CHAPTER I. THE JACOBIN PARTY
I. The Doctrine.
Program of the Jacobin party.—Abstract principle and
spontaneous development of the theory.
Nothing is more dangerous than a general idea in narrow and empty minds: as they are empty, it finds no knowledge there to interfere with it; as they are narrow it is not long before it occupies the place entirely. Henceforth they no longer belong to themselves but are mastered by it; it works in them and through them, the man, in the true sense of the word, being possessed. Something which is not himself, a monstrous parasite, a foreign and disproportionate conception, lives within him, developing and giving birth to the evil purposes with which it is pregnant. He did not foresee that he would have them; he did not know what his dogma contained, what venomous and murderous consequences were to issue from it. They issue from it fatally, each in its turn, and under the pressure of circumstances, at first anarchical consequences and now despotic consequences. Having obtained power, the Jacobin brings his fixed idea along with him; whether at the head of the government or in opposition to it, this idea is fruitful, and the all-powerful dogma projects over a new domain the innumerable links of its endless chain.
II. A Communist State.
The Jacobin concept of Society.—The Contrat-Social.—Total
surrender of the Individual to the Community.—Everything
belongs to the State.—Confiscations and Sequestrations.
—Pre-emption and requisition and requisition of produce and
merchandise.—Individuals belong to the State.—Drafts of
persons for Military service.—Drafts of persons for the
Civil service.—The State philanthropist, educator,
theologian, moralist, censor and director of ideas and
intimate feelings.
Let us trace this inward development and go back, along with the Jacobin, to first principles, to the original pact, to the first organization of society. There is but one just and sound society, the one founded on the "contrat-social," and