18. The Concentration and Centralisation of Capital as Casual Factors of Communism.
Capitalism, as we have seen, digs its own grave. For it creates its own grave-diggers, the proletarians. The more it develops, the more does it multiply those who are its mortal enemies, and the more does it unite them against itself. But it does not merely breed its enemies. It likewise prepares, the ground for a new organisation of social production, for a new economic order which will be comradely and communistic. How does it do this? We shall speedily give the answer.
We have previously seen (glance at or reread §11. “Capital”) that capital is continually increasing in amount. The capitalist adds to his capital, part of the surplus value which he extracts from the working class. By such means, capital grows larger. But if capital increases in amount, this implies that production must extend. The increase in capital, the growth of the amount held by one pair of hands, is termed the accumulation or concentration of capital.
We have