isoned themselves. It was the very logic of their tactics that they
could not circumvent so small an obstacle as that inward-opening door.
It meant self-destruction. And that, of course, was exactly what
happened, as we know, to those who followed the vicious round of logic
from which Bakounin could not extricate himself. Their struggle for an
organized existence was brief, and at the end of the seventies it was
entirely over.

Naturally, the complete failure of all their projects did not improve
their temper, and they lost no opportunity to assail the Marxists. The
Jura _Bulletin_ of December 10, 1876, translated an article entitled
_Poco a Poco_, written by Andrea Costa, who labeled the "pacific"
socialists "apostles of conciliation and ambiguity." They wish, said
Costa, to march slowly on the road of progress. "Otherwise, indeed, what
would become of them and their newspapers? For them the field of
fruitful study and of profound observations on the phenomena of
industrial life would be closed. For the journalists the means of
earning money would have likewise disappeared.... Finding the
satisfaction of their own aspirations in the present state of misery,
they end by becoming, often without wishing it, profoundly egotistic and
bad.... While calling themselves socialists, they are more dangerous
than the declared enemies of the popular cause."[11] About this time a
new journal appeared at Florence under the name of _l'Anarchia_ and
announced the following program: "We are not _armchair (Katheder)
socialists_. We will speak a simple language in order that the
proletariat may understand once for all what road it must follow in
order to arrive at its complete emancipation. _L'Anarchia_ will fight
without truce not only the exploiting bourgeoisie, but also _the new
charlatans of socialism_, for the latter are the most dangerous enemies
of the working class."[12]

The following year Kropotkin wrote two articles in the _Bulletin_, July
22 and 29, which vigorously attacked socialist parliamentary tactics.
"At what price does one succeed in leading the people to the ballot
boxes?" he asks in the first article. "Have the frankness to
acknowledge, gentlemen politicians, that it is by inculcating this
illusion, that in sending members to parliament the people will succeed
in freeing themselves and in bettering their lot, that is to say, by
telling them what one knows to be an absolute lie. It is certainly not
for the pleasure