Truly we understand that not everyone can bring the same amount of resistance to bear in the struggle, the same degree of energy in combating existing institutions. Temperaments and characters are not all moulded alike. The difficulties are so great, poverty so severe, persecutions so multiplied, that we comprehend how there must be degrees in efforts towards the propaganda of what is admitted to be true and just. But acts are always in proportion to the impulse received and the intensity of one’s faith in his beliefs. Very often one may be deterred by considerations of one’s family, one’s relations, or the necessities of earning one’s daily bread; but whatever be the force of these considerations, if one is really a man they will never go so far as to make him swallow all the infamies that spread out before his eyes. There comes a time when one sends considerations to the devil, remembering that he is a man and that he had dreamed of something better than what he has been compelled to submit to. —He who is incapable of making any sacrifice for the principles he claims to profess, does not really believe in them at all; he decorates himself with the label merely for show, because at some time it looked well, or because he pretends to justify certain vices, by the help of these principles: beware of taking him into confidence—he will deceive you.
As to those who seek to profit by existing institutions, ostensibly for the purpose of aiding the propaganda of new ideas, they are ambitious knaves who flatter the future in order to enjoy the present in peace.
It is, then, quite plain that our ideas are not immediately realizable; we do not hesitate to admit it. But they will become so through the energy exerted by those who will understand them. The greater the intensity of the propaganda the nearer the hour of realization. It is not by yielding to existing institutions that we shall do battle with them, nor yet by hiding our light under a bushel. To fight these institutions, to work for the advancement of new ideas we must have energy; this energy can come from nothing but conviction. Those, then, who already have the conviction must find their men and labor to impart it to them.
Reforms being inapplicable, as we think we have shown, it would hence be conscious deception to recommend them to the workers. Furthermore we know that the force of circumstances will infallibly drive the workers to a revolution: crises, enforced idleness, the development of machinery, political complications, all conspire to throw the workers upon the street, and compel them to revolt in order to affirm their right to existence. Now, since the revolution is inevitable and all reforms illusory, nothing remains but to prepare for the struggle; that is what we are doing by moving directly towards our object, leaving to the ambitious the business of carving out positions and sinecures for themselves from the misery they pretend they would assuage.
Just here, however, we anticipate an objection: “If you recognize that your ideas are not yet ready to be put in practice,” it will be said, “are you not preaching abnegation to the present generation for the sake of future generations, in asking them to strive for an idea whose immediate realization you cannot guarantee to them?” In nowise do we preach abnegation; we merely refuse to delude ourselves as to the facts, nor are we willing to encourage enthusiasts in deceiving themselves. We take the facts as they are, analyze and set them forth thus:—A class which owns all and is unwilling to give up anything on the one side; on the other side a class which produces all, possesses nothing, and has no other alternative than a cowardly cringing to its exploiters, slavishly waiting for them to throw it a bone to gnaw, having no longer dignity, pride, or any quality which uplifts human character, or else to revolt and imperatively demand what is refused to all its genuflections. For those who think only of their own personality, those who want to enjoy themselves at any price and no matter how, there is nothing pleasant in the alternative. We would advise all such to yield to the exactions of present society, to try to chip out their own little niche, not to look where they plant their feet, not to be afraid of crushing those who hinder them; such people have nothing in common with us. But to those who think they can be really free only when their liberty ceases to trammel the liberty of the weakest of their fellows; to those who cannot be happy until they know that the pleasures in which they delight have not cost some disinherited one his tears, to them we say that there is no abnegation on the part of anyone who recognizes that one must struggle to be free.
We proclaim this material fact, that there can be no enfranchisement of humanity save through the application of our principles; it rests with humanity to decide whether it will free itself completely, at one stroke, or whether there must forever be a privileged minority which will profit by all its progress at the expense of those who are dying of want while producing for others. Shall we be the ones to see the morning shine? Will it be the present generation, or that which follows it or a still later one? We do not know, we do not care; it will be those who will have enough
