philosophy.  Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is not a mere party doctrine of the working-class, but a theory compassing the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class, from its present narrow conditions.  This is true enough in the abstract, but absolutely useless, and sometimes worse, in practice.  So long as the wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of any emancipation, but strenuously oppose the self-emancipation of the working-class, so long the social revolution will have to be prepared and fought out by the working-class alone.  The French bourgeois of 1789, too, declared the emancipation of the bourgeoisie to be the emancipation of the whole human race; but the nobility and clergy would not see it; the proposition—­though for the time being, with respect to feudalism, an abstract historical truth—­soon became a mere sentimentalism, and disappeared from view altogether in the fire of the revolutionary struggle.  And to-day, the very people who, from the “impartiality” of their superior standpoint, preach to the workers a Socialism soaring high above their class interests and class struggles, and tending to reconcile in a higher humanity the interests of both the contending classes—­these people are either neophytes, who have still to learn a great deal, or they are the worst enemies of the workers,—­wolves in sheeps’ clothing.

The recurring period of the great industrial crisis is stated in the text as five years.  This was the period apparently indicated by the course of events from 1825 to 1842.  But the industrial history from 1842 to 1868 has shown that the real period is one of ten years; that the intermediate revulsions were secondary, and tended more and more to disappear.  Since 1868 the state of things has changed again, of which more anon.

I have taken care not to strike out of the text the many prophecies, amongst others that of an imminent social revolution in England, which my youthful ardour induced me to venture upon.  The wonder is, not that a good many of them proved wrong, but that so many of them have proved right, and that the critical state of English trade, to be brought on by Continental and especially American competition, which I then foresaw—­though in too short a period—­has now actually come to pass.  In this respect I can, and am bound to, bring the book up to date, by placing here an article which I published in the London Commonweal of March 1, 1885, under the heading:  “England in 1845 and in 1885.”  It gives at the same time a short outline of the history of the English working-class during these forty years, and is as follows: