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class, and the Anarchism of those revolutionists who have rendered more or less crazy by the cruelties and revolting injustice of our present "law and order." In fact, this latter class of Anarchists hate us more than they hate the other class of Anarchists, or anybody. If they were paid by Bismarck, or Czar Alexander III., or Jay Gould for destroying our organization, they could not more efficiently go about it than they really do. Their actions stultify their teachings, and vice versa. They conspire with the least enlightened and most pliant elements against us, the only apostles of a better future.
We do not in the least deny that we have little hope for an entirely peaceful renewal of society and politics, and that we may have to fight for the redemption of the working class from the threatening complete thraldom. But that war must be forced upon us—we try our best efforts to avoid it, and though this may be impossible in most of the European States, we must and do consider it possible in the United States, and wherever freedom of speech and of the press, the right to peacefully assemble and organize, and universal suffrage (inclusive of the suffrage of women) are not curtailed by existing laws. We are fully outspoken in our ideas and aims, all our working for redemption is above board, we shun secret organization for our purposes. Our platform of principles, which will be found at the conclusion of this treatise, means what it professes, no more, no less.
We, therefore, protest against being confounded and in any way identified with Anarchists of any type; we are the implacable enemies of all anarchism. And, if we are sometimes designated as Communists, we wish it to be understood that our Communism is different from all other Communism in that we demand nothing in common but capital—the great means of labor (land, buildings, machines, money) because all capital has been and is partly a gratuitous gift of Nature to all, partly being created by the labor of all mankind, and nothing can reasonably be private property but the full proceeds of one’s own labor, as agreed upon by common compromise. Our Communism is not sectarian, but truly universal, and compatible with the highest degree of liberty which is at all attainable. The most correct term for our Communism would, perhaps, be Collectivism, as it is now called in France. As regards the term Nihilism, we have to state that, even in Russia, what was, half a century ago, stigmatized as Nihilism, is no longer in existence, but supplanted by either practical Anarchism of a propagandistic kind, or revolutionary conspiracy of all classes, as far as their reflection has begun.
Finally, as may be gathered from our platform, we are a propagandistic organization which goes hand in hand with the great labor movement that is now refermenting the society of the world; and
