Brussels, December 24. Once again the French papers carry a letter 
from M. de Lamartine. This time it is communism on which this 
poetic socialist at last gives his candid opinion having been 
challenged to do so by Cabet.?’? At the same time Lamartine 
promises to set forth his views in detail on this “important subject” in 
the near future. For the present he contents himself with a few brief, 
oracular utterances: 

“My opinion of communism,” he says, “may be summarised in a feeling (!), namely 
the following: were God to entrust me with a society of savages to civilise them and 
make into well-mannered people, the first institution I should give them would be that 
of property.” 

“The fact,” continues M. Lamartine, “that man appropriates the elements to 
himself is a law of nature and a precondition of life. Man appropriates the air by 
breathing, space by striding through it, the land by cultivating it, and even time, by 
perpetuating himself through his children; property is the organisation of the life 
principle in the universe; communism would be the death of labour and of the whole 
of humanity.” 

“Your dream,” M. Lamartine finally consoles M. Cabet, “is too beautiful for this 
earth.” 

M. Lamartine is thus an opponent of communism, and what is 
more not merely of a communist system; in fact, he enters the lists 
on behalf of the “perpetuity of private property”. For his “feeling” 
tells him three things: 1. that property civilises people, 2. that it is 
the organisation of the life principle in the world, and 3. that its 
opposite, communism, is too beautiful a dream for this bad world. 

No doubt M. Lamartine “feels” a better world, in which the “life 
principle” is differently “organised”. In this bad world, however, it 
just so happens that “appropriation” is a precondition of life. 

Lamartine and Communism 405 

It is not necessary to analyse M. Lamartine’s confused feeling in 
order to resolve it into its contradictions. We wish only to make one 
single observation. M. Lamartine believes he has proved the 
perpetuity of bourgeois property by pointing out that property in 
general forms the transition from the state of savagery to that of 
civilisation, and by giving us to understand that the process of 
breathing and the making of children presuppose the right of 
property just as much as does social private property. 

M. Lamartine sees no distinction between the epoch of transition 
from savagery to civilisation and our own epoch, any more than 
between the “appropriation” of air and the “appropriation” of the 
products of society; for both of these are “appropriations”, forsooth, 
just as both epochs are “epochs of transition”! 

In his “detailed” polemic against communism M. Lamartine will 
no doubt find an opportunity to deduce “logically” from these 
general platitudes arising from his “feeling” a whole series of other, 
still more general platitudes.—Perhaps then we shall likewise find 
the opportunity to shed light upon his platitudes “in greater detail”. 
—For the present we shall content ourselves with passing on to 
our readers the “feelings” which a monarchist-Catholic newspaper 
opposes to those of M. Lamartine. The Union monarchique namely, in 
yesterday’s issue, speaks out against Lamartine’s feelings as follows: 

“Here we see how these enlighteners of humanity leave it leaderless. The wretches! 
.. They have robbed the poor man of the God who comforted him;... they have 
taken Heaven from him... they have left man alone with his want and his wretchedness. 
And then they come and say: ‘You wish to possess the earth—it is not yours. You 
wish to enjoy the good things of life—they belong to others. You wish to share in 
wealth—that is out of the question. Stay poor, stay naked, stay abandoned—die!’” 

The Union monarchique comforts the proletarians with God. The 
Bien Public, M. Lamartine’s paper, comforts them with the “life 
principle”. 

Frederick Engels