talism existed the mass of
humanity would be sunk in poverty. They called attention to the long
evolutionary processes that had been necessary to change the entire
world from a state of feudalism into a state of capitalism; and how it
was not due to man's will-power that the great industrial revolution
occurred, but to the growth of machines, of steam, and of electrical
power; and that it was these that have made the modern world, with its
intense and terrible contrasts of riches and of poverty. They also
pointed out that little individual owners of property were giving way to
joint-stock companies, and that these would in turn give way to even
greater aggregations of capital. An economic law was driving the big
capitalists to eat up the little capitalists. It was forcing them to
take from the workers their hand tools and to drive them out of their
home workshops; it was forcing them also to take from the small property
owners their little properties and to appropriate the wealth of the
world into their own hands. As a result of this economic process,
"private property," they said, "is already done away with for
nine-tenths of the population."[5] But they also pointed out that
capitalism had within itself the seeds of its own dissolution, that it
was creating a new class, made up of the overwhelming majority, that was
destined in time to overthrow capitalism. "What the bourgeoisie
therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers."[6] In the
interest of society the nine-tenths would force the one-tenth to yield
up its private property, that is to say, its "power to subjugate the
labor of others."[7]

Taking their stand on this careful analysis of historic progress and of
economic evolution, they viewed with contempt the older fighting methods
of the revolutionists, and turned their vials of satire and wrath upon
Herwegh, Willich, Schapper, Kinkel, Ledru-Rollin, Bakounin, and all
kinds and species of revolution-makers. They deplored incendiarism,
machine destruction, and all the purely retaliative acts of the
laborers. They even ridiculed the general strike.[AI] And, while for
thirty years they assailed anarchists, terrorists, and
direct-actionists, they never lost an opportunity to impress upon the
workers of Europe the only possible method of effectually combating
capitalism. There must first be unity--world-wide, international
unity--among all the forces of labor. And, secondly, all the energies of
a united la