66 



to deny the great utility of these conquests. 



But the sancta sanctorum always remained 

 impenetrable to the eyes of the crowd, and as 

 economic power continued to be the privilege 

 of the few, all the conquests, all the concessions, 

 were without real basis, separated as they were 

 from the solid and fructifying foundation 

 which can alone give life and durable force. 



Now that socialism has shown, even before 

 Marx, but never with so much scientific pre- 

 cision, that individual appropriation, private 

 ownership of land and of the means of pro- 

 duction, is the vital point of the question, the 

 problem is laid down in precise terms in the 

 consciousness of contemporary humanity. 



What method must be employed to abolish 

 this monopoly of economic power and the 

 mass of pains and evils, of hatred and iniquity, 

 which is the result of it ? 



The method of the "class struggle" setting 

 out from this positive datum that each class 

 tends to preserve and increase the advantages 

 and privileges acquired, teaches the class 

 deprived of economic power that in order to 

 conquer it, the struggle (we will concern our- 

 selves farther on with the mode of this 

 struggle) must be a struggle of class against 

 class and not of person against person. 



Hatred, the death of such or such in- 

 dividual belonging to the governing class, 

 does not advance by one step the solution of 

 the problem. It rather retards it because it 

 provokes a reaction in public feeling against 

 personal violence, and it violates the prin- 

 ciple of respect for the human being which 



