progress. The burning enthusiasm and white-hot indignation had
died down in him ere he reached the stage of the Duehring controversy.
He finds that although not everything that is real is reasonable, to
use the phrase against which he has fulminated in "Feuerbach,"
nevertheless every step in human progress has been an essential step
and it is impossible to hurry things. To the proletarian he looks of
course as the next great actor in the drama of social development. But
the proletarian, while his destiny is indubitable, is still not a
being apart from existing conditions. He exists in the conditions, is
in fact part of the conditions, and, while at war with them, takes on
the color of his surroundings. The facts of life have driven him to
an unconscious rejection of old faiths and old philosophies but they
have not forced him to take up the sword against the actual realities
of modern life, to which he appears, in fact, to submit himself with a
humility which is at least provoking to the eager and enthusiastic
revolutionist.

What wonders of economic organization, what triumphs in mechanical
production have been achieved since Engels gave the last revision to
this book in 1894 we in the United States at least have cause to know.
The entire structure of production has been modified from top to
bottom, the old individual doctrine has fallen victim to its
dialectic, and concentrated industry and collective capital now rise
supreme over the ruins of that individualism which gave them birth and
to which they owe their existence. In the name of the individual the
individual is denied. The courts hand down decisions in the name of
individual liberty which have for their result the dethroning and
extermination of the individual. The conglomeration of individual
states which was considered the very foundation of the American
government, and the outward and visible sign of collective sovereignty
is already in its death throes. The dialectic of the United States is
in course of development and there comes about in consequence the
birth of the United Imperial Republic, a republic which is so only in
name, which is, in fact, as little of a republic as were those
oligarchies of the Middle Ages whose very existence defamed the name
of republic. The old things have passed away, all things have become
new.

Still there is one factor which has not really appreciably changed,
one factor which is always confronted by the same necessity,