When pressed for a closer definition of the social organisation towards which he aspires, it is true he hedges and confesses himself unable to do so: 'But what remains to be done is of infinite difficulty, and I certainly do not intend to deal with it to-day. I should like to convince the economists as completely as I am convinced myself that their science is going off on a wrong tack. But I cannot trust myself to be able to show them the true course; it is a supreme effort--the most my mind will run to--to form a conception even of the actual organisation of society. Yet who would have the power to conceive of an organisation that does not even exist so far, to see the future, since we are already hard put to it to see the present?'[220] Surely it was no disgrace to admit oneself frankly powerless to envisage a future beyond capitalism in the year 1820--at a time when capitalism had only just begun to establish its domination over the big industries, and when the idea of socialism was only possible in a most Utopian form. But, as Sismondi could neither advance beyond capitalism nor go back to a previous stage, the only course open to his criticism was a petty-bourgeois compromise. Sceptical of the possibility of developing fully both capitalism and the productive forces, he found himself under necessity to clamour for some moderation of accumulation, for some slowing down of the triumphant march of capitalism. That is the reactionary aspect of his criticism.[221] FOOTNOTES: [210] 'L'argent ne remplit qu'un office passager dans ce double échange. Les échanges terminés, il se trouve qu'on a payé des produits avec des produits. En conséquence, quand une nation a trop de produits dans un genre, le moyen de les écouler est d'en créer d'un autre genre' (J. B. Say, _Traité d'Économie Politique_, Paris, 1803, vol. i, p. 154).