and his
implements was not easy to accomplish; but in proportion as these simple
implements were developed into the aggregated mechanisms of the factory,
each of which aggregates was used in common by hundreds and even by
thousands of labourers, the link between the implement and the user was
broken by an automatic process; for a single organised mechanism used by
a thousand men could not, in the nature of things, be owned by each one
of the thousand individually, and collective ownership by all of them
was an idea as yet unborn. Under these circumstances, with the growth of
modern machinery, the ownership of the implements of production passed,
by what Marx looked upon as a kind of historical fatality, into the
hands of a class whose activities were purely acquisitive, and had no
true connection with the process of production at all; and this class,
he said, constitutes the capitalists of the modern world.

The results of this process have, according to him, been as follows:
Society has become divided into two contrasted groups--an enormous
group, and a small one. The enormous group--the great body of every
nation--the people--the labouring mass--the one true producing
power--has been left without any implements by means of which its labour
can exert itself, and these implements have been monopolised by the
small group alone. The people at large, in fact, have become like the
employes of a single mill-owner, who have no choice but to work within
the walls of that mill or starve; and the possessing class at large has
become like the owner of such a single mill, who, holding the keys of
life and death in his hands, is able to impose on the mill-workers
almost any terms he pleases as the price of admission to his premises
and to the privilege of using his machinery; and the price which such an
owner, so situated, will exact (such was the contention of Marx)
inevitably must come, and historically has come, to this--namely, the
entire amount of goods which the labouring class produces, except such a
minimum as will just enable its members to keep themselves in working
order, and to reproduce their kind. Thus all capital, as at present
owned, all profits, and all interest on capital, are neither more nor
less than thefts from the labouring class of commodities which are
produced by the labouring class alone.

The argument of Marx is not, however, finished yet. There remains a
third part of it which we still have to consider