Note 1069 — Chapter IV · : DOCTRINES THAT OWE THEIR INSPIRATION TO CHRISTIANITY

Extract from a report of a meeting of the Sillon, November 1907:

“Marc Sangnier. The social transformation which we desire to see, comrades, will aim, not at absorbing the individual, but rather at developing him. We want the factories, the mines, and the industries in the possession, not of the State, but of groups of workers.

“An Interrupter. That is socialism.

“Marc Sangnier. You can call it socialism if you like. It makes no difference to me. But it is not the socialism of the socialists, of the centralising socialists. We don’t want to set the proletarians free from the control of the masters to put them under the immediate control of one great master, the State; we want the proletarians themselves, acting collectively, to become their own masters.”