that they are indeed combined into social groups for the production
of wares, but only as yet mechanically; they do not know what they
are working at, nor whom they are working for, because they are
combining to produce wares of which the profit of a master forms an
essential part, instead of goods for their own use: as long as they
do this, and compete with each other for leave to do it, they will
be, and will feel themselves to be, simply a part of those competing
firms I have been speaking of; they will be in fact just a part of
the machinery for the production of profit; and so long as this lasts
it will be the aim of the masters or profit-makers to decrease the
market value of this human part of the machinery; that is to say,
since they already hold in their hands the labour of dead men in the
form of capital and machinery, it is their interest, or we will say
their necessity, to pay as little as they can help for the labour of
living men which they have to buy from day to day: and since the
workmen they employ have nothing but their labour-power, they are
compelled to underbid one another for employment and wages, and so
enable the capitalist to play his game.

I have said that, as things go, the workers are a part of the
competing firms, an adjunct of capital. Nevertheless, they are only
so by compulsion; and, even without their being conscious of it, they
struggle against that compulsion and its immediate results, the
lowering of their wages, of their standard of life; and this they do,
and must do, both as a class and individually: just as the slave of
the great Roman lord, though he distinctly felt himself to be a part
of the household, yet collectively was a force in reserve for its
destruction, and individually stole from his lord whenever he could
safely do so. So, here, you see, is another form of war necessary to
the way we live now, the war of class against class, which, when it