Socialists at WorkMacmillan, 1908 - 374 pages |
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action affiliated agitation anarchists battle Bebel Belgian Belgium bourgeois British campaign capitalism capitalist carried congress coöperatives debate declared delegates doctrines economic election electoral Émile Vandervelde England Europe existence Fabian Fabian Society factory Federation fight forced France French German Guesde H. M. Hyndman Hardie ideal ideas important industrial influence interests International Italian Italy Jaurès Jules Guesde Labor Party land leaders legislation Liberals Liebknecht London Marx Marxian masses ment methods million misery modern municipal nearly organization ownership Paris parliament parliamentary peasant political parties present principles proletariat propaganda question radicals realize Reichstag representatives result revolt revolutionary Russia says seemed Social Democratic Federation Social Democratic Party social reform socialist movement socialist party society strike struggle tactics thought tion to-day Tom Mann trade unions unionists universal suffrage various views vote Wilhelm Liebknecht women workers working-class workmen
Popular passages
Page 158 - But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number, — it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.
Page 156 - The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has. created more massive and more colossal productive forces, than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive...
Page 254 - London — has become hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and see signs of, where I know it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly.
Page 158 - At first the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves...
Page 158 - The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades...
Page 159 - Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (trades unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots. Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.
Page 156 - As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every ten years. Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence,...
Page 255 - I KNOW not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have loved it, has always been to me but a divine plaything. I have never attached any great value to poetical fame ; and I trouble myself very little whether people praise my verses or blame them. But lay on my coffin a sword ; for I was a brave soldier in the- Liberation War of humanity.
Page 156 - ... production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into a headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again.
Page 295 - This organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again ; stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours