ABSTRACT
Without harking back to primitive Communism, a form of inferior development from which all societies have sprung, we may say that antiquity has experimented with all the forms of Socialism that are proposed to them. All the political revolutions in Greece were social revolutions, or revolutions with the object of changing the inequalities of conditions by despoiling the rich and oppressing the aristocracy. The Collectivist doctrines were exposed long ago in the Republic of Plato. Individual egoism has increased without a check on a basis of pessimistic indifference for all doctrines and general interests. The Romans suffered the experimental agrarian Socialism of the Gracchi, which limited the territorial property of each citizen, distributed the surplus among the poor, and obliged the State to nourish necessitous citizens. The Jews also were familiar with the demands of the Socialists. The imprecations of their prophets, the true anarchists of their times, were above all imprecations against riches.
