Every social system changes ceaselessly, and, ultimately, having fulfilled its mission, passes away.
Capitalism is the connecting link between feudalism and Socialism.
The industrial forces are now making for Socialism, preparing the way for it, and sooner or later it is sure to come.
On the one hand the capitalist class are combining their resources, centralizing their capital, co-operating instead of competing, organizing industry, and eliminating competition. This is the new and better way. It is good as far as it goes. It is the limited application of the economic principles of Socialism.
On the other hand, the working class are organizing. They are beginning to spell solidarity and to pronounce Socialism. They are yearning for emancipation from the galling yoke of wage-slavery, and with all the power of their minds, all the strength of their bodies and all the passion of their souls they are crusading against the ignorance of their fellow-workers and the prejudice of the people.
Steadily the number of class-conscious toilers is increasing, and higher and higher rises the tide that is to sweep away the barriers to progress and civilization.
Let others talk about the tariff and finance—the enlightened workers demand the ownership of the tools of industry and they are building up the Socialist party as a means of getting them.
_The working class alone made the tools; the working class alone can use them, and the working class must, therefore, own them._
This is the revolutionary demand of the Socialist movement. The propaganda is one of education and is perfectly orderly and peaceable. The workers must be taught to unite and vote together _as a class_ in support of the Socialist party, the party that represents them as a class, and when they do this the government will pass into their hands and capitalism will fall to rise no more; private ownership will give way to social ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wagesystem will disappear, and with it the ignorance and poverty, misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds; the working class will stand forth triumphant and free, and a new era will dawn in human progress and in the civilization of mankind.