andpoint; in the
worst cases, bitter want, reaching even homelessness and death by
starvation. The average is much nearer the worst case than the best. And
this series does not fall into fixed classes, so that one can say, this
fraction of the working-class is well off, has always been so, and
remains so. If that is the case here and there, if single branches of
work have in general an advantage over others, yet the condition of the
workers in each branch is subject to such great fluctuations that a
single working-man may be so placed as to pass through the whole range
from comparative comfort to the extremest need, even to death by
starvation, while almost every English working-man can tell a tale of
marked changes of fortune. Let us examine the causes of this somewhat
more closely.

COMPETITION.

We have seen in the introduction how competition created the proletariat
at the very beginning of the industrial movement, by increasing the wages
of weavers in consequence of the increased demand for woven goods, so
inducing the weaving peasants to abandon their farms and earn more money
by devoting themselves to their looms. We have seen how it crowded out
the small farmers by means of the large farm system, reduced them to the
rank of proletarians, and attracted them in part into the towns; how it
further ruined the small bourgeoisie in great measure and reduced its
members also to the ranks of the proletariat; how it centralised capital
in the hands of the few, and population in the great towns. Such are the
various ways and means by which competition, as it reached its full
manifestation and free development in modern industry, created and
extended the proletariat. We shall now have to observe its influence on
the working-class already created. And here we must begin by tracing the
results of competition of single workers with one another.

Competition is the completest expression of the battle of all against all
which rules in modern civil society. This battle, a battle for life, for
existence, for everything, in case of need a battle of life and death, is
fought not between the different classes of society only, but also
between the individual members of these classes. Each is in the way of
the other, and each seeks to crowd out all who are in his way, and to put
himself in their place. The workers are in constant competition among
themselves as the members of the bourgeoisie among themselves. The