Poverty is the symptom and slavery the disease. If we went only by appearances, we would all agree that poverty ought to be singled out as the worst feature of present-day society. The worst affliction, however, is slavery, which obliges man to lie down under poverty and prevents him from rebelling against it. The greatest of evils is not capital, which exploits the worker, enriching itself at his expense, but rather the state which keeps the worker naked and undefended, maintaining him in subjection by armed force and by imprisonment.