This is what I call the psychology of the “gros lot” (the capital prize in a lottery, etc.).  Many workingmen imagine, in fact, that—­without doing anything to form themselves into a class-conscious party—­they will win some day the capital prize, the social revolution, just as the manna is said to have come down from heaven to feed the Hebrews.

Scientific socialism has pointed out that the transforming power decreases as we descend the scale from one process to another, that of revolution being less than that of evolution, and that of rebellion being less than that of revolution, and individual violence having the least of all.  And since it is a question of a complete transformation and, consequently, in its juridical, political and ethical organization, the process of transformation is more effective and better adapted to the purpose in proportion as its social character predominates over its individual character.

The individualist parties are individualists even in the daily struggle; socialism, on the contrary, is collectivist even in that, because it knows that the present organization does not depend upon the will of such or such an individual, but upon society as a whole.  And this is also one reason why charity, however generous it be, being necessarily personal and partial, can not be a remedy for the social, and thereby collective, question of the distribution of wealth.

In political questions, which leave the economico-social foundation untouched, it is possible to understand how, for instance, the exile of Napoleon III. or of the Emperor Don Pedro could inaugurate a republic.  But this transformation does not extend to the foundation of the social life, and the German Empire or the Italian Monarchy are, socially, bourgeois just the same as the French Republic or the North American Republic, because notwithstanding the political differences between them, they all belong to the same economico-social phase.

This is why the processes of evolution and revolution—­the only wholly social or collective processes—­are the most efficacious, while partial rebellion and, still more, individual violence have only a very feeble power of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social and anti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, and because they deny, in the very person whom they strike down, the principle with which they believe themselves animated—­the principle of respect for human life and of solidarity.

What is the use of hypnotizing oneself with phrases about “the propaganda of the deed” and “immediate action?”