r would evolve a
despotic government, that he fell back on the fact that the population
was composed chiefly not of laborers, but of small capitalists, and
would probably remain so constituted, as the only convincing ground that
our political democracy would last. In a word, our greatest statesman
recognized that our political democracy and liberty were based on the
wide distribution of the land and other forms of capital. (See Lincoln's
Message of December 3, 1861.) If Lincoln foresaw no class struggle
between "hired labor" and the "returning despotism," this was only
because he mistakenly expected that the nation would continue to consist
chiefly of small capitalists. Yet his conclusions and those of his
contemporaries, so clearly limited to conditions that have passed away,
are taught like a gospel to the children in our public schools to-day.

The present generation, however, is slowly realizing, through the
development of organized capitalism in industry and government, and the
increase of hired laborers, that it is not nature alone that
civilization must contend against, not merely ignorance or poverty or
the backwardness of material development, but, more important than all
these, the systematic opposition of the employing and governing classes
to every program of improvement, except that which promises still
further to increase their own wealth and power.

The Socialist view of the evolution of society is that the central fact
of history is this struggle of classes for political and economic power.
The governing class of any society or period, Marx taught, consists of
the economic exploiters, the governed class of the economically
exploited. The governing class becomes more and more firmly established
in power, until it begins to stagnate, but the machinery of production
continues to evolve, and falls gradually into the hands of some
exploited element which is able to use this economic advantage as a
means for overthrowing its rulers. Marx felt that with the vast
revolution in society marked by modern science and modern machinery, the
time is fast approaching when the exploited classes of to-day will be
able to overthrow the present ruling class, the capitalists, and at the
same time establish an industrial democracy, where all class oppression
will be brought to an end.

However his predictions may turn out in the future, Marx's view of the
past is rapidly gaining ground and is possibly accepted by the majori