ety, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there
is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class
rule and the individual struggle for existence based on our present
anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from
these are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special
repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by
virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative
of the whole of society, the taking possession of the means of
production in the name of society, this is, at the same time, its last
independent act as a State. State interference in social relations
becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of
itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of
things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not
'abolished.' _It dies out._"[31]

FOOTNOTES:

[16] For all these quotations see the preface to the third edition of
the "Confessions d'un Revolutionnaire." This preface is simply an
article reprinted from the _Voix du Peuple_, November, 1849. It was not
till 1849 that Proudhon began to "expound" his Anarchist theory. In
1848, _pace_ Kropotkine, he only expounded his theory of exchange, as
anyone can see for himself by reading the sixth volume of his complete
works (Paris, 1868). This "critique" of Democracy, written in March,
1848, did not yet expound his Anarchist theory. This "critique" forms
part of his work, "Solution du Probleme Social," and Proudhon proposes
to bring about this solution "without taxes, without loans, without cash
payments, without paper-money, without maximum, without levies, without
bankruptcy, without agrarian laws, without any poor tax, without
national workshops, without association (!), without any participation
or intervention by the State, without any interference with the liberty
of commerce and of industry, without any violation of property," in a
word and above all, without any class war. A truly "immortal" idea and
worthy the admiration of all bourgeois, peace-loving, sentimental, or
bloodthirsty--white, blue, or red!

[17] "One, two, three; legerdemain isn't witchcraft."

[18] "Les Confessions d'un Revolutionnaire." Vol. ix., 1868 edition of
the complete works of Proudhon, pages 166 and 167.

[19] "Confessions," pp. 25-26.

[20] He is speaking of the two papers _Le Peuple_ and _Le Representant
du Peuple_, w