By permission of “Le Rire”
The revolutionary socialists, like the anarchists, are high-minded dreamers, who are bent on procuring happiness for the human kind. Unlike the anarchists, they participate in elections, and do not desire the abolition of the state (as is indicated by their use of the word citoyen, which the anarchists abhor); but they do wish for the downfall of the present state (with whose bad faith and impotence they are thoroughly disgusted) as the first step towards setting up the socialistic state, and they hold collective revolt the most likely means of effecting this downfall; all of which, in troubled periods, amounts to very much the same thing practically as if they abjured the state altogether. Like the anarchists, they demand the abolition of private property, and they are opposed, like them, to charity (as the term is popularly understood), to patriotism, and to armies. Like the anarchists, furthermore (though this does not seem to be a logical necessity for either), they are violently opposed to the church; and they are (with less inevitableness than the anarchists in the same matter) more or less hostile to marriage.
M. BROUSSE[53]
They do not advocate the individual overt act of violence (though they often sympathise with it when committed), and, hoping for social salvation from social machinery, neglect the propaganda par l’exemple. With these exceptions their methods of propaganda are identical with those of the anarchists. They dispense the word orally, as the anarchists dispense it by means of mass meetings, punchs-conférences, soupes-conférences, matinées-conférences, ballades propagandistes, soirées familiales, and amateur theatricals, and have a similar penchant for the chanson populaire.
The socialists have their special books and brochures and ingenious methods of circulating them and their special propagandist press, which includes several dailies, as well as weeklies and monthlies,[54] and serves as a bond of union and a means of communication between individuals and groups; and they make a copious use of placards, manifestos, pictures, artistic posters, and souvenir postal cards.[55]
M. JAURÈS[56]