ABSTRACT
Every government endeavors to support its power by a general ethical principle. The political forms in which the various social movements become crystallized also assume a philanthropic mask. The political forms in which the various social movements become crystallized also assume a philanthropic mask. The Commune was the first attempt, crowned by a transient success, at a proletarian-socialist government; and despite its communistic principles, and under the pressure of extreme financial stringency; the Commune respected the Bank of France as faithfully as could have done any syndicate of inexorable capitalists. In the violent struggle between the new class of those who are rising and the old stratum of those who are undergoing a decadence partly apparent and partly real—a struggle at times waged with dramatic greatness, who use them in order to mask their true aims.
