capitalism was embarked on an irresistible progress; but nowadays we see considerable forces grouped together in the endeavour to reform the capitalist economic system by bringing it, with the aid of laws, nearer to the medieval ideal. Parliamentary Socialism would like to combine with the moralists, the Church, and the democracy, with the common aim of impeding the capitalist movement; and, in view of middle-class cowardice, that would not perhaps be impossible.
Marx compared the passage from one historical era to another to a civil inheritance; the new age inherits prior acquisitions. If the revolution took place during a period of economic decadence, would not the inheritance be very much compromised, and in that case could there be any hope of the speedy reappearance of progress in the economic system? The ideologists hardly trouble themselves at all with this question; they affirm that the decadence will stop on the day that the public Treasury is at their disposal; they are dazzled by the immense reserve of riches which would be delivered up to their pillage; what banquets there would be, what women, and what opportunities for self-display! We, on the other hand, who have no such prospect before our eyes, have to ask whether history can furnish us with any guidance on this subject, which will enable us to guess what would be the result of a revolution accomplished in times of decadence.
The researches of Tocqueville enable us to study the French Revolution from this point of view. He very much astonished his contemporaries when, a half-century ago, he showed them that the Revolution had been much more conservative than had been supposed till then. He pointed out that most of the characteristic institutions of modern France date from the Old Régime (centralisation, the issue of regulations on every possible pretext,
