ish his ideal.

* * * * *

Just as Proudhon differed from the ready-made Socialism of his age by
a conception which he opposed to pauperism, so, too, he differed in
the method which he recommended should be adopted for the removal of
pauperism. He certainly accepted the proposition that poverty could
only be removed by the labourer receiving the entire result of his
labour, and that social reform must, accordingly, consist of an
organisation of labour. In this he was quite at one with Louis Blanc,
but only in this; for while Louis Blanc claimed for the organisation
of labour the full authority of the State, Proudhon desired it to
arise from the free initiative of the people, without the interference
of the State in any way. This is the parting of the roads between
Anarchism and authoritative Socialism; here they separate once for
all, never to meet again, except in the most violent opposition. This
was the starting-point of Proudhon's Anarchist views. The experiences
of the Revolution of 1848, which, from the social standpoint, failed
entirely, might well have fitted in with these views of his. Proudhon
had taken a very active part in the occurrences of this remarkable
year, as editor of the _People_, and as a representative of the
Department of the Seine, and in other capacities, and thought that the
cause of the fruitlessness of all attempts to solve the social problem
and to reap the fruits of the Revolution lay in the fact that the
Revolution had been initiated from above instead of from below, and
because the revolutionary principle had been installed in power, and
therefore had destroyed itself. But ultimately the opposition of
Proudhon to Blanc goes back to the fundamental difference alluded to
above.

Society, as Proudhon explains in his _Contradictions_, and as he
applies his doctrine of politics in his book called the _Confessions
of a Revolutionary_, written in prison in 1849, is essentially of a
dialectic nature and is founded upon opposites, which are all mingled
one with another, and the combinations of which are infinite. The
solution of the social problem he finds in placing the different
expressions of the problem no longer in contradiction but in their
"dialectic developments," so that for example the right to work, to
credit, and to assistance, rights whose realisation under an
antagonistic legislation is impossible or dangerous, gradually result
from an already esta