sts take shape within society; in the course of its
development these antagonisms lead to rank and class contrasts, and
these, in turn, grow into enmities between the several groups of
interests, and finally into rank and class struggles, that threaten the
existence of the new social order. In order to keep down these rank and
class struggles, and to protect the property-holders, an organization is
requisite that parries the assaults on property, and that pronounces
"legal and sacred" the property obtained under certain forms. _This
organization and power, that guards and upholds property, is the State._
Through the enactment of laws it secures the owner in his ownership, and
it steps as judge and avenger before him who assails the established
order. By reason of its innermost being, the interest of a ruling
property class, and of the Government therewith connected, is ever
conservative. The organization of the State changes only when the
interest of property so demands. The State is, accordingly, the
_inevitably necessary_ organization of a social order that rests upon
class rule. The moment class antagonisms fall through the abolition of
private property, the State loses both the _necessity_ and the
_possibility_ for its existence. With the removal of the conditions for
rulership, the State gradually ceases to be, the same as creeds wane
when the belief ceases in supernatural beings, or in transcendental
powers gifted with reason. Words must have sense; if they lose that they
cease to convey ideas.

"Yes," interjects at this point a capitalist-minded reader, "that is all
very well, but by what 'legal principle' can society justify such a
change?" The legal principle is the same that ever prevailed, whenever
it was the question of changes and reforms,--_public policy_. Not the
State, but society is the source of right; the State is but the
committee of Society, authorized to administer and dispense right.
Hitherto, "Society" has been a small minority; yet it acted in the name
of the whole community (the people) by pronouncing itself "Society,"
much as Louis XIV. pronounced himself the "State,"--"_L'etat c'est moi_"
(I am the State). When our newspapers announce: "The season begins;
society is returning to the city," or "The season has closed; society is
rushing to the country," they never mean the people, but only the upper
ten thousand, who constitute "Society" as they constitute the "State."
The masses are "plebs," "