nt, whom they do
not wish to bring into bad odour by seeming hostile to the opinions of
the majority. The State, however, wants to hold them in still tighter
control by seizing every opportunity of nationalising and socialising
them more completely.

The State wants also to destroy all large associations, and to absorb
their activities. The state purchase of a railway, for instance, is, in
the first place, a means of exploiting the company; for there is always
a hope that the State will be able to filch something out of the
transaction; but its chief recommendation lies in the fact that it
suppresses a whole army of the company's officials and employees, who
were under no obligation to please the Government, and who had no other
interest but to do their work properly. The State will thus transform
this free population into government employees, whose primary duty is to
be docile and subservient.

Under the extreme form and under the complete form of this regime, that
is to say under socialism, everyone will be a government official.

Consequently, say the Socialist theorists, all the alleged drawbacks
above mentioned will disappear. The State, the democracy, the dominant
party, whatever you choose to call it, will no longer be obliged to
select its servants, as you say it does, by reason of their subservience
and their incompetence, because every citizen will be an official. Thus
too will disappear that dual social system, under which half the
population lives on the State, while the other half is independent, and
prides itself on its superiority in character, in intelligence and in
efficiency. Socialism solves the problem.

I do not agree. Under socialism, the electoral system, and, therefore,
the party system will still exist. The citizens will choose the
legislators, the legislators will choose the Government, and the
Government will choose the directors of labour and the distributors of
the means of subsistence. Parties, that is, combinations of interests,
will still exist, and each party will want to capture the legislature in
order to secure the election, from its own number, of the directors of
labour and the distributors of the means of subsistence. These directors
and distributors will be the new aristocrats of socialism, and they will
be expected to arrange "soft jobs" and ampler rations for the members of
their own group or party.

Except that wealth and the last vestiges of liberty have been
suppressed