Note 1277 — Chapter III · : THE SOLIDARISTS

Mutualists are so taken up with the idea of solidarity that they indignantly protest if any of their number happens to make use of the term “beneficence” or “charity.” “Everyone has a right to demand his own,” they say: that is clearly Bourgeois’s thesis. On the other hand, their journal, L’Avenir de la Mutualité, for February 1909 claims that societies for mutual help have a right to organise tombolas and lotteries, and they base their care upon the law of May 21, 1836, which reserves the right of lottery to “efforts of an entirely charitable character.” In order to defend its claim, L’Avenir de la Mutualité does not hesitate to affirm that the societies for mutual help “recognise the existence of an element of benevolence which is not exactly mutual and which is rightly connected with the superior modern principle of social solidarity, but which none the less justifies the application of the law of 1836.”