Along with the constantly diminishing number of the
magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all
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,[8]
[8] Vol. i pp. 788, 789.
That is all. Hardly another word from beginning
to end is allowed to relieve the gloom, and in this
relentless pressure upon the mind of the reader lies
a great part of the power which this book has
acquired.
Two questions are raised by Marx's work: First,
Are his laws of historical development true? Second,
Is Socialism desirable? The second of these questions
is quite independent of the first.
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