founded on the distinction of thine and mine, it supposes the
legitimacy of the facts described and classified by political
economy. The theories of public and international law, with all
the varieties of representative government, are also false, since
they rest on the principle of individual appropriation and the
absolute sovereignty of wills.

All these consequences socialism accepts. To it, political
economy, regarded by many as the physiology of wealth, is but the
organization of robbery and poverty; just as jurisprudence,
honored by legists with the name of written reason, is, in its
eyes, but a compilation of the rubrics of legal and official
spoliation,--in a word, of property. Considered in their
relations, these two pretended sciences, political economy and
law, form, in the opinion of socialism, the complete theory of
iniquity and discord. Passing then from negation to affirmation,
socialism opposes the principle of property with that of
association, and makes vigorous efforts to reconstruct social
economy from top to bottom; that is, to establish a new code, a
new political system, with institutions and morals diametrically
opposed to the ancient forms.

Thus the line of demarcation between socialism and political
economy is fixed, and the hostility flagrant.

Political economy tends toward the glorification of selfishness;
socialism favors the exaltation of communism.

The economists, saving a few violations of their principles, for
which they deem it their duty to blame governments, are optimists