CHAPTER IX.—CONCLUSION.
The Bourgeosie, Anarchism, and Socialism.
The "father of Anarchy," the "immortal" Proudhon, bitterly mocked at those people for whom the revolution consisted of acts of violence, the exchange of blows, the shedding of blood. The descendants of the "father," the modern Anarchists, understand by revolution only this brutally childish method. Everything that is not violence is a betrayal of the cause, a foul compromise with "authority."[1] The scared bourgeosie does not know what to do against them. In the domain of theory they are absolutely impotent with regard to the Anarchists, who are their own enfants terribles. The bourgeoisie was the first to propagate the theory of laissez faire, of dishevelled individualism. Their most eminent philosopher of to-day, Herbert Spencer, is nothing but a conservative Anarchist. The "companions" are active and zealous persons, who carry the bourgeois reasoning to its logical conclusion.
The magistrates of the French bourgeois Republic have condemned Grave to prison, and his book, "La Société Mourante et l'Anarchie" to destruction. The bourgeois men of letters declare this puerile book a profound work, and its author a man of rare intellect.
And not only has the bourgeoisie[2] no theoretical weapons
- ↑ It is true that men like Reclus do not always approve of such notions of the revolution. But again we ask, what is left of the Anarchist when once he rejects the "propaganda of deed"? A sentimental, visionary bourgeois—nothing more.
- ↑ In order to obtain some idea of the weakness of the bourgeois-theorists and politicians in their struggle against the Anarchists, it suffices to read the articles of C. Lombroso and A. Bérard in the Revue des Revues, 15th February, 1894, or the article of J. Bourdeau in the Revue de Paris, 15th March , 1894 The latter can only appeal to "human nature" which, he thinks, "will not be changed through the pamphlets of Kropotkine and the bombs of Ravacbol."
