I have always been a liberal radical, an individualist and an anarchist.
In the first place, I am an enemy of the Church; in the second place, I
am an enemy of the State. When these great powers are in conflict I am a
partisan of the State as against the Church, but on the day of the
State's triumph, I shall become an enemy of the State. If I had lived
during the French Revolution, I should have been an internationalist of
the school of Anacarsis Clootz; during the struggle for liberty, I
should have been one of the _Carbonieri_.
To the extent in which liberalism has been a destructive force, inimical
to the past, it enthralls me. The fight against religious prejudice and
the aristocracy, the suppression of religious communities, inheritance
taxes--in short, whatever has a tendency to pulverize completely the
ancient order of society, fills me with a great joy. On the other hand,
insofar as liberalism is constructive, as it has been for example in its
advocacy of universal suffrage, in its democracy, and in its system of
parliamentary government, I consider it ridiculous and valueless as
well.
Even today, wherever it is obliged to take the aggressive, it seems to
me that the good in liberalism is not exhausted; but wherever it has
become an accomplished fact, and is accepted as such, it neither
interests me nor enlists my admiration.