The question has often been asked, in what degree are the 
different classes of society useful or even necessary? And the 
answer was naturally a different one for every different epoch of 
history considered. There was undoubtedly a time when a 
territorial aristocracy was an unavoidable and necessary element of 
society. That, however, is very, very long ago. Then there was a 
time when a capitalist middle class, a bourgeoisie as the French call 
it, arose with equally unavoidable necessity, struggled against the 
territorial aristocracy, broke its political power, and in its turn 
became economically and_ politically predominant. But, since 
classes arose, there never was a time when society could do 
without a working class. The name, the social status of that class 
has changed; the serf took the place of the slave, to be in his turn 
relieved by the free working man—free from servitude but also 
free from any earthly possessions save his own labour force. But it 
is plain: whatever changes took place in the upper, non-producing 
ranks of society, society could not live without a class of producers. 
This class, then, is necessary under all circumstances—though the 
time must come, when it will no longer be a class, when it will 
comprise all society. 

Now, what necessity is there at present for the existence of each 
of these three classes? 

The landed aristocracy is, to say the least, economically useless 
in England, while in Ireland and Scotland it has become a positive 
nuisance by its depopulating tendencies. To send the people across 
the ocean or into starvation, and to replace them by sheep or 
deer—that is all the merit that the Irish and Scotch landlords can 
lay claim to. Let the competition of American vegetable and 

animal food develop a little further, and the English landed 
aristocracy will do the same, at least those that can afford it, 
having large town estates to fall back upon. Of the rest, American 
food competition will soon free us. And good riddance—for their 
political action, both in the Lords and Commons, is a perfect 
national nuisance. 

But how about the capitalist middle class, that enlightened and 
liberal class which founded the British colonial empire and which 
established British liberty? The class that reformed Parliament in 
1831,*” repealed the Gorn Laws,*” and reduced tax after tax? 
The class that created and still directs the giant manufactures, and 
the immense merchant navy, the ever spreading railway system of 
England? Surely that class must be at least as necessary as the 
working class which it directs and leads on from progress to 
progress. 

Now the economical function of the capitalist middle class has 
been, indeed, to create the modern system of steam manufactures 
and steam communications, and to crush every economical and 
political obstacle which delayed or hindered the development of 
that system. No doubt, as long as the capitalist middle class 
performed this function it was, under the circumstances, a 
necessary class. But is it still so? Does it continue to fulfil its 
essential function as the manager and expander of social 
production for the benefit of society at large? Let us see. 

To begin with the means of communication, we find the 
telegraphs in the hands of the Government. The railways and a 
large part of the sea-going steamships are owned, not by 
individual capitalists who manage their own business, but by 
joint-stock companies whose business is managed for them by paid 
employees, by servants whose position is to all intents and purposes 
that of superior, better paid workpeople. As to the directors and 
shareholders, they both know that the less the former interfere 
with the management, and the latter with the supervision, the 
better for the concern. A lax and mostly perfunctory supervision 
is, indeed, the only function left to the owners of the business. 
Thus we see that in reality the capitalist owners of these immense 
establishments have no other action left with regard to them, but 
to cash the half-yearly dividend warrants. The social function of 
the capitalist here has been transferred to servants paid by wages; 
but he continues to pocket, in his dividends, the pay for those 
functions though he has ceased to perform them. 

But another function is still left to the capitalist, whom the 
extent of the large undertakings in question has compelled to 

Social Classes—Necessary and Superfluous 417 

“retire” from their management. And this function is to speculate 
with his shares on the Stock Exchange. For want of something 
better to do, our “retired” or in reality superseded capitalists, 
gamble to their hearts’ content in this temple of mammon. They 
go there with the deliberate intention to pocket money which they 
were pretending to earn; though they say, the origin of all 
property is labour and saving—the origin perhaps, but certainly 
not the end. What hypocrisy to forcibly close petty gambling 
houses, when our capitalist society cannot do without an immense 
gambling house, where millions after millions are lost and won, 
for its very centre! Here, indeed, the existence of the “retired”’ 
shareholding capitalist becomes not only superfluous, but a perfect 
nuisance. 

What is true for railways and steam shipping is becoming more 
and more true every day for all large manufacturing and trading 
establishments. ‘‘Floating’”—transforming large private concerns 
into limited companies—has been the order of the day for the last 
ten years and more. From the large Manchester warehouses of the 
City to the ironworks and coalpits of Wales and the North and the 
factories of Lancashire, everything has been, or is being, floated. 
In all Oldham there is scarcely a cotton mill left in private hands; 
nay, even the retail tradesman is more and more superseded by 
“co-operative stores”, the great majority of which are co-operative 
in name only—but of that another time. Thus we see that by the 
very development of the system of capitalists’ production the 
capitalist is superseded quite as much as the handloom-weaver. 
With this difference, though, that the handloom-weaver is doomed 
to slow starvation, and the superseded capitalist to slow death 
from overfeeding. In this they generally are both alike, that 
neither knows what to do with himself. 

This, then, is the result: the economical development of our 
actual society tends more and more to concentrate, to socialise 
production into immense establishments which cannot any longer 
be managed by single capitalists. All the trash of “the eye of the 
master’, and the wonders it does, turns into sheer nonsense as 
soon as an undertaking reaches a certain size. Imagine “the eye of 
the master” of the London and North Western Railway! But what 
the master cannot do the workman, the wages-paid servants of the 
Company, can do, and do it successfully. 

Thus the capitalist can no longer lay claim to his profits as 
“wages of supervision”, as he supervises nothing. Let us re- 
member that when the defenders of capital drum that hollow 
phrase into our ears. 

But we have attempted to show, in our last week’s issue,” that 
the capitalist class had also become unable to manage the immense 
productive system of this country; that they on the one hand 
expanded production so as to. periodically flood all the markets 
with produce, and on the other became more and more incapable 
of holding their own against foreign competition. Thus we find 
that, not only can we manage very well without the interference of 
the capitalist class in the great industries of the country, but that 
their interference is becoming more and more a nuisance. 

Again we say to them, “Stand back! Give the working class the 
chance of a turn.” 

Written in early August 1881 Reproduced from the newspaper 

leading article