But how the liberation of Labour from the capitalist yoke would be accomplished, what form the new organisation of production and exchange would take—in this respect the opinions of the Socialists were divided quite as much in 1864–1868 as they were twenty years before, when the representatives of the different Socialist schools met together in the Republican Constituent Assembly sitting at Paris in 1848.
Like their French predecessors, whose aspirations were so admirably summed up in 1848 by Considérant, in his "Socialism Before the Old World," the Socialists of the International Working Men's Association did not rally under the banner of one single doctrine. They oscillated between several different solutions.
There was, first, the direct legacy of the Great French Revolution—the Babeuf conspiracy of 1795—that is, the secret societies of the French "Materialist Communists" and the German Communists, followers of Weitling. Both lived upon the traditions of the stern Jacobinism of 1793. In 1848 they still dreamed of some day seizing the political power in the State—perhaps with the preliminary aid of a dictator—and of instituting, on the model of the terrorism of the Jacobinist societies of 1793 (but this time in favour of the workers), a "dictatorship of the proletariat." This dictatorship would introduce Communism by means of stern legislation.
Property-owning would be rendered so unbearable by means of a thousand laws, restrictions, taxation, and so on, that the property-owners would be happy to surrender their properties to the State. Then, "armies of labourers" would be sent out to cultivate the fields, and industrial production for the State would be organised in the same semi-military fashion.[1] This school continued to cherish the same ideals at the time of the foundation of the International Association, and had later on a great following in France among the Blanquists.
Diametrically opposed to this Jacobinist Communism was the Co-operative idea of Robert Owen, which refused to resort to the coercive action of the State, and relied chiefly, both for realising the Revolution and maintaining the new Socialistic life, on the power of the organised and federated Labour Unions. The British Owenites repudiated Communism; but, in common with
- ↑ It is interesting to note that similar ideas about State agriculture, carried on by "armies of labourers," had been expressed by Napoleon III., while he was yet a pretender to the Presidency of the Republic, in a pamphlet, "The Extinction of the Proletariate."
