This is not the moment to recall that the phrase _social democracy_ has had in France many significations from 1837 to 1848, all of which were based upon a vague sentimentalism. Neither is it necessary to explain how the Germans have been able in this nomenclature to sum up all the rich and vast development of their socialism from the episode of Lassalle now passed over and transformed up to our own days. It is certain that _social democracy_ can signify, has signified and signifies many things which have not been, are not, and never will be, either critical communism or the conscious march toward the proletarian revolution. It is also certain that contemporary socialism even in the countries where its development is most advanced, carries with it a great deal of dross which it throws off little by little along the road. It is certain also, in fine, that this broad designation of social democracy serves as an escutcheon and a buckler to many intruders. But here we need to fix our attention only upon certain points of capital importance. We must insist upon the second term of the expression in order to avoid any equivocation. Democratic was the constitution of the _Communist League_; democratic was its fashion of welcoming and discussing each new teaching; democratic was its intervention in the revolution of 1848 and its participation in the rebellious resistance against the invasion of reaction; democratic finally was the very way in which the League was dissolved. In this first type of our present parties, in this first cell so to speak, of our complex organism, elastic and highly developed, there was not only the consciousness of the mission to be accomplished as precursor, but there was already the form and the method of association which alone are suitable for the first initiators of the proletarian revolution. It was no longer a sect; that form was already, in fact, outgrown. The immediate and fantastic domination of the individual was eliminated, what predominated was a discipline which had its source in the experience of necessity and in the precise doctrine which must proceed from the reflex consciousness of this necessity. It was the same with the International, which appeared authoritarian only to those who could not make their own authority prevail in it. It must be the same, and it is so, in the working class parties and where this character is not or cannot yet be marked, the proletarian agitation still elementary and confused simply engenders illusions and is only a pretext for intrigues, and when it is not so, then we have a passover where men of understanding touch elbows with the madman and the spy; as for example the society of The International Brothers which attached itself like a parasite to the International and discredited it; or again the co-operative which degenerates into a business and sells itself to capitalists; the labor party which remains outside politics and which