The division of society into a small, excessively rich class and a large, propertyless class of wage-workers results in a society suffocating from its own super-fuity, while the great majority of its members is scarcely, or even not at all, protected from extreme want. This state of affairs becomes daily more absurd and—more unnecessary. It must be abolished, it can be abolished

Friedrich Engels, Introduction to Wage Labour and Capital: Wages, Price and Profit