the desperate efforts of Poland, Italy, and Hungary, the starvation of Ireland into submission—these were the chief events in which the European class struggle between bourgeoisie and working class was summed up, and from which we proved that every revolutionary uprising, however remote from the class struggle its object might appear, must of necessity fail until the revolutionary working class will have conquered, that every social reform must remain a Utopia until the proletarian revolution and the feudalistic counter-revolution will have been pitted against each other in a world-wide war. In our presentation, as in reality, Belgium and Switzerland were tragicomic caricaturish genre pictures in the great historic tableau, the one the model State of the bourgeois monarchy, the other the model State of the bourgeois republic; both of them States that flatter themselves to be just as free from the class struggle as from the European revolution.[1]
But now, after our readers have seen the class struggle of the year 1848 develop into colossal political proportions, it is time to examine more closely the economic conditions themselves upon which is founded on the existence of the capitalist class and its class rule, as well as the slavery of the workers.
We shall present in three great divisions:
I. The relation of wage-labor to capital, the slavery of the worker, the sway of the capitalist.
II. The inevitable ruin of the middle classes and the so-called commons[2] under the present system.
- ↑ It must be remembered that this was written over fifty years ago. To-day, the class struggle in Switzerland, and especially in Belgium, has reached that degree of development where it compels recognition from even the most superficial observers of political and industrial life. — Translator.
- ↑ Peculiar to Europe, and originating in the rank of the freeman or burgher of feudal times; citoyen, common, and Bürger are equivalent terms. — Translator.
