ore by force the vanished
status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass
scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual
competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies,
this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of
the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its
own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in
motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this
stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies,
but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute
monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty
bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated
in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a
victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry the proletariat not only
increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses,
its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various
interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the
proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as
machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly
everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing
competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial
crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The
unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,
makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions
between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and
more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon
the workers begin to form combinations (Trades Unions) against
the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of
wages; they found permanent associations in order to make
provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and
there the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time.
The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate
result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This
union is helped on by the improved means of communication that
are created by modern industry and that place the workers of
different localities in contact with one another. It was just
this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local
struggles, all of the same character, into one nati