e period; but these formulas, like the State itself, like every
political constitution, are but the product of human ignorance, the
mother of all fictions and phantasmagorias. At bottom it is always the
same. The main point is that Anarchist ("social") organisation could
only be discovered as the result of "many experiences." The reader will
see how much this is to be regretted.

The political constitution has an unquestionable influence upon the
social organisation; at any rate it calls it forth, for such is its
"fate" as revealed by Proudhon, master of Kantian philosophy and social
organisation. The most logical conclusion to be drawn therefrom is that
the partisans of social organisation must make use of the political
constitution in order to attain their end. But logical as this deduction
is, it is not to the taste of our author. For him it is but a
phantasmagoria of our brain. To make use of the political constitution
is to offer a burnt offering to the terrible god of authority, to take
part in the struggle of parties. Proudhon will have none of this. "No
more parties," he says; "no more authority, absolute liberty of the man
and the citizen--in three words, such is our political and social
profession of faith."[19]

Every class-struggle is a political struggle. Whosoever repudiates the
political struggle by this very act, gives up all part and lot in the
class-struggle. And so it was with Proudhon. From the beginning of the
Revolution of 1848 he preached the reconciliation of classes. Here
_e.g._, is a passage from the Circular which he addressed to his
electors in Doubs, which is dated 3rd April of this same year: "The
social question is there; you cannot escape from it. To solve it we must
have men who combine extreme Radicalism of mind with extreme
Conservatism of mind. Workers, hold out your hands to your employers;
and you, employers, do not deliberately repulse the advances of those
who were your wage-earners."

The man whom Proudhon believed to combine this extreme Radicalism of
mind with extreme Conservatism of mind, was himself--P. J. Proudhon.
There was, on the one hand, at the bottom of this belief, a "fiction,"
common to all Utopians who imagine they can rise above classes and their
struggles, and naively think that the whole of the future history of
humanity will be confined to the peaceful propagation of their new
gospel. On the other hand, this tendency to combine Radicalism and
Conservatism sho