6. The Conflict Between the Elevating and Degrading Tendencies Which Affect the Proletariat.
The elevation of the working-class is a necessary and inevitable process. But it is neither peaceful nor regular. The tendency of the capitalist system is, as we have shown in Chapter II. to degrade the proletariat ever more and more. The moral regeneration of the working-class is possible only in opposition to this tendency and its representatives, the capitalists. It cannot come about except through the new tendency developed in the working-class by the modern conditions of labor. But the two tendencies, the one upward and the other downward, vary constantly in different places and at different periods. They depend on the condition of the market, the organization of industry, the development of machinery, the insight of the capitalists and workers, etc., etc. All of these conditions vary from year to year in all the numerous branches of industry.
But fortunately for human development there comes a time in the history of every section of the proletariat when the elevating tendencies gain the upper hand. And when they have once wakened full class-consciousness in any group of workers, the consciousness of solidarity with all the members of the working-class, the consciousness of the strength that is born of union; as soon as any group has recognized that it is essential to society and that it dare hope for better things in the future,—then it is well nigh impossible to shove that group back into the degenerate mass of beings whose opposition to the
