the rise and fall of the international. 169 
collectivity, he said, is an unknown abstraction, and yet you 
seek to impose it on us. The individual is the only concrete 
thing, and everything inconsistent with his free development 
IS bad. We find in everybody the wish to be his own master 
and to enjoy his independence. In attributing all the evils of 
humanity to the right of property, you are taking effect for 
cause. Will the collectivity have more intelligence than the 
individual in directing profitable works? Is it not to individual 
initiative that all progress is due? M. Tolain was only a 
“mutualist,” not a “collectivist.” 
Another Frenchman, named Langlois, a former disciple of 
Proudhon, and delegate of the metal-turners, while claiming 
t at rents should belong to the State, uttered some prophetic 
words: “Socialism will be ruined, through alienating all the 
country populations, if the decisions taken at Brussels, in their 
absence and without consulting them, are to be maintained. 
We shall see once more, as in 1848, the peasants rising in a 
body against the town labourers and rendering illusory the 
triumph of the revolution. If you were masters would you be 
ready to effect any work likely to live ? The State as collective 
proprietor of the land, would mean a State that would force 
everybody to work, that would enrol armies of labourers bv 
squads under the command of engineers and overseers, and 
that wou d create a hierarchy of forced labour. Is this result 
so desirable that to attain it we ought to sacrifice liberty ? " 
from Communism. In.hecZclkt^mSrZ;^;; 
Pect to the remuneration of labour. Communism desires