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.He must constantly strive to better his rivals by producingmore goods at lower cost, by exploiting his workers more and more,to extract ever greater quantities of surplus value.This fierce compe-tition inevitably produces winners and losers: the stronger capitalistsflourish while the weaker ones go out of business.Thus, the capitalistclass grows smaller and richer, while the proletariat grows larger andmore wretched.This is the natural tendency of capitalism, although the process isnot smooth or continuous, but is characterised by a regular progressionof boom and slump, of rapid growth and sudden collapse of indus-trial production.Marx explained this trade cycle in terms of what hebelieved was the most fundamental contradiction of capitalism: the evergreater production of goods is based on ever greater exploitation of theworker, while that same exploitation reduces the workers ability to buythe goods produced.Consequently, there is always a tendency in capi-talism to overproduce, causing a downward spiral of factory closures andreductions in spending power: a slump.Marx believed that each successive boom would develop faster andhigher, and each successive slump would be deeper and more catastrophicthan the last.Eventually the slump would be so great that the impov-erished working class would be forced by sheer necessity to overthrowcapitalism and establish a workers state.The capitalist system cannot be128 KARL MARXreformed, but will be driven to destruction by its own nature, by theworking out of its own inner logic.It is a peculiarity of the capitalist system, Marx thought, that it musttrain its future destroyer.Unlike other modes of production, industrialcapitalism must concentrate its workforce (in factories and workshops)and teach it discipline and mutual dependence.In these circumstancesthe proletariat has the opportunity to organise and achieve a commonunderstanding of its own experience and what needs to be done; inother words, it has the opportunity to achieve what Marx called classconsciousness.The progressive immiseration of the proletariat forces it to see its ownsituation clearly, undistorted by bourgeois ideology.It will see that capi-talist society cannot survive, that the proletariat can and must itself takeover the means of production.In short, the working class will come torealise (assisted by intellectuals like Marx and Engels who defect to theproletarian cause) that communism is the true outlook of the workingclass, and the only hope for the future of humanity.Thus, when therevolution does come, the workers will understand their historical task,which is not only to seize control of the means of production and theinstruments of the state, but to go on to build a communist society.Marx believed that the communist revolution would only come whencapitalism had reached the full peak of its development.Consequently,he looked to see the revolution begin in the industrially advanced West,above all in Britain (although he was less certain of this towards theend of his life).But wherever it began, it would be a worldwide revo-lution, because one of the unique features of capitalism was its capacity through trade and the exploitation of colonies to bring the wholeworld within its network.Marx thought that nationalism was an aspectof bourgeois ideology, whereas proletarian class-consciousness wastruly international: that is, workers had more in common with fellowworkers in other countries than with their own bourgeoisie.When thecommunist revolution began in one country, therefore, it would quicklyspread to others and eventually the whole world, so that the whole ofhumanity would be emancipated together.However, Marx did not believe that the communist revolution wouldbe immediately followed by the establishment of the communist society.There would have to be a transitional period, which Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat , in which the workers would be incontrol.The state and its instruments would still be the means by whichthe ruling class overtly maintains its domination, only now the rulingclass would be the workers, the majority.The dictatorship of the prole-tariat has two tasks.The first is to preserve and extend the revolution.129 KARL MARXThe second is to prepare the way for the ultimate stage of human history,the establishment of the classless, stateless communist society, the kind ofsociety appropriate for human nature.Marx was decidedly vague about the nature of communist society anddeliberately so, insisting that communist society was not some utopianblueprint that people must aspire to but the actual society that theywould build as they thought best.However, some general features canbe given
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