ABSTRACT
The explanation which Marx gives of the vast productive powers of industry in the modern world. The new stores of practical scientific knowledge which "Society" has acquired whilst these changes were in progress, and which, embodied in new mechanisms and processes, have given man a "new control over the productive forces of nature". The true underlying cause of the modern clustering of the manual labourers in large groups instead of remaining in small ones, or instead of working singly. The centres round which they cluster are not what Marx/the ordinary socialist supposes. These primarily are not great mechanisms, but the mental efficiencies of exceptionally able individuals, to which the mechanisms themselves are due, and to which are due also the new organisation of the labourers, and the new subdivisions of their tasks. In other words, the increased efficiency of industry in the modern world is due primarily to a development, not of the democratic principle, but of the oligarchic.
