COLLECTIVISM AND LAND NATIONALIZATION 263 
throughout all Europe, as is shown by the manifestoes and 
programmes occasionally published; but among Collectivists 
there are several degrees, and, as usually happens, those most 
nearly related hate each other the most cordially. According 
to information that I owe to the courtesy of M. B. Malón, the 
author of a good history of Socialism, and himself one of the 
leaders of the movement in Paris, the Collectivist party in 
France may be approximately divided as follows :—At the 
extreme left are the Anarchists or Nihilists, of whom Prince 
Krapotkine may be taken as the ideal type. Their idea of 
“ Anarchy ” resembles that of Proudhon, but they are more 
directly connected with Bakunin, who, by means of secret 
societies formed from the remnants of the International, has 
spread the ideas of Russian Nihilism throughout all Socialist 
circles. The Anarchists are not numerous, but they are very 
fanatical, and their extreme members shrink from no means 
petroleum, fire, bombs, dynamite, even assassination, as has 
recently been shown in Andalusia, Their creed does not, 
however, make much progress in France, because the French 
genius likes clear ideas and a programme carefully thought 
out, and containing a plan of reform easy to grasp. The 
Collectivists, properly so called, may be themselves divided 
into two groups, especially since the Congress held at St. 
Etienne in September, 1882 : (i) the Irreconcilable Collec 
tivists, who look for a revolutionary movement like the 
Jacobins of old; and (2) the Evolutionist-Collectivists, who 
are beginning to accept as a truth the doctrine of science, that 
changes in the social order, as in nature, are only brought about 
slowly and by a process of evolution. These latter are called 
“ Possibilists,” because they are anxious to make their claims 
in a legal manner, and to take part in elections, not merely as 
a protest, but also with the aim of making their ideas prevail in 
Parliament and in the Municipal Councils. In this they follow 
the course adopted by the German Socialists, who have thus 
succeeded, not only in sending representatives to the Reichstag, 
but also in inducing the Government—partly, no doubt, out of 
consideration for the large number of Socialist votes—to take 
up the question of social reforms.