99 



and mud, which reproduce in the Basilicate, 

 the quarters of the Roman helots, or in the 

 valley of the Po, the Australian aborigines' 

 huts.* 



No intelligent socialist has ever dreamt of 

 refusing to recognise all that the bourgeoisie 

 has done for human civilisation, or of tearing 

 out the pages of gold that it has written in 

 the history of the civilised world by its 

 national epics, its marvellous applications of 

 science to industry, and by the commercial 

 and intellectual relations it has developed 

 among the nations. 



These are definitive" conquests of human 

 progress, and socialism no more denies them 

 than it wishes to destroy them. It accords a 

 just tribute of gratitude to the noble pioneers 

 who have realised them. The attitude of 

 socialism with respect to the bourgeoisie might 

 be compared with that of atheists who do not 

 wish to refuse their admiration for, or to 

 destroy a picture of Raphael or a statue of 

 Michael Angelo, because these works of art 

 represent and give the seal of eternity to 

 religious legends. 



But socialism sees in the present bourgeois 

 civilisation, which has reached its decline, the 

 painful symptoms of an irremediable dissolu- 

 tion, and it claims that the social organism 

 must be delivered from its infectious venom, 

 and that can be done, not by freeing it from 

 such or such a bankrupt, from such or such a 



* My master, Pietro Ellero, has given in La Tirranide 

 borghese an eloquent description of this social and 

 political pathology as it concerns Italy. 



