periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial, and artistic progress;
while the decay of these communal institutions came mainly
from the incapacity of men of combining the village with the
city, the peasant with the citizen, so as jointly to oppose the
growth of the military states, which destroyed the free
cities.

The history of mankind, thus understood, does not offer,
then, an argument against Communism. It appears, on the
contrary, as a succession of endeavours to realize some sort
of communist organization, endeavours which were crowned
here and there with a partial success of a certain duration;
and all we are authorized to conclude is, that mankind has
not yet found the proper form for combining, on commun-
istic principles, agriculture with a suddenly developed industry
and a rapidly growing international trade. The latter appears
especially as a disturbing element, since it is no longer indi-
viduals only, or cities, that enrich themselves by distant com-
merce and export; but whole nations grow rich at the cost
of those nations which lag behind in their industrial develop-
ment.

These conditions, which began to appear by the end of the
eighteenth century, took, however, their full development in
the nineteenth century only, after the Napoleonic wars came
to an end. And modern Communism has to take them into
account.

It is now known that the French Revolution, apart from
its political significance, was an attempt made by the French
people, in 1793 and 1794, in three different directions more
or less akin to Socialism. It was, first, the equalization of
fortunes, by means of an income tax and succession duties,
both heavily progressive, as also by a direct confiscation of the
land in order to sub-divide it, and by heavy war taxes levied
upon the rich only. The second attempt was a sort of Muni-
cipal Communism as regards the consumption of some objects
of first necessity, bought by the municipalities, and sold by
them at cost price. And the third attempt was to introduce
a wide national system of rationally established prices of all

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