broken authority of the King and his camarilla. We see how they laboured to build up a powerful centralised State, and thus to consolidate the property they acquired during or through the Revolution, as well as their full right to enrich themselves with the underpaid work of the poorer classes. We study the development and the struggle of these two powers, and try to find out why the latter gained the upper hand over the former.
And then we see how the centralised State, created by the Jacobinist middle classes, prepared the way for the autocratic Empire of Napoleon I. We see how, half a century later, Napoleon III. found in the dreams of those who meant to create a centralised Republic the necessary elements for his Second Empire. And we understand how this centralised authority, which for seventy years in succession killed in France every local effort and every personal effort made outside the State hierarchy, remains till now the curse of the country. The first effort to be free from it was only made in 1871 by the Paris Communalist proletarians.
It is thus seen how in this domain, too, our comprehension of history and the conclusions we draw therefrom are quite different from the comprehension and the historical conclusions of both the middle-class and the Socialist political parties.
Without entering here into an analysis of the different revolutionary movements, it is sufficient to say that our conception of the coming social revolution is quite different from that of a Jacobin dictatorship, or the transformation of social institutions effected by a Convention, a Parliament, or a dictator. Never has a revolution been brought about on those lines; and if the present working-class movement takes this form, it will be doomed to have no lasting result.
On the contrary, we believe that if a revolution begins, it must take the form of a widely spread popular movement, during which movement, in every town and village invaded by the insurrectionary spirit, the masses set themselves to the work of reconstructing society on new lines. The people—both the peasants and the town workers—must themselves begin the constructive work, on more or less Communist principles, without waiting for schemes and orders from above. From the very beginning of the movement they must contrive to house and to feed every one, and then set to work to produce what is necessary to feed, house, and clothe all of them.
They may not be—they are sure not to be—the majority of
