eir enemies, the
remnants of absolute monarchy, and land owners, the non-industrial
bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement
is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so
obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases
in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength
grows and it feels that strength more. The various interests and
conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and
more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions
of labor, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level.
The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting
commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating.
The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,
makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between
individual workman and individual bourgeois take more and more the
character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers
begin to form combinations (Trades' Unions) against the bourgeois; they
club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found
permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these
occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real
fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result but in the ever
improved means of communication that are created in modern industry and
that place the workers of different localities in contact with one
another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the
numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national
struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political
struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the middle
ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern
proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organization of the proletarians into a class and consequently
into a political party, is continually being upset again by the
competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up
again; stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition
of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the
divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill in