Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/22

exploiting one lacks historical background, and is therefore inadequate. The exploiting class had a necessary function to perform. If it put a yoke of subjection on the necks of other classes, it was because the organisation which society required in order that it might exist at all, implied such a differentiation into classes, with political and economic inequalities, and consequently with opportunities to prey upon the mass and use power for personal and class ends. John Ball's sermons, to the ethics of which no one can take objection, could no more have been carried into effect in the days of the Henrys than the Sermon on the Mount can be carried into effect to-day. On the surface, the whole history of human progress within communities and nations is a series of class struggles. Liberty "slowly broadens down" from class to class as the enfranchised sections of the nation tend to become the whole of the nation. In the earlier stages of society the custody of national functions must be in the hands of a few because the military officer is also the political authority. But when the factory takes the place of the battlefield in national importance, the custodianship of national interests must pass into more hands, and the propertied and middle classes are enfranchised and their economic interests taken special care of. Finally, when the state becomes a democratic organisation and co-operates with the individual in all spheres of his activity, the movement for political democracy has ripened and has produced its natural social fruits.