "unwashed" are in truth fighting
their battles for them, and receiving instead of gratitude, contempt,
gibes and sneers. Socialism does occasionally receive a recruit from the
very highest stratum of society, but I tell you it is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a member of the
Middle Class to become a scientific socialist.

I have said the Class Struggle is a compass to steer by in the present
struggle for the emancipation of the working class. If we steer by this
compass, we will resolutely reject all overtures from political parties
representing the interests of other classes, even when such parties in
their platform endorse some of the immediate demands of the socialists;
we will "fear the Greeks bringing gifts;" we will not be seduced for a
moment by the idea of fusion with any so-called Socialist party which is
not avowedly based on the Class Struggle; especially as individuals will
we avoid giving our votes or our support to any Middle Class party which
we may at times fancy to be "moving in the right direction." The history
of the class conflicts of the past shows that whenever the proletarians
have joined forces with the Middle Class or any section of it, the
proletarians have had to bear the heat and burden of the day and when
the victory has been won their allies have robbed them of its fruits.

You, yourselves, then, Workingmen, must fight this battle! To win, it is
true, you will need the help of members of the other classes. But this
help the economic evolution is constantly bringing you. It is a law of
the economic evolution that with the progress of industrialism the ratio
of the returns of capital to the capital invested constantly diminishes,
(though the aggregate volume of those returns increases). You see this
in the constant lowering of the rate of interest. Now, as their incomes
decrease, the small capitalists and the middle class, who form the vast
majority of the possessing class, become unable to continue to support
the members of the liberal professions, the priests, preachers, lawyers,
editors, lecturers, etc., whose chief function heretofore has been to
fool the working class into supporting or at least submitting to the
present system. Now, when the income of these unproductive laborers, an
income drawn from the class hostile to the proletariat, shall sensi