Page:Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov - Anarchism and Socialism - tr. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1906).pdf/106



The "father of Anarchy," the "immortal" Proudhon, bitterly mocked at those people for whom the revolution consisted of acts of violence, the exchange of blows, the shedding of blood. The descendants of the "father," the modern Anarchists, understand by revolution only this brutally childish method. Everything that is not violence is a betrayal of the cause, a foul compromise with "authority." The scared bourgeosie does not know what to do against them. In the domain of theory they are absolutely impotent with regard to the Anarchists, who are their own enfants terribles. The bourgeoisie was the first to propagate the theory of laissez faire, of dishevelled individualism. Their most eminent philosopher of to-day, Herbert Spencer, is nothing but a conservative Anarchist. The "companions" are active and zealous persons, who carry the bourgeois reasoning to its logical conclusion.

The magistrates of the French bourgeois Republic have condemned Grave to prison, and his book, "La Société Mourante et l'Anarchie" to destruction. The bourgeois men of letters declare this puerile book a profound work, and its author a man of rare intellect.

And not only has the bourgeoisie no theoretical weapons