roperty surpasses the
limits which can be properly cultivated, the holder should have no
right to claim the surplus for himself; it will fall to the share of
another worker." The Russian _mir_ is always before his thoughts as
the patron of peasant organisation. Nothing is more remarkable than
the affection of the Anarchist followers of Proudhon and Bakunin for
the Russian _mir_ system. It would be a meritorious piece of
sociological work to show the fundamental errors which underlie the
agricultural systems that have been tried and have failed in modern
attempts to revive them. The endeavour to revive them is now so
general that it is no longer to be wondered at that we see those who
are apparently most extreme, and even Anarchists, following the same
reactionary stream as the Socialist Catholics and their followers. The
folly of their proceedings is best seen in those people who angrily
reject a revival of the guilds, but by no means object to the revival
of the old village communism, which implies a far earlier stage of
development. We are, however, digressing, but must add one further
remark. The Anarchists are accustomed to say that their free economic
organisation will quite absorb and devour politics, authority, and
government, so that nothing of them remains; while, on the other hand,
they represent the _mir_ as the pattern of such an organisation. But
how comes it that, in the very country where the _mir_, this "just"
village communism, exists, in Russia itself, on the one hand famine is
never absent,[10] and on the other the Czar's bureaucracy and Cossack
tyranny flourish so exceedingly, and that the peasant population
itself is the most powerful support of the arbitrary rule of their
"Little Father," the Czar?

[10] This is seen, _inter alia_, by the number of persons
wandering about seeking food--"a vagabond proletariat." In
1886 no less than 4,951,000 were wandering more than thirty
versts from their dwellings. Even the women have to leave the
villages to seek support elsewhere, and the number of women
and children who thus are compelled to seek work at a
distance is increasing every year. Thus, _e. g._, in the
district of the Government of Wjatka, in 1874, 2.68 per
cent.; in 1883, 6.46 per cent.; in 1885, 7.22 per cent. of
the women capable of work did this. Often whole families
wander about, and women with children at the breast are no
uncommon sight among