Excerpt from Socialism

America it began to rise again, and in the Dutch and the American revolutions it first came into acknowledged power, and did so like wise in the French revolution, undisputed for a time. Then loomed up the lower class of the proletariat, as it was called in France (the manufacturing labourers collected in cities and towns), as another estate demanding to be considered, the fourth estate, as it came to be reckoned.' The men of this class in their turn claimed political power, and in America gained it during the first two or three decades of the last century; but in France and elsewhere in Europe, though they once held sway during a few months of convulsion, they did not come into a fair share of political power till the last quarter of that century. And with their acquisition of such power against determined opposi tion, arose the desire to enlarge it and to use it for their own class-purposes. In America, where the Opposition had been slight, this desire has arisen only after the abuse of power by those of the middle class who have climbed out of their own class to excessive wealth, and who, in order to augment still more their possessions, have used their money corruptly to purchase privilege. Against the abusive oppression of wealth everywhere, or of capitalism mistaken for the essential factor, socialism is the system which the lower classes and their advocates, organised into a party which fosters the class-consciousness of the newly adolescent fourth estate, would by revolution or otherwise substi tute for the present system which permits the evil of oppression. Instead of correction, reconstruction is proposed.

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