THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
198 
At the Congress of the League of Peace and Liberty, which 
assembled at Berne in 1869, under the presidency of Victor 
Hugo, Bakunin with some of his friends attempted to carry 
resolutions in favour of Communism. He obtained only thirty 
votes against eighty. Indignant at the imbecility and cowardice 
of the bourgeois democrats, he founded a new society which 
was to carry out his ideas, “ the Alliance of the Socialist 
Democracy.” 
One extract from its programme will suffice to enable its 
tendencies to be understood : “ The Alliance declares itself 
atheistic. It desires the final and complete abolition of classes, 
and the political, economical, and social equalization of the two 
sexes. It wishes that land, instruments of production, and all 
other capital should become the collective property of society 
as a whole, and should only be utilized by the workers, that is, 
by agricultural and industrial associations. It recognizes that 
all political and authoritative States actually existing must dis 
appear in the universal union of free associations.” 
How to realize this radical change? Evidently by force 
employed without truce and without mercy. The Bakunists 
did not disguise the matter at all. One of them, Jaclard, 
exclaimed in this congress intended to establish universal 
peace, “You wish to preserve existing institutions in order to 
reform them ? Vain endeavour ! They can only be the instru 
ments of tyranny and spoliation. We, we alone are logical ; we 
wish to destroy everything. We separate ourselves from you, 
and warn you : War you shall have, and it will be a terrible one. 
It will array itself against all that exists. Yes, we must away 
with the bourgeoisie and its institutions. It is only on their 
smoking ruins that the definitive Republic can be based. It is 
on the ruins smeared, I will not say with their blood—it is long 
since they have had any in their veins—but with their accumu 
lated filth, that we shall plant the standard of the Social 
Revolution.” 
The Alliance resolved to join the International, but the 
general council of the latter refused to admit it, on the ground 
that the Alliance, which also proclaimed itself International, 
could not, as such, enter into its ranks. The Alliance accord-