Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Modern Science and Anarchism (1912).pdf/63

 be the ehare of Talent. However, most of the Internationalists saw in this part of Fourier's ideas a mere concession to the reaction that reigned during his lifetime; at any rate, they treated them as a point which did not affect the more essential portions of his scheme, which were the following:—

1. The Commune—i.e., a small territorial unit—is to be considered as the basis of the new Socialist society.

2. It is the depositary of all the commodities produced in the surrounding locality, and the intermediary for exchange. It represents also the association of consumers, and very probably in most cases it will also be the producing unit (which may, however, also be a professional, and not a territorial group, or a federation of producing groups).

3. These Communes freely federate, in order to constitute the Federation, the Region, or the Nation.

4. Labour must be rendered attractive. No solution whatever of the Social question is possible, so long as this has not been achieved. And to attain this is quite possible.

5. To maintain harmony in such communities, no coercion is necessary. The influence of public opinion alone will do.

As to how distribution would take place in each Commune, the working men of the International considered that this must be settled by the Commune itself, which may introduce the Communist principle, "to each one according to his needs," or adopt some system of remuneration by results. This solution, which left to each Commune the choice of the system of remuneration, was the essence of what was known among the Latin nations as "Collectivism"—in opposition to the authoritarian Communism of the Babeuf schools.

And finally, as to how the present society could pass over to a Socialist one, it was almost unanimously recognised by the workers that the time is soon coming when a new revolution, much deeper and more universal than that of 1848, would break out; and then the workers would do all in their power to dispossess Capital of its present monopolies.

This, then, was the ground upon which the Anarchist ideas were going to develop within the International.

One sees from the above sketch how the Jacobinist ideas—centralist and authoritarian—intermingled in the International with ideas of local independence and federation. Both were legacies of the Great French Revolution. If the centralist ideas were handed down directly from the Jacobinists of 1793 and the conspiracy of Babeuf, through the secret Communist organisations