ABSTRACT
The practice of agreements between cartels of owners and of workers tends to transform the ideas that formed the very basis of socialism. Participation in politics, in any form, is a great harm for socialism, because this participation leads men to give importance only to wheeling and dealing. The more easily the intelligent workers can obtain social positions that give them prestige among the bourgeoisie, the more the revolutionary spirit is extinguished. Socialist sentiment is extremely artificial. Socialism has something that is both instinctive and intellectual, while anti-Semitism is entirely instinctive. Socialism produces results of an entirely different value: it popularizes the idea of economic fatalism. In place of the vital competition between individual men, socialism substitutes the class struggle. It is easy to illustrate to any intelligent reader these general observations with many examples: the degeneration of socialism is accompanied everywhere by a moral decadence—at least in our democratic countries.
