evolution_. Well, comrades, revolution, as a matter
of fact, accomplishes nothing. If you are not able to formulate, after
the revolution, by legislation, your legitimate demands, the revolution
will perish miserably like that of 1848. You will be the prey of the
most violent reaction and you will be forced anew to suffer years of
oppression and disgrace.

"What, then, are the means of execution that democracy will have to
employ in order to realize its ideas? Legislation by an individual
functions only to the advantage of that individual and his family.
Legislation by a group of capitalists, called representatives, serves
only the interests of this class. It is only by taking their interests
into their own hands, by direct legislation, that the people can ...
establish the reign of social justice. I insist, then, that you put on
the program of this congress the question of direct legislation by the
people."[11]

The forces led by Bakounin and Professor Hins, of Belgium, opposed any
consideration of this question. The latter, in elaborating the remarks
of Bakounin, declared: "They wish, they say, to accomplish, by
representation or direct legislation, the transformation of the present
governments, the work of our enemies, the bourgeois. They wish, in order
to do this, to enter into these governments, and, by persuasion, by
numbers, and by new laws, to establish a new State. Comrades, do not
follow this line of march, for we would perish in following it in
Belgium or in France as elsewhere. Rather let us leave these governments
to rot away and not prop them up with our morality. This is the reason:
the International is and must be a State within States. Let these States
march on as they like, even to the point where our State is the
strongest. Then, on their ruins, we will place ours, all prepared, all
made ready, such as it exists in each section."[12] The result of this
debate was that the father of direct legislation was not allowed time to
present his views, and it is significant that this first clash of the
congress resulted in a victory for the anarchists, despite all that
could be done by Liebknecht and the other socialists.

The chief question on the program was the consideration of the right of
inheritance. This was the main economic change desired by the Alliance.
For years Bakounin had advocated the abolition of the right of
inheritance as the most revolutionary of his economic demands. "The
right of inheri