ly disorganised, where there
is still such ignorance and confusion on all economic and political
subjects; where, with the exception, among the larger Socialist
organisations, of the Social-Democratic Federation (and even among the
younger S.D.F. members there is a vague sort of idea that Anarchism is
something fine and revolutionary), there has been no little coquetting
with Anarchism under an impression that it was very "advanced," and
where the Old Unionist cry of "No politics!" has unconsciously played
the reactionary Anarchist game. We cannot afford to overlook the fact
that the Socialist League became in time--when some of us had left
it--an Anarchist organisation, and that since then its leaders have
been, or still are, more or less avowed Anarchists. While quite recently
the leader of a "new party"--and that a would-be political one!--did not
hesitate to declare his Anarchist sympathies or to state that "The
methods of the Anarchists might differ from those of the Socialists, but
that might only prove that the former were more zealous than the
latter."

It is also necessary to point out once again that Anarchism and
Nihilism have no more in common than Anarchism and Socialism. As
Plechanoff said at the Zurich International Congress: "We (_i.e._, the
Russians) have had to endure every form of persecution, every thinkable
misery; but we have been spared one disgrace, one humiliation; we, at
least, have no Anarchists." A statement endorsed and emphasised by other
Russian revolutionists, and notably by the American delegate, Abraham
Cahan--himself a Russian refugee. The men and women who are waging their
heroic war in Russia and in Poland against Czarism have no more in
common with Anarchism than had the founders of the modern Socialist
movement--Carl Marx and Frederick Engels.

This little book of Plechanoff will assuredly convince the youngest even
that under any circumstances Anarchism is but another word for reaction;
and the more honest the men and women who play this reactionist game,
the more tragic and dangerous it becomes for the whole working class
movement.

Finally, there is a last reason why the issuing of this work at the
present moment is timely. In 1896 the next International Socialist and
Trade Union Congress meets in London. It is well that those who may
attend this great Congress as delegates, and that the thousands of
workers who will watch its work, should understand why the resolutions
arri