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THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
CHAPTER X. 
BAKUNIN THE APOSTLE OF NIHILISM. 
W HEN Dante descended through the circles of the 
Inferno and reached the lowest depths of the “ city 
without hope,” he found himself face to face with the awful 
sovereign of the revolted angels : 
“ Ü Imperador del doloroso regno." 
So, when we penetrate to the lowest stratum of Revolutionary 
Socialism, we meet Bakunin, It is impossible to go further, 
for he is the apostle of universal’ destruction, of absolute An 
archism, or, as he himself terms his doctrine, of “ Amorphism.” 
He it was who, borrowing the name and the organization of 
the International, spread Anarchic Socialism throughout the 
Latin countries. His were the ideas which, as we have shown, 
prevailed in the Commune of Paris, and it is his ideas which 
to-day form the basis of the programmes adopted by the 
majority of Socialist Associations in Italy, in Switzerland, in 
Belgium, in Spain, and even in France. What are these ideas, 
whence do they come, and who is Bakunin? It is worth 
knowing, for this is the foe that for many a day existing society 
will have to combat. 
Proudhon was a brilliant dialectician, but he had clear 
ideas upon nothing, and consequently he is full of contra 
dictions. On the one hand, he abolishes private property and 
leaves to individuals possession only ; what possession—for 
life, for periods of years, or revocable at any moment?—he 
does not say, but in any case the State will be the collective 
owner, and all the requisites of production will be concentrated 
in the State. On the other hand, pushing the hostility of