was set on foot by the middle classes in their own interests; the sentence that Napoleon accepted as the expression of his aims, “la carriére ouverte aux talens”—“the career thrown open to talent”—is the motto of middle-class supremacy. It implies the overthrow of aristocratic privilege and the setting up in its place of a money aristocracy, founded on the privilege of exploitation, amidst a world of so-called “free competition.” The middle-class, the first beginnings of which we saw formed in mediæval times, after a long and violent struggle, has conquered and is supreme from henceforth.
Previous chapter | Next chapter | Socialism: Index | Works | William Morris Archive