ble and even necessary the elimination of
classes,--the association which does not produce commodities, and that
this form of society is no longer the State, but its opposite, that is
to say, the technical and pedagogical administration of human society,
the self-government of labor. Behind the Jacobins are the gigantic
heroes of 1793 and their caricatures of 1848.

_Social democracy!_ But is not that, say some, an evident attenuation of
the communist doctrine as it is formulated in the Manifesto in terms so
ringing and so decisive?

This is not the moment to recall that the phrase _social democracy_ has
had in France many significations from 1837 to 1848, all of which were
based upon a vague sentimentalism. Neither is it necessary to explain
how the Germans have been able in this nomenclature to sum up all the
rich and vast development of their socialism from the episode of
Lassalle now passed over and transformed up to our own days. It is
certain that _social democracy_ can signify, has signified and signifies
many things which have not been, are not, and never will be, either
critical communism or the conscious march toward the proletarian
revolution. It is also certain that contemporary socialism even in the
countries where its development is most advanced, carries with it a
great deal of dross which it throws off little by little along the road.
It is certain also, in fine, that this broad designation of social
democracy serves as an escutcheon and a buckler to many intruders. But
here we need to fix our attention only upon certain points of capital
importance.

We must insist upon the second term of the expression in order to avoid
any equivocation. Democratic was the constitution of the _Communist
League_; democratic was its fashion of welcoming and discussing each new
teaching; democratic was its intervention in the revolution of 1848 and
its participation in the rebellious resistance against the invasion of
reaction; democratic finally was the very way in which the League was
dissolved. In this first type of our present parties, in this first cell
so to speak, of our complex organism, elastic and highly developed,
there was not only the consciousness of the mission to be accomplished
as precursor, but there was already the form and the method of
association which alone are suitable for the first initiators of the
proletarian revolution. It was no longer a sect; that form was already,
in fact, outgrown. The