It is plain that the capitalist will find it advantageous to make the workers work as long as possible and to pay them as little as possible; on the other hand, the workers will find it advantageous to work for the minimum hours and for the maximum wages. Obviously, therefore, since the time when the working class first began to exist, there must have been a struggle for higher wages and shorter hours.
This struggle has never been interrupted, and has never been stilled. It has not, however, been restricted to a struggle for a trifling advance in wages. Wherever the capitalist system has developed, the toiling masses have become convinced that they must make an end of capitalism itself. The workers began to consider how this detested system could be replaced by a just and comradely system based upon work. Such was the origin of the communist movement of the working class.
In their struggle, the workers have experienced numerous defeats. But the capitalist system bears within its womb the final victory of the proletariat. Why? For this reason, because the development of capitalism entails the proletarianisation of the broad masses of the people. The victory of large-scale capital effects the ruin of independent artisans, small traders, and peasants; it swells the ranks of the wage workers. At