What they can reasonably expect and insist upon having is the sustenance of life (in a broad sense),[7] and this they will have, as you see, in any case. The socialization will not result in such a change in the distribution of wealth as is often caused by watering the stock of a company. It will simply extend to all, those who hold stocks at present included, those advantages which a minority alone enjoys to-day, and it will benefit all, but stockholders especially, by doing away with those risks which capitalist exploitation forces everyone to run. * * * * * Finally, socialism will rob no one. I would ask those who assert the contrary, what description then should be given to those transactions in the goods and property of the nobility, the clergy and above all of the communes, performed by our great radicals in the French Revolution, by those whose work has become a "compass" for our guidance. Just as soon as we cease simply substituting one privileged class for another, just as soon as we enable all without exception to enjoy the same advantages, no one will be robbed or deprived of anything. Simply, inequality in the enjoyment of privilege will have been abolished, another privileged class will have vanished from the stage. Yes, the capitalists will lose, along with their special privileges or rights over the means of production, that characteristic or quality that makes them capitalists; but, I repeat, they will have exactly the same rights as all others to the use and enjoyment of those means of production, from that time forth the inalienable property of society. With capital dethroned, the principles of the Republic will at last be applied with controlling power to the field of economics, just as they are to the field of politics, and political democracy will have ceased to be a farce, for it will have developed into its perfect flower, INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY. FOOTNOTES: [6] This is not an English word, but I will take the liberty of borrowing it from the French.--Tr. [7] "The world owes every man a living," is a common saying. VII.