abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labor, an
appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of
human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the
labor of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable
character of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives
merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only insofar as
the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase
accumulated labor. In Communist society, accumulated labor is but a
means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in
Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois
society capital is independent and has individuality, while the
living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the
bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so.
The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence,
and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

The version of the Marxian gospel which we have in the Manifesto is
among the first of its versions. It was published about the middle of
the last century. Within the short period which has intervened, it has
changed nearly all of the ideas of a large and rapidly growing part of
every nation about almost everything social; and before the middle of
the present century, it will revolutionize all nations as it has Russia.

Ludendorff, the greatest among the military authorities in Germany, saw
and terribly feared this, and called Europe to arms to prevent it. In
his almost frantic appeal he said:

Bolshevism is advancing now and in a gradual progress from east to
west and is crushing everything between the midland sea and the
Atlantic ocean. It was easy to foresee that the Bolshevist armies
would attack toward the middle of May and defeat the Poles, as they
have now done. The world at large must, therefore, figure with a
Bolshevist advance in Poland toward Berlin and Prague.

Poland's fall will entail the fall of Germany and Czecho-Slovakia.
Their neighbors to the north and south will follow. Fate steps
along with elementary force. Let no one believe it will come to a
stand wi