by experience. Cabet, indeed, a revolutionist of ’48, founded a community in America under the name of Icaria, which was (and is, for it still exists) more nearly an approach to genuine Communism than any of the other communities which have owed their origin to Utopian Socialism. Of these communities there remains a word to be said as a warning to those who are young in the movement. Although as experiments in association something may be learned from them, their conditions of life have no claim to the title of Communism, which most unluckily has often been applied to them. Commun1sm can never be realised till the present system of Society has been destroyed by the workers taking hold of the political power. When that happens, it will mean that Communism is on the point of absorbing and transmuting Civilisation all the world over.
Footnotes
- In 1806, when owing to the rise in cotton he could not continue manufacturing, he stopped the mills and paid his people their full wages till he could go on again in four months’ time, a proceeding that cost him £7000.Back