As regards the other condition, the locked-out will on no account consent to it, unless they are compelled to do so by dire necessity; they feel that to renounce the society, to renounce all organisations, would mean making themselves regular serfs of the capitalists and casting away the little scrap of independence that is still left to the modern proletarians. The obstinacy of the masters, who lay claim to an authority over their hands similar to that of the American plantation owner over his slaves, has evoked the disapproval even of a section of the bourgeois reporters. Naturally, we have no cause to be dissatisfied with the building masters. After all, they are doing everything in their power to widen the already wide gulf between labour and capital and to intensify the concentrated, conscious class hatred which is the best guarantee for a social upheaval. In London there are over 1,000 builders workshops in all. Only 88 of them, the biggest, are closed. The number of lockouts (dismissed workers) amounts to 19,000-20,000, not 40,000, as was maintained initially. Generous money contributions are streaming into the society from all parts of the country, but so far the unemployed workers have refused to draw on these. Honour to the brave! Would the bourgeoisie be capable of such sacrifice for the sake of its class interests?
Karl Marx in Das Volk 1859