he proletarian
movement have become such that there is henceforth no mind capable of
embracing it in its completeness, of understanding it in its details and
grasping its real causes and exact relations. The single International,
from 1864 to 1873, necessarily disappeared after it had fulfilled its
task. The preliminary equalization of the general tendencies and of the
ideas common and indispensable to all the proletariat, and no one can
assume or will assume to re-constitute anything like it.

Two causes, notably, contributed in a high degree to this
specialization, this complexity of the proletarian movement. In many
countries the bourgeoisie felt the need of putting an end in the
interest of its own defense to some of the abuses which had arisen in
consequence of the introduction of the industrial system. Thence arose
labor legislation, or as it has been pompously called social
legislation. This same bourgeoisie in its own interest or, under the
pressure of circumstances has been obliged, in many countries to
increase the generic conditions of liberty, and notably to extend the
right of suffrage. These two circumstances have drawn the proletariat
into the circle of daily political life. They have considerably
increased its chance for action and the agility and suppleness thus
acquired permit it to struggle with the bourgeoisie in elective
assembles. And as the _processus_ of things determines the _processus_
of ideas, this practical multiform development of the proletariat is
accompanied by a gradual development of the doctrines of critical
communism, as well in the manner of understanding history or
contemporary life as in the minute description of the most infinitesimal
parts of economics: in a word, it has become a science.

Have we not there, some ask, a deviation from the simple and imperative
doctrine of the Manifesto? Others again say, have we not lost in
intensity and precision what we have gained in extension and complexity?

These questions, in my opinion, arise from an inexact conception of the
present proletarian movement and an optical illusion as to the degree of
energy and revolutionary valor of the former movements.

Whatever be the concessions that the bourgeoisie can make in the present
economic order even if it be a very great reduction in the hours of
labor, it always remains true that the necessity for exploitation upon
which the whole present social order rests imposes limits beyond which