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THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
declares, “ desires a universal revolution, at once social, philo 
sophical, economical, and political, in order that the existing 
order of things—which is founded on property, on exploitation, 
on the principle of authority, whether religious, metaphysical, 
doctrinaire after the manner of the bourgeoisie, or revolutionary 
after the manner of the Jacobins—may be absolutely over 
thrown, so that not one stone of it shall remain upon another, 
first throughout Europe, and then in the rest of the world. 
Raising the cry of ‘ Peace for the workers ! Liberty for the 
oppressed ! ’ and ‘ Death to tyrants, exploiters, and patrons of all 
kinds ! ’ we wish to destroy all States and all Churches, w ith 
all their institutions and laws, religious, political, juridical, finan 
cial, magisterial, academical, economical, and social, in order 
that all these millions of poor human beings, who are cheated, 
enslaved, overworked', and exploited—having been at last 
delivered from their masters and benefactors, whether official 
or officious, whether associations or individuals—may hence 
forth and for ever breathe in absolute freedom.” This is plainly 
Rousseau’s idea, expressed with the emphasis of the Oriental 
and the violence of the Tartar. Man, especially the worker, 
is crushed by the immense superstructure of the social edifice 
which the centuries have piled up. How to free him ? There 
is only one way : to hurl it all down and level it even with the 
ground. Everything must be swept away so as to produce 
“perfect amorphism ;” for if one single ancient form be 
preserved, “ it will become the embryo from which all the old 
social iniquities will spring up again.” 
Still, however perfect this amorphism may be, to whatever 
extreme the work of destruction may be pushed, there will yet 
remain some men living and working beside each other. What 
political tie will unite them ? How w ill property and the dis 
tribution of products be regulated ? In the programme of the 
Alliance, we can find only vague indications on this head. 
The ideal of the future is evidently borrowed from what exists 
in Russia to-day. Land will be the collective property of the 
Commune, which will distribute it among the inhabitants. 
Industrial workers will be associated in “ artel,” that is to say, 
in co-operative societies. But it is a crime to attempt at pre-