which are mainly concerned with distribution, for it is their aim to free the workers from the grip of middlemen and traders. Last of all we have the political parties of the working class (socialist, social-democrat, and communist) whose program it is to guide the working class in its struggle for political power. The fiercer the struggle between the two classes became, the more essential was it that all sections of the working-class movement should concentrate upon a single aim — the overthrow of the bourgeois State. Those leaders of the working-class movement who have most perfectly realised the situation have always insisted upon the necessity for a close collaboration between all working-class organisations. They pointed out, for example, the essential need for unity of action between the trade unions and the political parties of the proletariat; and they declared that the trade unions could not remain “neutral” (that is to say, indifferent in political matters). The unions, they said, must march shoulder to shoulder with the political parties of the working class.
Quite recently, the workers’ movement has assumed yet newer forms. The most important of these is the constitution of councils of workers’ delegates (soviets). We shall have to speak of these again and again in the course of the book.
Thus from our study of the development of the capitalist system we can confidently deduce the following conclusions: THE NUMBER OF THE CAPITALISTS GROWS SMALLER, BUT THESE FEW CAPITALISTS GROW RICHER AND STRONGER; THE NUMBER OF THE WORKERS CONTINUALLY INCREASES, AND WORKING-CLASS SOLIDARITY LIKEWISE INCREASES, THOUGH NOT TO THE SAME EXTENT; THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE WORKERS AND THE CAPITALISTS GROWS EVER GREATER. INEVITABLY, THEREFORE, THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM LEADS TO A CLASH BETWEEN THE TWO CLASSES, THAT IS, IT LEADS TO THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION.