ery has had its time;
that it is condemned to disappear; and that all requisites of production
must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in
common by the producers of wealth. And, in common with the most advanced
representatives of political Radicalism, they maintain that the ideal of
the political organisation of society is a condition of things where the
functions of government are reduced to a minimum, and the individual
recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfying, by
means of free groups and federations--freely constituted--all the
infinitely varied needs of the human being. As regards Socialism, most
of the Anarchists arrive at its ultimate conclusion, that is, at a
complete negation of the wage-system, and at Communism. And with
reference to political organisation, by giving a farther development to
the above-mentioned part of the Radical programme, they arrive at the
conclusion that the ultimate aim of society is the reduction of the
functions of governments to _nil_--that is, to a society without
government, to Anarchy. The Anarchists maintain, moreover, that such
being the ideal of social and political organisation they must not
remit it to future centuries, but that only those changes in our social
organisation which are in accordance with the above double ideal, and
constitute an approach to it, will have a chance of life and be
beneficial for the commonwealth."[62]

Kropotkine here reveals to us, with admirable clearness, the origin and
nature of his "Ideal." This Ideal, like that of Bakounine, is truly
"double;" it is really born of the connection between bourgeois
Radicalism, or rather that of the Manchester school, and Communism; just
as Jesus was born in connection between the Holy Ghost and the Virgin
Mary. The two natures of the Anarchist ideal are as difficult to
reconcile as the two natures of the Son of God. But one of these natures
evidently gets the better of the other. The Anarchists "want" to begin
by immediately realising what Kropotkine calls "the ultimate aim of
society," that is to say, by destroying the "State." Their starting
point is always the unlimited liberty of the individual. Manchesterism
before everything. Communism only comes in afterwards.[63] But in order
to reassure us as to the probable fate of this second nature of their
Ideal, the Anarchists are constantly singing the praises of the wisdom,
the goodness, the forethought of th