ions, and considering further the practical side
of expropriation, of which we shall speak in the following chapters, we
are convinced that our first obligation, when the revolution shall have
broken the power upholding the present system, will be to realize
Communism without delay.

But ours is neither the Communism of Fourier and the Phalansteriens, nor
of the German State Socialists. It is Anarchist Communism, Communism
without government--the Communism of the Free. It is the synthesis of
the two ideals pursued by humanity throughout the ages--Economic and
Political Liberty.

II

In taking "Anarchy" for our ideal of political organization we are only
giving expression to another marked tendency of human progress. Whenever
European societies have developed up to a certain point, they have
shaken off the yoke of authority and substituted a system founded more
or less on the principles of individual liberty. And history shows us
that these periods of partial or general revolution, when the old
governments were overthrown, were also periods of sudden, progress both
in the economic and the intellectual field. So it was after the
enfranchisement of the communes, whose monuments, produced by the free
labour of the guilds, have never been surpassed; so it was after the
great peasant uprising which brought about the Reformation and
imperilled the papacy; and so it was again with the society, free for a
brief space, which was created on the other side of the Atlantic by the
malcontents from the Old world.

And, if we observe the present development of civilized nations, we see,
most unmistakably, a movement ever more and more marked tending to limit
the sphere of action of the Government, and to allow more and more
liberty to the individual. This evolution is going on before our eyes,
though cumbered by the ruins and rubbish of old institutions and old
superstitions. Like all evolutions, it only waits a revolution to
overthrow the old obstacles which block the way, that it may find free
scope in a regenerated society.

After having striven long in vain to solve the insoluble problem--the
problem of constructing a government "which will constrain the
individual to obedience without itself ceasing to be the servant of
society," men at last attempt to free themselves from every form of
government and to satisfy their need for organization by free contacts
between individuals and groups pursuing the same aim. The independe