It is the antagonisms which are the principal cause of progress
(Marx). But it is equally true, notwithstanding, that in this unstable
organization, in which is given to us the inevitable form of domination
and subjection, intelligence is always developed not only unequally, but
quite imperfectly, incongruously and partially. There has been and there
is still in society what we may call a hierarchy of intelligence,
sentiments and conceptions. To suppose that men, always and in all
cases, have had an approximately clear consciousness of their own
situation, and of what was the most rational thing to do, is to suppose
the improbable and, indeed, the unreal.

Forms of law, political acts and attempts at social organization were,
and they still are, sometimes fortunate, sometimes mistaken, that is to
say, disproportionate and unsuitable. History is full of errors; and
this means that if all was necessary, granted the relative intelligence
of those who have to solve a difficulty or to find a solution for a
given problem, etc., if everything in it has a sufficient reason, yet
everything in it was not reasonable, in the sense which the optimists
give to this word. To state it more fully, the determined causes of all
changes, that is to say the modified economic conditions, have ended and
end by causing to be found, sometimes through tortuous ways, the
suitable forms of law, the appropriate political orders and the more or
less perfect means of social adjustment. But it must not be thought that
the instinctive wisdom of the reasoning animal has been manifested, or
is manifested, definitely and simply, in the complete and clear
understanding of all situations, and that we have left only the very
simple task of following the deductive road from the economic situation
to all the rest. Ignorance--which, in its turn, may be explained--is an
important reason for the manner in which history is made; and, to
ignorance we must add the brutishness which is never completely subdued
and all the passions, and all the injustices, and the various forms of
corruption, which were and are the necessary product of a society
organized in such a way, that the domination of man over man in it is
inevitable, and that from this domination falsehood, hypocrisy,
presumption and baseness were and are inseparable. We may, without being
utopians, but simply because we are critical communists, foresee, as we
do in fact foresee, the coming of a society which,