peasant is the greatest individualist imaginable, at least as far as boorishness, suspicion, opinionatedness, and the other "individualist" virtues are concerned. For centuries he has led an isolated and self-sufficient existence. He lived by his own toil without the help of others. He never came into contact with others except to be robbed and oppressed and occasionally to be cheated. No wonder he is such an individualist. Nor has he been fitted by the countless generations of oppression which he has undergone, or by the work to which he is accustomed, to the arduous and complicated duties of a self-governed industrial community. All this would make the old-fashioned peasant an inveterate enemy of socialism, notwithstanding his great poverty and ruined existence, if he were to survive. But he is not to survive. We cannot enter here upon a discussion of the so-called agrarian problem. One thing may be stated, however, without any fear of contradiction: the old peasant, as Marx knew him, and the old economic surroundings and social environment which produced him, are no more, except in very backward countries, and there they are disappearing before the onward march of capitalism. With the old-fashioned peasant passes away the mainstay of private property and the bulwark of reaction. There is no other social class that could quite fill his place in this respect.
The bourgeois has few of the characteristics of the peasant. He is quick and always on the qui vive. His love and attachment for property are not as pronounced as those of the peasant. He has not the kind of property which becomes individualized and may be personified. He has himself produced none of it. He cannot form any lasting friendship with his stock of goods or the machines used in his manufactory. They are liable to constant change and can be easily supplanted by others of their kind. In most cases it is in their quick disposal that his chief advantage lies, and he parts from them without regret. As a matter of fact he never cared about them: it is their money value
