all the
advantage would accrue solely to the most crafty and the least
scrupulous.

Our aim must be the abolition of private ownership and the establishment
of collective and social ownership in land and the means of production.
This substitution cannot be the subject for a decree,--though the
intention to effect it by a decree is attributed to us--but it is in
course of accomplishment under our eyes, every day, from hour to hour,
directly or indirectly.

Directly, because civilization shows us the continuous substitution of
public ownership and social functions for private ownership and
individual functions. Roads, postal systems, railways, museums, city
lighting-plants, water-plants, schools, etc., which were only a few
years since private properties and functions, have become social
properties and functions. And it would be absurd to imagine that this
direct process of socialization is destined to come to a halt to-day,
instead of becoming progressively more and more marked, in accordance
with every tendency of our modern life.

Indirectly, since it is the outcome toward which the economic
individualism of the bourgeoisie tends. The bourgeois class, which takes
its name from the dwellers in the _bourgs_ (towns) which the feudal
chateau and the Church--symbols of the class then dominant--protected,
is the result of fecund labor intelligently directed toward its goal and
of historical conditions which have changed the economic structure and
tendency of the world (the discovery of America, for instance). This
class achieved its revolution in the end of the eighteenth century, and
conquered the political power. In the history of the civilized world, it
has inscribed a page in letters of gold by those wondrous developments
in the lives of nations that are truly epic in character, and by its
marvelous applications of science to industry ... but it is now
traversing the downward branch of the parabola, and symptoms are
appearing which announce to us--and offer proof of their
announcement--its dissolution; without its disappearance, moreover, the
advent and establishment of a new social phase would be impossible.

Economic individualism carried out to its ultimate logical consequences,
necessarily causes the progressive multiplication of property in hands
of a constantly diminishing number of persons. _Milliardaire_
(billionaire) is a new word, which is characteristic of the nineteenth
century, and this new word serves