the reason of all this, and what it rests on, by trying to answer the
question, Why have the profit-makers got all this power, or at least
why are they able to keep it?

That takes us to the third form of war commercial: the last, and,
the one which all the rest is founded on. We have spoken first of
the war of rival nations; next of that of rival firms: we have now
to speak of rival men. As nations under the present system are
driven to compete with one another for the markets of the world, and
as firms or the captains of industry have to scramble for their share
of the profits of the markets, so also have the workers to compete
with each other--for livelihood; and it is this constant competition
or war amongst them which enables the profit-grinders to make their
profits, and by means of the wealth so acquired to take all the
executive power of the country into their hands. But here is the
difference between the position of the workers and the profit-makers:
to the latter, the profit-grinders, war is necessary; you cannot have
profit-making without competition, individual, corporate, and
national; but you may work for a livelihood without competing; you
may combine instead of competing.

I have said war was the life-breath of the profit-makers; in like
manner, combination is the life of the workers. The working-classes
or proletariat cannot even exist as a class without combination of
some sort. The necessity which forced the profit-grinders to collect
their men first into workshops working by the division of labour, and
next into great factories worked by machinery, and so gradually to
draw them into the great towns and centres of civilization, gave
birth to a distinct working-class or proletariat: and this it was
which gave them their MECHANICAL existence, so to say. But note,