Book II.: Socialistic Sophisms.

Having demonstrated that the Socialist programme, so far from being an advance, only represents a retrograde movement towards earlier and inferior types of civilisation, it remains for us to ask, by the aid of what sophisms, by what erroneous methods can the authors of this programme so present it as to win disciples who rally round it with a fierce and jealous passion.

We shall take the enumeration of these sophisms from the declaration of principles of the Gotha and Erfurt Congresses, which we stated above, so that we cannot be accused of misstating Socialist ideas in order to refute them the more easily. We are, nevertheless, obliged to add to these a few of the maxims, more or less explicitly borrowed from the French Socialists of 1848, which have come to be current arguments.