The material conditions needed for the abolition of this antagonism have matured in the lap of the capitalistic system itself by the time it has reached that stage of development when the material productive forces come into conflict with the old conditions of production, and these conditions of production have become obstacles in the way of production and lead to social revolution.
The breakdown of the capitalistic system of production leading to social revolution will be brought about by the inherent contradictions of the capitalistic system of production itself.
The laws which govern the capitalistic form of production will ultimately lead to the extinction of the middle strata of society as independent, property-owning, classes, and divide society into two classes: the very small minority owning all the wealth of society, and the large mass of the people, the working class, who own nothing, not even their own bodies if they want to keep from starvation. At the same time the development of machinery will continue to throw more and more workingmen out of employment and make the share of those workingmen who are employed in the product produced by them grow continually smaller. The productive forces of society will not only become fettered, so that they will largely have to remain idle, but even that portion which will not remain in enforced idleness will be able to produce only with tremendous accompanying waste and convulsive interruptions, until finally, a point will be reached when, by the very conditions of capitalistic production, because of the large portion of the working class out of employment and the small share of the goods produced by them received by the employed workingmen in return for their labor, there will accumulate such an enormous mass of goods which the capitalists will be unable to dispose of, that is to say find a market for, that production will have to be indefinitely suspended, unless a new basis of production be found.
Meanwhile the discontent of the working class has been
