tion was to comprise not only the association of the workers in each factory, but also the union of all these coöperative associations into one great federation: in short, an organization of such a character that, as Marx very correctly states in the Civil War, it must have ultimately ended in communism, that is, in the very opposite of the Proudhonistic theory. For this reason, the Commune was the grave of the Proudhonist School of Socialism. This school no longer exists among the French workers; and among the Possibilists[1] no less than among the Marxists, there now rules undisputedly the Marxian theory. To-day Proudhonists are found only among the "radical" bourgeoisie.
The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, held together by the rigid discipline essential to it, they started from the conception that a comparatively small number of resolute, well organized men would be able not only to grasp the helm of State at
- ↑ The "Possibilists" were opportunists, who believed in working only for what they considered as "possible" or "practicable;" the "Marxists" are the great French Labor Party (Parti Ouvrier Français), a thoroughly socialist revolutionary organization. The acceptance of the Marxist theory by the Possibilists can refer only to the goal—the Socialist Commonwealth. Incorrigible arrivistes, they hastened into the camp of the Ministerialists when Millerand accepted a portfolio in the Waldeck-Rousseau-Galliffet cabinet.—Note to the American Edition.
while the former are not (except by the census-taker when this particular class of footwear is turned out in custom shoe-making establishments of some importance). Marx and Engels, however, never failed to put back on its feet what the "vulgar bourgeois" had turned upon its head. They restored in their works the correct sense of the expression, according to its derivation; and by the word "manufacture" is here meant the product of the large workshop in which the work is done by hand, as of old, but the modern characteristic of which is the division of labor. Let us also observe here that although the division of labor is in this case a mere administrative device, economic results are obtained from it that are similar to those which flow from the division of labor necessitated by the use of machinery: namely, greater efficiency of the worker in the particular branch of work especially assigned to him; increase of the intensity of his toil; decrease, however, of his general skill, and, consequently, "cheaper labor."—Note to the American Edition.
