their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."
This passage which describes one process, clearly indicates that Marx distinguished three moments of that process which he evidently considered of importance: (1) The technical, and, so to say, purely material side of the process, the concentration and centralization of capital, which furnishes the technical and material (in the more limited sense of the word) basis of the future society; (2) The effect of the technical and material side of the process on the members of the society, particularly the working class, which creates the active force ready and able to make the change from the present system to the future; and (3) The resulting conflict of the technical and material side of the process and the needs of society in general and of the working classes in particular, which necessitates the change.
The first moment was considered by us at length in the preceding chapters, the third moment was already touched upon by us in a preceding chapter, and will be treated at length in the succeeding one; the second moment will be considered here.
Does the mass of "misery, oppression, slavery, degradation and exploitation" grow? The Revisionists say: No;
