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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  Anarchism, ­
  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  contradictions. ­
  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