t is placed in a position
of inferiority to them, real inferiority, mind you, involving a
degradation both of mind and body. To sum up, then, civilised States
are composed of three classes--a class which does not even pretend to
work, a class which pretends to work but which produces nothing, and a
class which works."[221] In other words, William Morris divided
society into two classes: propertied non-producers and non-propertied
toilers.

According to practically all living English Socialists, there are but
two classes in society. "Modern society is divided into two
classes--the possessors of property and the non-possessors: the
dominant class and the subject class; the class which rules and the
class which has to obey. He who possesses sufficient wealth to
exercise control over the labour of others, to exploit that labour for
his own profit, belongs to the one class; he who possesses nothing but
the power to labour contained in his own body, and who is therefore
compelled to sell that labour power in order to live, belongs to the
other. It is this struggle and conflict between these two classes
that Socialists call the class war, a recognition of which is
essential to a clear conception of what the Socialist movement
involves."[222] "Society is divided into two opposite classes, one,
the capitalists and their sleeping partners the landlords and
loanmongers, holding in their hands the means of production,
distribution, and exchange, and being therefore able to command the
labour of others; the other, the working class, the wage-earners, the
proletariat, possessing nothing but their labour power, and being
consequently forced by necessity to work for the former."[223] "In
society there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a
class struggle between those who possess but do not produce, and those
who produce but do not possess."[224] "The people of this unfortunate
country have been aptly divided by Mr. Gladstone into the 'masses' and
the 'classes'--that is to say, into those who live by their own labour
and those who live on the labour of others. Among the latter tribe of
non-producers are included all manner of thieves, pick-pockets,
burglars, sharpers, prostitutes, Peers of Parliament, their families
and menials, all, or nearly all, the 'six hundred and odd scoundrels
of the House of Commons,' the twenty thousand State parsons, who every
Sunday shamelessly travesty the Christian religion in the interest