50 Years Ago [Bax on class]

“Classes exist; you may ignore them, but they will exist still with the respective characters they engender. Though you ignore them, they will not ignore you. . . . In the Socialist workmen the class-instinct has become transformed into the conviction that, in the words of Lassalle, ‘he is called to raise the principle of his class into the principle of the age.’ He knows that in the moment of victory—of the realisation of the dominion of his class—the ugly head of class itself must fall, and society emerge. Militant, his cause is identified with class; triumphant with Humanity.” (Quoted from “Socialism and Ethics,” by E. Belfort Bax.)

(From the SOCIALIST STANDARD, October, 1904.)