distinctions or for large differences of
wealth. In earlier ages, class distinctions had been not only inevitable
but desirable. Inequality was the price of civilization. With the
development of machine production, however, the case was altered. Even if
it was still necessary for human beings to do different kinds of work, it
was no longer necessary for them to live at different social or economic
levels. Therefore, from the point of view of the new groups who were on the
point of seizing power, human equality was no longer an ideal to be striven
after, but a danger to be averted. In more primitive ages, when a just and
peaceful society was in fact not possible, it had been fairly easy to
believe it. The idea of an earthly paradise in which men should live
together in a state of brotherhood, without laws and without brute labour,
had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years. And this vision
had had a certain hold even on the groups who actually profited by each
historical change. The heirs of the French, English, and American
revolutions had partly believed in their own phrases about the rights of
man, freedom of speech, equality before the law, and the like, and have
even allowed their conduct to be influenced by them to some extent. But by
the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of
political thought were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had been
discredited at exactly the