Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/51

 massacre which followed, the infamous misdeeds of the Versailles troops, with such monsters as Gallifet at their head, and the fearful scenes on the plain of Satory have effaced almost all memory of the errors of the vanquished. Once more "order" rose in place of the best government for the many that Paris had ever seen. Throughout the world to-day the remembrance of that fearful struggle and defeat strengthens the determination of the real leaders of the proletariat revolution.

From that date forward organised Socialism has made way against many difficulties, the apathy of Englishmen having largely contributed to check any real re-commencement of the international movement. But of late years a change has taken place and the rapidly growing influence of the Democratic Federation shows that an avowed Socialist propaganda of an international character has at last taken root in this country.

What we have to face now is a bitter class antagonism between the classes who own the means of production which they use to enslave their fellows to those means of production and the labourers who are thus economically and socially enslaved. With these labourers must be numbered a large portion of the lowest middle-class who practically depend upon and are a portion of the proletariat, certain of the intellectual proletariat, clerks, &c., who are learning how they are being exploited themselves by their employers, and the domestic servants, whose servile, degraded position will be felt more and more as education spreads. Here is the last class antagonism, which indeed is world-wide—the antagonism between the slaves of the machine, the