TRANSLATOR’S  PREFACE.

No  apology  is  needed  for  bringing  before  English  readers  a
translation  of  a  work  by  so  eminent  a  writer  and  so  profound
a  thinker  as  M.  de  Laveleye,  upon  so  important  a  question  of
the  day  as  Socialism.  The  term  Socialist  is  an  exceedingly
elastic  one.  It  has  been  used  to  include  a  revolutionary
anarchist,  like  Bakunin,  who  seeks  to  destroy,  by  any  and
every  means,  all  States  and  all  institutions,  and  to  eradicate
utterly  the  very  idea  of  authority,  as  well  as  a  constructive
statesman  of  the  conservative  type,  like  Prince  Bismarck,
whose  aim  is  to  concentrate  much  power  and  many  functions
in  the  hands  of  a  paternal  government.  There  are  Tory  and
Radical  Socialists,  State  and  Communal  Socialists,  Christian
and  Atheist  Socialists,  Socialists  who  are  Collectivists,  Communists, ­
  or  Anarchists,  Socialists  of  the  Chair,  and  “  Socialists
of  the  Pothouse.”  Other  shades  and  subdivisions  might
easily  be  added,  but  under  one  or  other  of  its  numerous  forms.
Socialism  is  daily  gaining  fresh  adherents  in  almost  all  civilized
countries.  1  he  recruits  of  even  the  more  extreme  sections
are,  moreover,  no  longer  confined  to  the  ranks  of  the  uneducated ­
  or  the  non-propertied  classes.  Even  in  England,  among
persons  whom  it  would  be  misleading  to  call  Socialists,  there
is  an  increasing  dissatisfaction  with  our  present  industrial
system,  a  growing  feeling  that  the  old  principle  of  laissez  faire