st deadlock of markets brought on in 1914
the capitalist collapse popularly known as the World War. The
capitalist world can not extricate itself out of the debris.
America today is choking under the weight of her own gold and
products.

This situation has brought on the present stage of human
misery--starvation, want, cold, disease, pestilence, and war. This
state is brought about in the midst of plenty, when the earth can
be made to yield a hundredfold, when the machinery of production is
made to multiply human energy and ingenuity by the hundreds. The
present state of misery exists solely because the mode of
production rebels against the mode of exchange. Private property in
the means of life has become a social crime. The land was made by
no man; the modern machines are the result of the combined
ingenuity of the human race from time immemorial; the land can be
made to yield and the machines can be set in motion only by the
collective effort of the workers. Progress demands the collective
ownership of the land on and the tools with which to produce the
necessities of life. The owner of the means of life today partakes
of the nature of a highwayman; he stands with his gun before
society's temple; it depends upon him whether the million mass may
work, earn, eat, and live. The capitalist system of production and
exchange must be supplanted if progress is to continue.

In place of the capitalist system we must substitute a system of
social ownership of the means of production, industrially
administered by the workers, who assume control and direction as
well as operation of their industrial affairs."

25. Define "class consciousness."

Ans.: Class consciousness of the workers means that they are conscious
of the fact that they, as a class, have interests which are in direct
conflict with the interests of the capitalist class.

26. What function does the state perform in the class struggle?

Ans.: "The state is a class instrument, and is the public power of
coercion created and maintained in human societies by their division
into classes, a power which, being clothed with force, makes laws." It
is, therefore, used by the dominant class to keep the subject working
class in subjection in accordance with the interests of the ruling and
owning class. It is also used to prevent the workers fr