ved at by the Paris, Brussels, and Zurich International Congresses
with regard to the Anarchists should be enforced. The Anarchists who
cynically declare Workers' Congresses "absurd, motiveless, and
senseless" must be taught once and for all, that they cannot be allowed
to make the Congresses of the Revolutionary Socialists of the whole
world a playground for reaction and international spydom.

ELEANOR MARX AVELING.

Green Street Green, Orpington, Kent.
August, 1895.

ANARCHISM AND SOCIALISM

CHAPTER I

THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE UTOPIAN SOCIALISTS

The French Materialists of the 18th century while waging relentless war
against all the "_infames_" whose yoke weighed upon the French of this
period, by no means scorned the search after what they called "perfect
legislation," _i.e._, the best of all possible legislations, such
legislation as should secure to "human beings" the greatest sum of
happiness, and could be alike applicable to all existing societies, for
the simple reason that it was "perfect" and therefore the most
"natural." Excursions into this domain of "perfect legislation" occupy
no small place in the works of a d'Holbach and a Helvetius. On the other
hand, the Socialists of the first half of our century threw themselves
with immense zeal, with unequalled perseverance, into the search after
the best of possible social organisations, after a perfect social
organisation. This is a striking and notable characteristic which they
have in common with the French Materialists of the last century, and it
is this characteristic which especially demands our attention in the
present work.

In order to solve the problem of a perfect social organisation, or what
comes to the same thing, of the best of all possible legislation, we
must eventually have some criterion by the help of which we may compare
the various "legislations" one with the other. And the criterion must
have a special attribute. In fact, there is no question of a
"legislation" _relatively_ the best, _i.e._, _the best legislation under
given conditions_. No, indeed! We have to find a _perfect_ legislation,
a legislation whose perfection should have nothing relative about it,
should be entirely independent of time and place, should be, in a word,
absolute. We are therefore driven to make abstraction from history,
since everything in history is relative, everything depends upon
circumstance, time, and place. But abstraction made of the hi