“The anarchists propose to teach the people how to get along without government, as they already begin to learn how to get along without God.
“They will learn, likewise, how to get along without property-holders.
“No liberty without equality! No liberty in a society where the capital is centralized in the hands of a minority, which continually grows smaller.
“We believe that capital—the common patrimony of humanity, since it is the fruit of the co-operation of contemporaneous generations—ought to be placed at the service of all.
“We wish, in a word, equality—equality in fact, as corollary or rather as primordial condition of liberty. From each one according to his faculties, to each one according to his needs: that is what we wish sincerely, energetically.
“Wicked and insane as people call us, we demand bread for all, science for all, work for all; for all, also, independence and justice.”[148]
The anarchists believe in a kind of collectivism. Their ideal consists of independent communes united very loosely in a confederation. Of course, the confederation has no powers save such as are voluntarily granted it by each individual and during the time which it may please him to grant them. It is no government. It is simply combined action. There are groups and confederations within the communes based on similar principles.
The collectivists are French socialists and social democrats, who have adopted the views of the Germans, chiefly of Marx and Lassalle. Their opinions we will then discuss under the head of German socialism. It is here only necessary to give evidence of the fact that they build on German foundations; to mention their organizations and a few of their leaders.
If French expositions of collectivism are examined, it will be found that constant references are made to the German socialists and citations taken from their writings. Thus Malon, himself a collectivist, cites Depaepe’s presentation of international collectivism—and pretty much all collectivism and social democracy are to-day international; and Depaepe, in the passage quoted, states plainly that he has only given a more or less perfect résumé of Marx and Lassalle.[149] The French socialist who wrote the article for the London Times on French socialists, to which reference has already been made, mentions familiarly the names of Schäffle, Marx, and Lassalle. Émile de Laveleye, in his article in the Fortnightly Review on the “European Terror,”[150] follows Schäffle’s “Quintessence of Socialism” in explaining the system of the collectivists, and Schäffle simply presents German social democracy at its best. The international spirit of social democracy was illustrated in the marriage of two of Marx’s daughters to two French socialists, Longuet and Lafargue, the latter of whom translated his work, “Das Kapital,” into French.