Socialismo O Monopolismo

Image::1 We would call the attention of those among our readers who know Italian, to the above work, just published by our comrade S. Merlino. It is a most useful text-book of Anarchist Socialism, and we hope it may shortly make its appearance in English dress.

The author begins by pointing out that our present economic system, in spite of so-called free competition, and other delusive appearances of freedom, is founded upon monopoly. By monopoly he understands the individual appropriation of the wealth of the community by persons who make use of this property to obtain for themselves the fruits of other people's labor. The first part of the book describes the growth of this monopoly ; the second consists of an examination of the doctrines of the economist, and exposes current fallacies in relation to the private appropriation of wealth.

The third portion devoted to the evolution of Anarchist Communism. Our comrade exhibits this form of Socialism as the logical outcome of the progressive elements already at work within our existing society, and the only practical satisfaction for our present needs. He then deals with the stock objections of the admirers of things as they are ; e.g., the absence of any stimulus to exertion in a communistic society, the want of individuality which some folks imagine to be ell engendered by economic equality, etc. He contrasts with such futile objections the impracticability and uselessness of so-called practical reforms in economics and politics, considered as a means of bringing about a radical change in the basis of society ; and ends by affirming Anarchy as the scientific social ideal of our times.

B. Tucker, of Boston, Mass., is issuing in monthly parts a complete English edition of Proudhon's Works.

Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism
Vol. 1 -- No. 5,
FEBRUARY, 1887
Source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/journals/freedom/freedom1_5.html