58), that the basis of my thought was ‘‘more socialistic
than is that of many other persons who imagine themselves
to be socialists, and who are persecuted as such.” My
book, in fact,Socialismo e criminalita, only made criticisms
on the revolutionary method of the Italian socialism of
that time, still stamped with nebulous romanticism. The
import of my criticisms was exaggerated, not without


27

fundamental needs, and the two poles of
life—and its means are almost solely muscular
force. In a subsequent phase is added the
struggle for political supremacy (in the class,
in the tribe, in the village, in the town, in the
state), and, more and more, muscular force is
replaced by intellectual force.
In the historic period Græco-Latin society
struggles for civil equality (abolition of
slavery) ; it triumphs, but does not stop
because life is a struggle; the society of the
middle ages struggles for religious equality,
gains it, but does not stop; and at the end
of the 18th century it struggles for political
equality. Should it now stop and rest
in its present state? To-day society
struggles for economic equality, not for
an absolutely material equality, but for
this more positive equality of which I have
spoken. And everything makes us foresee with
mathematical certainty that this victory will
be gained to give place to new struggles for
new ideals among our descendants.
reason, by conservatives more or less progressive; but
already (1883) I was at the bottom a socialist, and I shall
prove it in the second edition of Socialismo e criminalita.
