Workmen's advocate., 1890-07-05


 past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, winch cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
 ne communist revolution is the most radlcal rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that it's develop ment involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
 But let us have done with the bour. geOis objections to Communism.
 We have seen above that the first step m the revolution by the working class Is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class; to win the battle of democracy.
 The proletarlat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to central. ize all instruments of production in the hands Of the State, i c., of the prole. tarlat organized as the ruling class: and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
 Of course, in the beginning this can not be effected except by means of de- spotlcs lnroads on the rights of property ana on the conditions of bourgeois pro auction; by means of measures, there. fore, which appear economically insutii- clent and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip them. selves, necessltate further inroads upon the old social order and are unavoidable as means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
 These measures will of course be diff terent in different countries.
 Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable.
 l. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
 ,. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax
 8. Abolition of all right of inherit ance.
 4. Confscation of the property of all emlgrantS and rebels.
 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
 6. Generalization of the means of com. munication and transport in the hands of the State.
 Extension of factories and instru ments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvements of the soil generally in accordance with con- mon plan.
 s. Equal liability of all to labor. Estab llshment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
 5. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual abo lition of the distinction between town and country, by more equable dstri- button of the population over the coun- try.
 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of chldren's factory labor in it's present form. Com- bination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.
 When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character Political power, properly so called is merely the organ ized power of one class for expressing another. If the proletariat during it's contest with the bourgeosie is com pelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as class, if by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished it's own supremacy as class.
 In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the con dition for the free development of all.
 (7O be continued neat 1reek.)