Moribund Society and Anarchy by Jean Grave

In treating of the question "Why we are revolutionists," we endeavored to show that the poverty and discontent engendered by our bad social organization leads directly to revolt, and that since we are constrained by the force of circumstances to take part in this revolution we have every interest in preparing ourselves for it. There is another reason which we have mentioned only incidentally and which is also very important, for it explains why the Anarchists decline to struggle to obtain some of the reforms offered to the workers as panaceas or as evolutional means for achieving their emancipation gradually. We have to show that the capitalistic organization being given, the separation of society into two classes, one of which lives at the expense of the other, no melioration can be granted to the exploited class without lessening the privileges of the exploiting class; consequently either the reform is illusory, a decoy used for the purpose of lulling the worker to sleep and making him exhaust his energies in the conquest of soap-bubbles which burst in his hands when he seeks to grasp them, or, if it really might alter the situation, the privileged class, which is in possession of the power, will put forth every effort to prevent its application or turn it to their own profit; hence we must always come to the same ultima ratio -- force. We do not intend to review all the reforms invented by hard-up politicians, nor to criticize all the electoral canards hatched in the brains of office-seekers; we should have to write hundreds of volumes. We believe we have amply demonstrated that the sources of misery lie in our bad economic organization; the reader will therefore understand that we leave aside all those remedies which embody political changes only. As to economic reforms worth the trouble of discussing, they are very few, and easy to enumerate:

An income tax;