omed;
capitalist appropriation of labor's product forces the bulk of
mankind into wage slavery, throws society into the convulsions of
the class struggle, and momentarily threatens to engulf humanity in
chaos and disaster.

Since the advent of civilization human society has been divided
into classes. Each new form of society has come into being with a
definite purpose to fulfill in the progress of the human race. Each
has been born, has grown, developed, prospered, become old,
outworn, and, has finally been overthrown. Each society has
developed within itself the germs of its own destruction as well
as the germs which went to make up the society of the future.

The capitalist system rose during the seventeenth, eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries by the overthrow of feudalism. Its great and
all-important mission in the development of man was to improve,
develop, and concentrate the means of production and distribution,
thus creating a system of co-operative production. This work was
completed in advanced capitalist countries about the beginning of
the 20th century. That moment capitalism had fulfilled its historic
mission, and from that moment the capitalist class became a class
of parasites.

In the course of human progress mankind has passed (through class
rule, private property, and individualism in production and
exchange) from the enforced and inevitable want, misery, poverty,
and ignorance of savagery and barbarism to the affluence and high
productive capacity of civilization. For all practical purposes,
co-operative production has now superseded individual production.

Capitalism no longer promotes the greatest good of the greatest
number, It no longer spells progress, but reaction. Private
production carries with it private ownership of the products.
Production is carried on, not to supply the needs of humanity, but
for the profit of the individual owner, the company, or the trust.
The worker, not receiving the full product of his labor, can not
buy back all he produces. The capitalist wastes part in riotous
living; the rest must find a foreign market. By the opening of the
twentieth century the capitalist world--England, America, Germany,
France, Japan, China, etc.--was producing at a mad rate for the
world market. A capitali