As ideologies disappeared which had once made inequality appear natural and ordained, it was inevitable that workers everywhere would see the system for what it was, and would rise up and overthrow it. Soon, in fact, there would be just two types of people in the world: the people who owned property and the people who sold their labor to them. As cities and towns industrialized, as wealth became more concentrated, and as the rich got richer, the middle class began sinking to the level of the working class. Ten per cent of the population possessed virtually all of the property the other ninety per cent owned nothing. The new modes of production, communication, and distribution had also created enormous wealth. For the first time in history, men and women could see, without illusions, where they stood in their relations with others. People no longer believed that ancestry or religion determined their status in life. Just as important, it swept away all the old hierarchies and mystifications. Goods and ideas now circulated everywhere. In the name of free trade, it had knocked down national boundaries, lowered prices, made the planet interdependent and cosmopolitan. Its innovations-the railroad, the steamship, the telegraph-had unleashed fantastic productive forces. It surpassed, in its accomplishments, all the great civilizations of the past-the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman aqueducts, the Gothic cathedrals. Modern industry, it proclaimed, had revolutionized the world. On or about February 24, 1848, a twenty-three-page pamphlet was published in London. How useful is Karl Marx-who died a hundred and thirty-three years ago-for understanding our world? Illustration by Roberto De Vicq De Cumptich
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