ABSTRACT
The social struggle becomes the object of ever-growing attention when individuals with the purpose of defending or grasping possessions join in groups, when these groups comprehend a multitude of the members of human society and claim to occupy the thoughts and dominate the wills of the latter in an increasing measure. This chapter considers the formation of the class of have-nots, then the struggle of the latter against the privileged for material goods and political power and the intervention of the state in the struggle, and finally the fight for the intellectual goods. Like so many other ideas of the French Revolution, this thought too met with a very receptive attitude on the other bank of the Rhine. The misery of poverty had thus found an especially crass expression in the severance of the industrial wage earner from the disposal of the means of production.
