the one hand consolidated all the groups of the middle class of the preceding epoch, such as country squires, large and small, big farmers, merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, and professional men; and made them so conscious of their solidarity, that the ordinary refined and thinking man of to-day cannot really see any other class at all, but only, outside his own class, certain heterogeneous groups to be used as instruments for the further advancement of that class, On the other hand, 173 it has attained such complete domination that the upper classes are merely adjuncts to it and servants of it. In fact, these also are now of the bourgeoisie, as they are all engaged in commerce in one way or other: thus the higher nobility are all either house-agents, spirit merchants, coal-factors, or company-promoters, and would be of no importance without their "businesses.” Moreover, striving ever to extend itself downwards as well as upwards, the middle class has absorbed so much in that direction, especially within the last thirty years, that it has now nothing left below it except the mere propertiless proletariat. These last are wholly dependent upon tit, utterly powerless before it, until the break up of the system that has created it (the signs of whose beginning we have just noted), shall force them 1nto a revolt against it. In the course of that revolt this great middle class will in its turn be absorbed into the proletariat, which will form a new society in which classes shall have ceased to exist. This is the next Revolution, as inevitable, as inexorable, as the rising of to-morrow’s sun.
Footnotes
- This meant destruction of boilers in factories, the rioters pulling out the plugs to ensure their bursting.Back
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