All those processes (development of technique, concentration of production, growth of mass-consciousness) go on simultaneously, and not only do they help and stimulate each other, but they also _hamper and limit_ each other's development. Each of the processes of a higher order presupposes the development of another process of a lower order, yet the full development of any of them is incompatible with the full development of the others.
The logical limit of technical development is undoubtedly a perfect automatic mechanism which takes in raw materials from natural resources and lays them down at the feet of men as ready objects of consumption. Were not capitalism limited by relations between classes and by the consequences of those relations, the class struggle, one would be warranted in his assumption that industrial technique, having approached the ideal of one great automatic mechanism within the limits of capitalistic economy, _eo ipso_ dismisses capitalism.
The concentration of production which is an outgrowth of economic competition has an inherent tendency to throw the entire population into the working class. Taking this tendency apart from all the others, one would be warranted in his assumption that capitalism would ultimately turn the majority of the people into a reserve army of paupers, lodged in prisons. This process, however, is being checked by revolutionary changes which are inevitable under a certain relationship between social forces. It will be checked long before it has reached its logical limit.
And the same thing is true in relation to social mass-consciousness. This consciousness undoubtedly grows with the experiences of every day struggle and through the conscious efforts of Socialist parties. Isolating this process from all others, we can imagine it reaching a stage where the overwhelming majority of the people are encompassed by professional and political organizations, united in a feeling of solidarity and in identity of purpose. Were this process allowed to grow quantitatively without changing in quality, Socialism might be established peacefully, through a unanimous compact of the citizens of the twenty-first or twenty-second Century. The historic prerequisites to Socialism, however, do not develop in isolation from each other; _they limit each other_; reaching a certain stage, which is determined by many circumstances, but which is very far from their mathematical limits, they undergo a qualitative change, and in their complex combination they produce what we call a Social revolution.