International Politics, the Civil War in Spain, the "Cold War, Fascism, Capitalism, Etc." (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798349448805)

Here to every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the capitalist class is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as a overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its within its slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink inti such impoverish state of existence, that it must feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this parasitic ruling capitalist class, in other words, its existence is not compatible with modern-day society."-The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1848 What was true 176 years ago is true today in modern day capitalist society. The gross enrichment of the 1% ruling corporate capitalist billionaire class has created a gross impoverishment of society. The richer it becomes on one end the greater impoverishment it becomes on the other end.