THE   OUTLOOK  OF  SOCIALISM  451

"The  economic  development  of  burgher  society,"  runs  one  of
the  paragraphs  of  this  programme,  "leads  with  necessity  to  the
decay  of  small  undertakings,  the  basis  of  which  is  the  workman's
possession  of  his  means  of  production.  It  divorces  the  workman
from  the  means  of  production,  transforming  him  into  a  non-
possessing  proletaire,  and  the  means  of  production  become  the
monopoly  of  a  relatively  small  number  of  capitalists  and
large  landed  proprietors.  Hand  in  hand  with  this  process
of  monopolisation  goes  the  crushing  down  of  the  disintegrated
small  undertakings  by  colossal  undertakings  on  a  large  scale.
For  the  proletariate  and  the  working  middle  classes — the  small
burghers  and  peasants — this  transformation  implies  a  growing
uncertainty  of  existence  and  increasing  misery,  need,  sub-
ordination, degradation,  and  exploitation.
"  Private  property  in  the  means  of  production,  which  formerly
was  a  means  of  securing  to  the  producer  the  possession  of  his
product,  has  to-day  become  the  means  of  dispropriating  the
peasants,  artisans,  and  small  traders,  and  of  placing  the  non-
workers — capitalists  and  large  landowners — in  the  possession  of
the  workers'  products.  Only  the  conversion  of  capitalist
private  property  in  the  means  of  production — land,  mines,  raw
materials,  tools,  machines,  means  of  communication — into  social
property,  and  the  conversion  of  the  production  of  commodities  into
Socialistic  production  carried  on  by  society  on  our  behalf,  can  cause
the  system  of  large  undertakings  and  the  continually  increasing
productivity  of  social  labour  to  become  for  the  hitherto  exploited
classes  a  source  of  the  highest  welfare  and  universally  harmonious
perfection,  instead  of,  as  now,  a  source  of  misery  and  oppres-
sion."

In  this  programme  there  is  obviously  no  place  or  lot  for  a
German  middle  class,  whether  of  industry,  trade,  or  agriculture.
