sion of peace previous to decisive victory, would be treason
against that reality for the sake of which the personal element is
excluded from the conflict.

With endless varieties otherwise, the social struggles since Marx have
developed themselves in the above form. Since it is recognized that the
situation of laborers is determined by the objective organization and
formulas of the productive system, independent of the will and power of
individual persons, the personal embitterment incident to the struggle
in general and to local conflicts exemplifying the general conflict
necessarily diminishes. The entrepreneur is no longer, as such, a
blood-sucker and damnable egotist; the laborer is no longer universally
assumed to act from sinful greed; both parties begin, at least, to
abandon the program of charging the other with demands and tactics
inspired by personal malevolence. This literalizing of the conflict has
come about in Germany rather along the lines of theory; in England,
through the operation of the trade unions, in the course of which the
individually personal element of the antagonism has been overcome. In
Germany this was effected largely through the more abstract
generalization of the historical and class movement. In England it came
about through the severe superindividual unity in the actions of the
unions and of the combinations of employers. The intensity of the
struggle, however, has not on that account diminished. On the contrary,
it has become much more conscious of its purpose, more concentrated, and
at the same time more aggressive, through the consciousness of the
individual that he is struggling not merely, and often not at all, for
himself but rather for a vast superpersonal end.

A most interesting symptom of this correlation was presented by the
boycotting of the Berlin breweries by the labor body in the year 1894.
This was one of the most intense local struggles of the last decade. It
was carried on by both sides with extraordinary energy, yet without any
personal offensiveness on either side toward the other, although the
stimulus was close at hand. Indeed, two of the party leaders, in the
midst of the struggle, published their opinions about it in the same
journal. They agreed in their formulation of the objective facts, and
disagreed in a partisan spirit only in the practical conclusions drawn
from the facts. Inasmuch as the struggle eliminated everything
irrelevantly personal, and thereby