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Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a

social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the

economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern

bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange

and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic

means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is

no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he

has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history

of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of

modern productive forces against modern conditions of production,

against the property relations that are the conditions for the

existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to

mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put

on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the

entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only

of the existing products, but also of the previously created

productive forces, are periodically destroyed.