Excerpt from The Socialism of Today

No apology is needed for bringing before English readers a translation of a work by so eminent a writer and so profound a thinker as M. de Laveleye, upon so important a question of the day as Socialism. The term Socialist is an exceedingly elastic one. It has been used to include a revolutionary anarchist, like Bakunin, who seeks to destroy, by any and every means, all States and all institutions, and to eradicate utterly the very idea of authority, as well as a constructive statesman of the conservative type, like Prince Bismarck, whose aim is to concentrate much power and many functions in the hands of a paternal government. There are Tory and Radical Socialists, State and Communal Socialists, Christian and Atheist Socialists, Socialists who are Collectivists, Communists, or Anarchists, Socialists of the Chair, and "Socialists of the Pothouse." Other shades and subdivisions might easily be added, but under one or other of its numerous forms, Socialism is daily gaining fresh adherents in almost all civilized countries. The recruits of even the more extreme sections arc, moreover, no longer confined to the ranks of the uneducated or the non-propertied classes.

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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Socialism of Today (Classic Reprint) (Emile de Laveleye)