In what follows I shall attempt to give some points of view for an understanding of a specific--the modern--social movement. But what do we mean by the phrase "to _understand_ a social movement"? This: to comprehend the social movement in its essential historic limitations, in its causal connection with historic facts out of which, of necessity, that is produced which we describe as a social movement. That is, to comprehend why specific social classes are formed, why they present these particular points of opposition, why especially a pushing, aggressive social class has, and must have, that particular ideal for which it reaches. We mean, above all, to see that the movement springs not out of the whim, the choice, the malevolence of individuals; that it is not made, but becomes.
And now to the modern social movement. How is it to be characterised? If we would hold fast to those elements which constitute every social movement, we must describe the modern social movement on two sides: according to its aim, and according to the class that supports the movement. The modern social movement is, from the standpoint of its aim, a socialistic agitation, because, as will be shown, it is uniformly directed to the establishment of communal ownership, at least of the means of production; that is, to a socialistic, communal order of society in place of the existing method of private ownership. It is characterised, on the other side, in accordance with the adherents of the movement, by the fact that it is a proletarian agitation, or, as we customarily say, it is a working-men's movement. The class which supports it, upon which it rests, which gives to it the initiative, is the proletariat, a class of free wage-workers.