Magyars in Hungary, the German barons in East Prussia and the Baltic
provinces, and so forth. They make their profit and maintain themselves
out of the labour and the taxation of the subject peoples.

In the earlier forms of social life, when men lived in tribes, a rude
equality and democracy prevailed; there was nothing that could well be
called class-government; there was simply custom and the leadership of
the elders of the tribe. Then with the oncoming of what we call
civilization, and the growth of the sense of property, differences
arose--accumulations of wealth and power by individuals, enslavements of
tribes by other tribes; and classes sprang up, and class-government, and
so the material of endless suffering and oppression and hatred and
warfare. I have already explained (in the Introduction) that Class in
itself as the mere formation within a nation of groups of similar
occupation and activity--working harmoniously with each other and with
the nation--is a perfectly natural and healthy phenomenon; it is only
when it means groups pursuing their own interests counter to each other
and to the nation that it becomes diseased. There will come a time when
the class-element in this latter sense will be ejected from society, and
society will return again to its democratic form and structure. There
will be no want, in that time, of variety of occupation and talent, or
of differentiation in the social organism; quite the contrary; but
simply there will be no predatory or parasitical groups within such
organism, whose, interests will run counter to the whole, and which will
act (as such classes act now) as foci and seedbeds of disease and strife
within the whole. With a return to the recognition of racial rights and
autonomies over the world, it is clear that one great cause of strife
will be removed, and we shall be one step nearer to the ending of the
preposterous absurdity of war.