Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 2, March 16th, 1949.

Axe-Grinders

Axe-Grinders

There is, of course, a reason for it. Any admission on the part of those who get the plums of our present order, of the fact that the revolution which first established their supremacy was an unavoidable conflict of class interests, would be the first step to an admission' of the whole of that conception of history which sees class interests as the motivating force in the development of human society. The next logical step would be an admission of the existence of class conflict in our own society and ultimately, of the fact that the future lies with socialism (oh hell. I've said it again).

For the fact is that the Great Rebellion of 1640-1660 was a conflict of class interests. It represented the clash between the feudal aristocracy, the material foundation of whose power (the land) had already been expropriated, and who clung like leeches to the power of the crown; and the rising middle classes of town and country, on whose personal initiative and self-seeking the whole structure of capitalism was to be reared. There is no doubt as to which group was, historically, the more progressive.