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Updated: June 6, 2025
It has, not improbably, been thought that under these circumstances a prosecution for incitement of the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes would create an effective diversion; it was probably hoped that even if such an accusation were dismissed by you, still you remember the ancient adage: calumniare audacter, semper aliquit haeret it would serve as a wet towel to bind about the slightly-inflamed countenance of our bourgeoisie, and so, with this in view, Gentlemen, I was selected as the scapegoat to be driven out into the wilderness.
And, indeed, herein lies the great distinction of action between the world-old propertied classes and the contending proletariat; for whereas the one have always campaigned irrespective of law and particularly by bribery, intimidation, repression and force, the working class has had to confine its movement strictly to the narrow range of laws which were expressly prepared against it and the slightest violation of which has called forth the summary vengeance of a society ruled actually, if not theoretically, by the very propertied classes which set at defiance all law.
At their command spacious, majestic palaces arose at Newport, whither in the torrid season some of the Vanderbilts transferred their august seat of power and pleasure. Hardly had they settled themselves down in the vested security of their great fortunes when an ominous situation presented itself to shake the entire propertied class into a violent state of uneasiness.
But in actual practice the propertied men recognized no such thing as equality and dispensed with humility. The merchants imitated in a small way the seignorial pretensions of the land nabobs.
In fact, the continued Bolshevist rule seems to be an index of the relative fighting strength of the several classes in Russian society the industrial proletariat, the landed and industrial propertied class, and the peasantry.
Encrusted creatures of precedent and self-interest, they thoroughly accepted the doctrine that in the making and enforcement of law their concern should be for the propertied interests. With few exceptions they were aligned with the propertied.
And this at a time when only propertied persons could vote in any of the States and when only professed Christians could either vote or hold office in two of them! While Washington was President, Tammany Hall, the first municipal machine, began its career; and presently George Clinton, Governor of New York, and his nephew, DeWitt Clinton, were busy organizing the first state machine.
Now it is just this growing consciousness of the fact that as long as there exists in society a propertied class living on the labour of a propertyless one, there MUST be a struggle always going on between those two classes it is just the dawning knowledge of this fact which should show us what civilization can hope for namely, transformation into true society, in which there will no longer be classes with their necessary struggle for existence and superiority: for the antagonism of classes which began in all simplicity between the master and the chattel slave of ancient society, and was continued between the feudal lord and the serf of mediaeval society, has gradually become the contention between the capitalist developed from the workman of the last-named period, and the wage-earner: in the former struggle the rise of the artisan and villenage tenant created a new class, the middle class, while the place of the old serf was filled by the propertyless labourer, with whom the middle class, which has absorbed the aristocracy, is now face to face: the struggle between the classes therefore is once again a simple one, as in the days of the classical peoples; but since there is no longer any strong race left out of civilization, as in the time of the disruption of Rome, the whole struggle in all its simplicity between those who have and those who lack is WITHIN civilization.
And after having in this way, quietly and by subreption, introduced this its definition of the term "bourgeoisie," the indictment goes on to formulate its final charge as follows: "It is accordingly charged that the above named citizen, F.L., , by his lecture etc., and by publishing the pamphlet containing this same lecture, has publicly instigated the unpropertied classes of the State's subjects to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes."
The public prosecutor appears to believe that I aspire to see the propertied classes reduced to servitude under the working classes, that I would invert history and make the landed gentry and the manufacturers the servants of the workingmen.
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