Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/263

state of all domestic, civil, political, social, and religious rights, has not found it difficult to prove that communism, that is to say, governmentalism elevated to its highest power, is absurd and extravagant regarded in the point of view of these new sectaries. In effect, communism, considering the state as an absolute unity which concenters in itself all rights and absorbs all individuals, must necessarily consider it as in the highest degree representing the principle of solidarity, as unity and solidarity are one and the same thing viewed under two different aspects. Catholicism, the depositary of the dogma of solidarity, always derives this dogma from unity, through which it is alone possible, and which renders it necessary. Now, as the starting-point of socialism is precisely the negation of this dogma, it is clear that communism contradicts itself, since it denies it in theory and recognizes it in practice, denies it in its principles and affirms it in its applications. If the negation of the solidarity of the family brings with it the negation of the family, so the negation of political solidarity involves the negation of all government. This last negation proceeds equally from the idea held by socialism, that equality and liberty are common to all men alike, since this equality and this liberty cannot be conceived as limited by a government, but only by the free action and the free reaction that individuals naturally exercise upon each other. Mr. Proudhon is then consistent when he says, in his Confessions of a Revolutionist: "All men are free and equal. Society is then, as well by its nature as through the function for which it is destined, autonomous, that is to say, having the right of self-government. The sphere of activity of each citizen being determined by the natural division of work, and