88페이지 중 34페이지

It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an

existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help

letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him,

instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under

this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer

compatible with society.

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of

the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of

capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour

rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The

advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the

bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to

competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to

association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts

from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie

produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie,

therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its

fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.