The Winter of Our Crushed Dissent

Officers of the Peace


Out of the decay of self-seeking capitalism, it was held, would arise the flower of the ages, the Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which, appalling alike to us who look back and to those that lived at the time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot, the Oligarchy.
Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the Oligarchy was there---a fact established in blood, a stupendous and awful reality.
---Jack London, The Iron Heel.