Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term
of social development,--the THESIS; property, the reverse of communism,
is the second term,--the ANTITHESIS. When we have discovered the third
term, the SYNTHESIS, we shall have the required solution. Now, this
synthesis necessarily results from the correction of the thesis by the
antithesis. Therefore it is necessary, by a final examination of their
characteristics, to eliminate those features which are hostile to
sociability. The union of the two remainders will give us the true form
of human association.

% 2.--Characteristics of Communism and of Property.

I. I ought not to conceal the fact that property and communism have been
considered always the only possible forms of society. This deplorable
error has been the life of property. The disadvantages of communism are
so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence
to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice
which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and
repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral
torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect
which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and
stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning,
unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and
condemned communism by an irrevocable decree.

The authorities and examples cited in its favor disprove it. The
communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus
employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus
enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports
and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau--confounding communism and equality--has
said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of
conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last
the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries. In those
of the Jesuits of Paraguay, the condition of the blacks is said by all
travellers to be as miserable as that of slaves; and it is a fact that
the good Fathers were obliged to surround themselves with ditches and
walls to prevent their new converts from escaping. The followers
of Baboeuf--guided by a lofty horror of property rather than by any
definite belief--were ruined by exaggeration of their principles; the
St. Simonians, lumping communism and ineq