Free The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen Page A

the current code of morals are made by his mortal enemies.... Consequently, he ignores them insofar as he is able, and it, suits his purposes. He proposes to develop, regardless of capitalist conceptions of 'legality,' 'fairness,' 'right,' etc., a greater power than his capitalist enemies have...." 17
     
    So now Marx and Engels had completed their original purposes in making an intensive study of history. They felt they had successfully explained the origin of the various institutions in society by showing that all of these were the product of Economic Determinism, and they felt they had traced to its source the cause of strife, inequity and injustice among men -- private property. Only one task now remained for the master architects -- to apply this knowledge to a "plan of action" which would permanently solve the economic, political and social ills of all mankind.
     
The Communist Plan of Action
     
    As Marx and Engels analyzed modern civilization they concluded that capitalistic society is rapidly reaching that point where a revolution is inevitable. This is the way they reasoned: After the overthrow of feudalism the capitalistic society came into being. At first it consisted primarily of individuals who owned their own land or their own workshops. Each man did his own work and reaped the economic benefits to which he was entitled. Then the industrial revolution came along and the private workshop was supplanted by the factory. Products no longer came from the private workshop but from the factory where the united effort of many individuals produced the commodity. Engels said manufacturing thereby became social production rather than private production. It was therefore wrong for private individuals to continue owning the factory because the factory had become a social institution. He argued that no private individual should get the profits from something which many people were required to produce.
     
    "But," critics asked, "do not the workers share in the profits of the factory through their wages?"
     
    Marx and Engels did not believe that wages were adequate compensation for labor performed unless the workers received all the proceeds from the sale of the commodity. Since the hands of the workers produced the commodity they believed the workers should receive all the commodity was worth. They believed that the management and operation of a factory were only "clerical in nature" and that in the near future the working class should rise up and seize the factories or means of production and operate them as their own.
     
    "But does not the investment of the capitalist entitle him to some profit? Without his willingness to risk considerable wealth would there be any factory?"
     
    Marx and Engels answered this by saying that all wealth is created by the worker. Capital creates nothing. Marx and Engels believed that the reason certain men have been able to accumulate wealth is because they have taken away the fruits of the worker in the form of interest, rent or profits. They said this was "surplus value" which had been milked from the labor of men in the past and should be confiscated from the capitalists by the workers of the present.
     
    Marx and Engels now dared to predict the ultimate trend of development in modern capitalistic civilization. They said that just as private workshops had been taken over by the factory, so the small factory would be taken over by the big combine. They said the monopoly of capital would continue until it was concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer men while the number of exploited workers would grow proportionately. And while a few were becoming richer and richer the exploited class would get poorer and poorer. They predicted that the members of the so-called middle class who own small shops and businesses would be squeezed out of economic existence because they could not compete with the mammoth business combines. They also predicted that the government would be the instrument of