CHAPTER IV: THE ANARCHISTS
The social creed of the anarchist is a curious fusion of Liberal and socialist doctrines. Its economic criticism of the State, its enthusiasm for individual initiative, as well as its conception of a spontaneous economic order, are features which it owes to Liberalism; while its hatred of private property and its theory of exploitation represent its borrowings from socialism.
Doctrinal fusions of this kind which seek to combine two extreme standpoints not infrequently outdo them both. Dunoyer, for example, was the extremest of Liberals, but he took great care to remind his readers of at least one function which none but the State could perform: no other authority, he thought, could ever undertake to provide security. True bourgeois of 1830 that he was, Dunoyer always considered that “order” was a prime social necessity.[1292] But, armed with the criticism of the socialists, the anarchists soon get rid of this last vestige of the State’s prerogative. In their opinion the security of which Dunoyer spoke merely meant the security of proprietors; “order” is only necessary for the defence of the possessors against the attack of the non-possessors. The socialists themselves (with the exception of Fourier, perhaps, whom the anarchists claim as one of themselves), however opposed to private property, were exceedingly anxious to retain considerable powers in the hands of the State, such as the superintendence of social production, for example. Armed this time with the criticism of the Liberal school, the anarchists experience no difficulty in demonstrating the economic and administrative incapacity of the State. “Liberty without socialism means privilege, and socialism without liberty means slavery and brutality”—so writes Bakunin.[1293]
It is only fitting that a few pages at the end of this book should be devoted to a doctrine that attempts to fuse the two great social currents that strove so valiantly for the upper hand in nineteenth-century history.
It is not our first acquaintance with anarchy, however. It has already been given a “local habitation and a name” by Proudhon, who is the real father of modern anarchism. This does not imply that similar doctrines may not be discovered in writings of a still earlier date, as in Godwin’s, for example. But such writers remained solitary exceptions,[1294] while the links connecting the anarchical teaching of Proudhon with the political and social anarchy of the last thirty years are easily traced. Not only is the similarity of ideas very striking, but their transmission from Proudhon to Bakunin, and thence to Kropotkin, Reclus, and Jean Grave, is by no means difficult to follow.
Alongside of the political and social anarchism which form the principal subject of this chapter there is also the philosophical and literary anarchism, whose predominant characteristic is an almost insane exaltation of the individual. The best known representative of this school, which hails from Germany, is Max Stirner, whose book entitled Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum appeared in 1844.[1295] The work was forgotten for a long time, although it enjoyed a striking success when it first appeared. Some twenty years ago, just when Nietzsche was beginning to win that literary renown which is so unmistakably his to-day, it was seen that in Stirner he had a precursor, although Stirner’s works probably remained quite unknown to Nietzsche himself, with the result that Stirner has since enjoyed posthumous fame as the earliest immoraliste. A few words only are necessary to show the difference between his doctrines and those of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin.[1296]
I: STIRNER’S PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHISM AND THE CULT OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Stirner’s book was written as the result of a wager. The nature of the circumstances and the character of the epoch that gave birth to it were briefly these. Stirner was a member of a group of young German Radicals and democrats whom Bruno Bauer had gathered round him in 1840. They drew their inspiration from Feuerbach, and accepted the more extreme views of the Hegelian philosophy. Their ideal was the absolute freedom of the human spirit, and in the sacred name of liberty they criticised everything that seemed in any way opposed to this ideal, whether nascent communism, dogmatic Christianity, or absolute government. The intellectual leaders of the German Revolution of 1848 were drawn from this group, but they were soon swept aside in the reaction of 1850. A few of them who were in the habit of meeting regularly in one of the Berlin restaurants assumed the name die Freien. Marx and Engels occasionally joined them, but soon left in disgust. Their joint pamphlet, which bears the ironical title of The Holy Family, is supposed to refer to Bauer and his friends. A few of the German Liberal economists, including Julius Faucher among others, paid occasional visits to the Hippel Restaurant. Max Stirner, who was one of the most faithful members and a most attentive listener, although it does not seem that he contributed much to the discussion, conceived the idea of preparing a surprise for his friends in the form of a book in which he attempted to prove that the criticism of the supercritics was itself in need of criticism.
The extreme Radicals who formed the majority of the group were still very strongly attached to a number of abstract ideas which to Stirner seemed little better than phantoms. Humanity, Society, the Pure, and the Good seemed so many extravagant abstractions; so many fetishes made with hands before whom men bow the knee and show as much reverence as ever the faithful have shown towards their God. Such abstractions, it seemed to him, possess about as much reality as the gods of Olympus or the ghosts that people the imagination of childhood. The only reality we know is the individual; there is no other. Every individual constitutes an independent original force, its only law its own personal interest, and the only limit to his development consists in whatever threatens that interest or weakens its force. Every man has a right to say, “I want to become all that it is within my power to become, and to have everything I am entitled to.”[1297] Bastiat had already expressed it as his opinion that there could be no conflict of legitimate rights, and Stirner declares that “every interest is legitimate provided only it is possible.” “The crouching tiger is within his rights when he springs at me; but so am I when I resist his attacks.” “Might is right, and there is no right without might.”[1298]
Granting that the individual is the only reality, all those collective unities that go by the name of the family, the State, society, or the nation, and all of which tend to limit his individuality by making the individual subservient to themselves, at once become meaningless. They are devoid of substance and reality.[1299] Whatever authority they possess has been ascribed to them by the individual. Mere creatures of the imagination, they lose every right as soon as I cease to recognise them, and it is only then that I become a really free man. “I have a right to overthrow every authority, whether of Jesus, Jehovah, or God, if I can. I have a right to commit a murder if I wish it—that is to say, unless I shun a crime as I would a disease. I decide the limits of my rights, for outside the ego there is nothing.… It may be that that nothing belongs to no one else; but that is somebody else’s affair, not mine. Self-defence is their own look-out.”[1300] The workers who complain of exploitation, the poor who are deprived of all property, have just one thing which they must do. They must recognise the right to property as inherent in themselves and take as much of it as they want. “The egoist’s method of solving the problem of poverty is not to say to the poor, ‘Just wait patiently until a board of guardians shall give you something in the name of the community,’ but ‘Lay your hands upon anything you want and take that.’ The earth belongs to him who knows how to get hold of it, and having got hold of it knows how to keep it. If he seizes it, not only has he the land, but he has the right to it as well.”[1301]
But what kind of a society would we have under such conditions? It would simply be a “Union of Egos,” each seeking his own and joining the association merely with a view to greater personal satisfaction. Present-day society dominates over the individual, making him its tool. The “Union of Egos”—for we cannot call it a society—would be simply a tool in the hand of the individual. No scruples would be felt by anyone leaving the union if he thought something was to be gained by such withdrawal. Every individual would just say to his neighbour, “I am not anxious to recognise you or to show you any respect. I simply want you to be of some service to me.”[1302] It would be a case of bellum omnium contra omnes, with occasional precarious alliances. But it would at least mean liberty for all.
Such strange, paradoxical doctrines are irrefutable if we accept Stirner’s postulates. But we must reject his whole point of view and dispute the stress laid upon the individual as the only reality, as well as his denial of the reality of society. Granting that the individual is the only reality, then society and the nation are mere abstractions created by man and removable at his pleasure. But that is just the mistake. The individual has no existence apart from society, nor has he any greater degree of reality. He is simply an element, not a separate entity. His existence or non-existence does not depend upon himself. Nor is society merely an idea. It is a natural fact. The individual may be quite as appropriately described as an abstraction or a mere phantom.
The fundamental difference between Stirner and the other anarchists who will engage our attention is just this recognition of the reality of the social fact which Stirner denies in toto. It also marks the cleavage between literary and political anarchism.[1303]
II: SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ANARCHISM AND THE CRITICISM OF AUTHORITY
Stirner spent his life between his study and the Hippel Restaurant, the rendezvous of his friends. Bakunin and Kropotkin are men of a different stamp who have risked their freedom, and even their lives, for the sake of the cause which they have at heart. It is true that the seed sown in the mind of the ignorant as the result of their teaching has often had most deplorable results, but no one can deny the quality of courage to either Kropotkin or Reclus, or withhold from them the title of greatness both of mind and character.
Bakunin was reared in much the same intellectual atmosphere as Stirner.[1304] By birth he belonged to the Russian nobility, and spent the earliest years of his life in the Russian army. In 1834, at the age of twenty, he resigned his commission in order to devote himself to the study of philosophy, and, like Proudhon, Stirner, and Marx, he came under the universal spell of Hegel. In 1840 he proceeded to Berlin, where he became acquainted with the school of young Radicals of whom we have already spoken. From 1844 to 1847 we find him in Paris, where he used to spend whole nights in discussion with Proudhon. Proudhon’s influence upon him is very marked, and one constantly meets with passages in the writings of the Russian anarchist which are nothing but paraphrases of ideas already put forward by Proudhon in the Idée générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle. The year 1848 revealed to the dilettante nobleman his true vocation, which he conceived to be that of a revolutionary. He successively took part in the risings at Prague and in the Saxon Revolution at Dresden. He was arrested and twice condemned to death, in Saxony and again in Austria, but was finally handed over to the Russian authorities, who imprisoned him in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, where an attack of scurvy caused him to lose all his teeth. He was exiled to Siberia in 1857, but managed to escape in 1861. Making his way to London, he undertook the direction of a vigorous revolutionary campaign, which was carried on in Switzerland, Italy, and France. During the years 1870 and 1871 he successfully planned a popular rising at Lyons. Bernard Lazare has graphically described him as “a hirsute giant with an enormous head which seems larger than it really is because of the mass of bushy hair and untrimmed beard which surrounds it. He always sleeps rough, has no roof above him, and no homeland which he can call his own, and like an apostle is always prepared to set out on his sacred mission at any hour of the night or day.”
The most striking fact in his history was his rupture with Karl Marx at the last International Congress, held at The Hague in 1872. Bakunin joined the International in 1869. Disgusted with the pontifical tendencies of the General Council, which was entirely under the heel of Marx, he proposed a scheme of federal organisation under which each section would be left with considerable autonomy. The Jura Federation supported his proposals, and so did several of the French, Belgian, and Spanish delegates, as well as all the Italian. But he was expelled from the International by Marx’s own friends. The official rupture between Marxian socialism and anarchy, grown to considerable proportions since, dates from that very moment. That Hague congress marks also the end of the International. Marx soon afterwards transferred the centre of the administration to the United States, and no conference has been held since. Bakunin also retired from the struggle about the same time, but not before he had set up a new association at Geneva, composed of a few faithful friends. In 1876 Bakunin died at Berne.
It was in the region of the Jura, in the neighbourhood of Neuchâtel, where Bakunin had still a few followers among the extremely individualistic but somewhat mystical population of those parts, that Kropotkin in the course of a short stay in the district in 1872 imbibed those anarchist ideas to the propagation of which he has so strenuously devoted his life.[1305] Although personally unacquainted with Bakunin, Kropotkin must be regarded as his direct descendant.
Prince Kropotkin is also a Russian aristocrat, and he, like his master, joined the army after a short period of study. He attracted public notice first of all as the author of several remarkable works dealing with natural history and geography, which showed him to be a confirmed disciple of Darwin. But science was by no means his only interest. By 1871 Hegelian influence was on the wane in Russia, and the more thoughtful of the younger generation turned their attention to democracy. The new watchword was, “Go, seek the people, live among them, educate them and win their confidence if you want to get rid of the yoke of autocracy.” Kropotkin caught the inspiration. He himself has told us how one evening after dinner at the Winter Palace he drove off in a cab, took off his fine clothes, and, putting on a cotton shirt instead of his silk one, and boots such as the peasants wore, hurried away to another quarter of the city and joined a number of working men whom he was trying to educate. But his propaganda proved short-lived, for one evening when he was leaving the headquarters of the Geographical Society, where he had just been reading a paper and had been offered the presidency of one of the sections, he was arrested on a charge of political conspiracy and imprisoned in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. He managed to escape in 1876, and found refuge in England. Afterwards he was wrongfully condemned to three years’ imprisonment at Clairvaux on account of his supposed complicity in an anarchist outbreak which took place at Lyons in 1884. But there was something extraordinary about a prisoner who could get the libraries of Ernest Renan and the Paris Academy of Sciences placed at his disposal during his term of imprisonment in order to enable him to pursue his scientific investigations. During his previous imprisonment in Russia the Geographical Society of St. Petersburg had extended him a similar privilege. Kropotkin has since lived in England.
The best known French anarchists, Élisée Reclus, the geographer, and Jean Grave, simply reproduce Kropotkin’s ideas, with an occasional admixture of Bakunin’s or Proudhon’s.[1306]
Our concern is with the expression of anarchist ideas as we find them in the best known writers of the school. Consequently we must pass over the very striking but immature formulæ which are not infrequently to be met with in the works of more obscure writers.[1307]
Here again the distinguishing features are the emphasis laid upon individual rights and a passion for the free and full development of personality, which, as we have seen, was the keynote of Stirner’s system. “Obedience means abdication,” declares Élisée Reclus.[1308] “Mankind’s subjection will continue just so long as it is tolerated. I am ashamed of my fellow-men,” writes Proudhon in 1850 from his prison at Doullens.[1309] “My liberty,” says Bakunin, “or what comes to the same thing, my honour as a man, consists in obeying no other individual and in performing only just those acts that carry conviction to me.”[1310] Jean Grave declares that society can impose “no limitations upon the individual save such as are derived from the natural conditions under which he lives.”[1311]
But this cult of the individual which is present everywhere in anarchist literature rests upon a conception which is the direct antithesis of Stirner’s. To Stirner every man was a unique being whose will was his only law. The anarchists who follow Proudhon, on the other hand, regard man as a specimen of humanity, i.e. of something superior to the individual. “What I respect in my neighbour is his manhood,”[1312] wrote Proudhon. It is this humanity or manhood that the anarchist would have us respect by respecting his liberty, for, as Bakunin declares, “liberty is the supreme aim of all human development.”[1313] It is not the triumph of the egoist but the triumph of humanity in the individual that the anarchists would seek, and so they claim liberty not merely for themselves but for all men. Far from wishing to be served by their fellow-men, as Stirner desired, they want equal respect shown for human dignity wherever found. “Treat others as you would that others should treat you under similar circumstances,”[1314] writes Kropotkin, employing Kantian and even Christian phraseology. Bakunin, a faithful disciple of Proudhon’s, considered that “all morality is founded on human respect, that is to say, upon the recognition of the humanity, of the human rights and worth in all men, of whatever race or colour, degree of intellectual or moral development”;[1315] and he adds that “the individual can only become free when every other individual is free. Liberty is not an isolated fact. It is the outcome of mutual goodwill; a principle not of exclusion, but of inclusion, the liberty of each individual being simply the reflection of his humanity or of his rights as a human being in the conscience of every free man, his brother and equal.”[1316] This idea of humanity, which the latest anarchists owe to Proudhon, is not simply foreign to Stirner, but is just one of those phantoms which Stirner was particularly anxious to waylay.[1317]
Along with this extravagant worship of individual liberty goes a hatred of all authority. Here the political anarchists join hands with Stirner. For the exercise of authority of one man over another means the exploitation of one man by another and a denial of his humanity. The State is the summation of all authority, and the full force of anarchist hatred is focused upon the State. No human relation is too sacred for State intervention, no citizen but is liable to have his conduct minutely prescribed by law. There are officers to apply the law, armies to enforce it, lecturers to interpret it, priests to inculcate respect for it, and jurists to expound it and to justify everybody. Thus has the State become the agent par excellence of all exploitation and oppression.[1318] It is the one adversary, in the opinion of every anarchist—“the sum total of all that negates the liberty of its members.” “It is the grave where every trace of individuality is sacrificed and buried.” Elsewhere, “it is a flagrant negation of humanity.”[1319] Bakunin, who in this matter as well as in many others is a follower of Bastiat, speaks of it as “the visible incarnation of infuriated force.” That is enough to label it for ever with the evil things of life, for the aim of humanity is liberty, but force is “a permanent negation of liberty.”[1320]
A necessary agent of oppression, government always and inevitably becomes the agent of corruption. It contaminates everything that comes into contact with it, and the first to show signs of such contamination are its own representatives. “The best man, whoever that may be, whatever degree of intelligence, magnanimity, and purity of heart he may have, is unavoidably corrupted by his trade. The person who enjoys any privilege, whether political or economic, is intellectually and morally a depraved character.” So Bakunin thought,[1321] and Elisée Reclus writes in a similar strain. “Every tree in nature bears its own peculiar fruit, and government, whatever be the form it take, always results in caprice or tyranny, in misery, villainy, murder, and evil.”[1322] The governing classes are inevitably demoralised, but so are the governed, and for just the same reasons. Government is a worker of evil even when it would do good, for “the good whenever it is enjoined becomes evil. Liberty, morality, real human dignity consists in this, that man should do what is good not because he is told to do it, but simply because he thinks that it really is the best that he can ever wish or desire.”[1323]
It matters little what form government takes. Absolute or constitutional monarchy, democratic or aristocratic republicanism, government on the basis of a universal or a restricted suffrage, are all much the same, for they all presuppose a State of some sort. Authority, whether of a despot or of the majority of the community, is none the less authority, and implies the exercise of a will other than the individual’s own. The great error committed by all the revolutions of the past has been this: one government has been turned out, but only to have its place usurped by another. The only true revolution will be that which will get rid of government itself—the fount and origin of all authority.
Still closer scrutiny reveals the interesting fact that the State, which is naturally oppressive, gradually becomes employed as the instrument for the subjugation of the weak by the strong, the poor by the rich. It was Adam Smith who ventured to declare that “civil government … is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”[1324] Pages of anarchist literature simply consist of elaborate paraphrases of this remark of Smith’s.
Kropotkin thinks that every law must belong to one or other of three categories. To the first category belong all laws concerned with the security of the individual; to the second all laws concerned with the protection of government; and to the third all those enactments where the chief object in view is the inviolability of private property.[1325] In the opinion of the anarchist, all laws might more correctly be placed under the last category only, for whenever the safety of the individual is in any way threatened it is generally the result of some inequality of fortune.[1326] Indirectly, that is to say, the attack is directed against property. The real function of government is to defend property, and every law which is instrumental in protecting property is also effective in shielding the institution of government from attack.
Property itself is an organisation which enables a small minority of proprietors to exploit and to hold in perpetual slavery the masses of the people. In this instance the anarchists have not made any weighty contribution of their own, but have merely adopted the criticisms of the socialists.[1327] Proceeding in the usual fashion, they point to the miserable wages which are usually paid to the workers, and show how the masters always manage to reserve all the leisure, all the joys of existence, all the culture and other benefits of civilisation for themselves. Private property is of the essence of privilege—the parent of every other kind of privilege. And the State becomes simply the bulwark of privilege. “Exploitation and government,” says Bakunin, “are correlative terms indispensable to political life of every kind. Exploitation supplies the means as well as the foundation upon which government is raised, and the aim which it follows, which is merely to legalise and defend further exploitation.”[1328] “Experience teaches us,” says Proudhon,[1329] “that government everywhere, however popular at first, has always been on the side of the rich and the educated as against the poor and ignorant masses.”[1330]
Whether the extinction of private property, which would free the worker from the danger of being exploited by the rich, would also render the State unnecessary is a question upon which the anarchists are not agreed. Proudhon, we remember, had hoped by means of the Exchange Bank to reduce the right of property to mere possession. Bakunin, on the contrary, is under the spell of the Marxians, and, like a true collectivist, he thinks that all the instruments of production, including land, should be possessed by the community. Such instruments should always be at the disposal of groups of working men expert in the details of agriculture or industrial production, and such workers should be paid according to their labour.[1331] Kropotkin, on the other hand, regards communism as the ideal and looks upon the distinction drawn by the collectivist between instruments of production and objects of consumption as utterly futile. Food, clothing, and fuel are quite as necessary for production as machinery or tools, and nothing is gained by emphasising the distinction between them. Social resources of every kind should be freely placed at the disposal of the workers.[1332]
But the State and the institution of private property by no means exhausts the list of tyrannies. Individual liberty is as little compatible with irrevocable vows—that is, with a present promise which binds for ever the will of man—as it is with submission to external authority. The present marriage law, for example, violates both these conditions. Marriage ought to be a free union. A contract freely entered upon and deliberately fulfilled is the only form of marriage that is compatible with the true dignity and equality of both man and woman.[1333] A free and not a legal contract is the only form of engagement which the anarchists recognise. Free contract between man and wife, between an individual and an association, between different associations pursuing the same task, between one commune and another, or between a commune and a whole country. But such engagements must always be revocable, otherwise they would merely constitute another link in the chain that has shackled humanity. Every contract that is not voluntarily and frequently renewed becomes tyrannical and oppressive and constitutes a standing menace to human liberty. “Because I was a fool yesterday, must I remain one all my life?”[1334] asks Stirner; and on this point Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, Jean Grave, and even Proudhon are agreed.
To regard their social philosophy as nothing but pure caprice because of the wonderful faith which they had in their fellow-men would, however, be a great mistake.
Notwithstanding the merciless criticism of authority of every kind, there was still left one autocrat, of a purely abstract character perhaps, but none the less imperious in its demands. This was the authority of reason or of science. The sovereignty of reason was one of the essential features of Proudhon’s anarchist society.[1335] What Proudhon calls reason Bakunin refers to as science, but his obeisance is not a whit less devotional. “We recognise,” says he, “the absolute authority of science and the futility of contending with natural law. No liberty is possible for man unless he recognise this and seek to turn this law to his own advantage. No one except a fool or a theologian, or perhaps a metaphysician, a jurist, or a bourgeois economist, would revolt against the mathematical law which declares that 2 + 2 = 4.” The utmost that a man can claim in this matter is that “he obeys the laws of nature because he himself has come to regard them as necessary, and not because they have been imposed upon him by some external authority.”[1336]
Not only does Bakunin bow the knee to science, but he also swears allegiance to technical or scientific skill. “In the matter of boots I am willing to accept the authority of the shoemaker; of clothes, the opinion of the tailor; if it is a house, a canal, or a railway, I consult the architect and the engineer. What I respect is not their office but their science, not the man but his knowledge. I cannot, however, allow any one of them to impose upon me, be he shoemaker, tailor, architect, or savant. I listen to them willingly and with all the respect which their intelligence, character, or knowledge deserves, but always reserving my undisputed right of criticism and control.”[1337] Bakunin has no doubt that most men willingly and spontaneously acknowledge the natural authority of science. He agrees with Descartes and employs almost identical terms[1338] when he declares that “common sense is one of the commonest things in the world.” But common sense simply means “the totality of the generally recognised laws of nature.” He shares with the Physiocrats a belief in their obviousness, and invokes their authority whenever he makes a vow. He is also anxious to make them known and acceptable of all men through the instrumentality of a general system of popular education. The moment they are accepted by “the universal conscience of mankind the question of liberty will be completely solved.”[1339] Let us again note how redolent all this is of the rationalistic optimism of the eighteenth century, and how closely Liberals and anarchists resemble one another in their absolute faith in the “sweet reasonableness” of mankind. Bakunin only differs from the Physiocrats in his hatred of the despot whom they had enthroned.
A society of free men, perfectly autonomous, each obeying only himself, but subservient to the authority of reason and science—such is the ideal which the anarchists propose, a preliminary consideration of its realisation being the overthrow of every established authority. “No God and no master,” says Jean Grave; “everyone obeying his own will.”[1340]
III: MUTUAL AID AND THE ANARCHIST CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY
At first sight it might seem that a conception of social existence which would raise every individual on a pedestal and proclaim the complete autonomy of each would speedily reduce society to a number of independent personalities. Every social tie removed, there would remain just a few individuals in juxtaposition, and society as a “collective being” would disappear.
But it would be a grievous mistake to conceive of the anarchist ideal in this light. There is no social doctrine where the words “solidarity” and “fraternity” more frequently recur. Individual happiness and social well-being are to them inseparable. Hobbes’ society, or Stirner’s, where the hand of everyone is against his brother, fill the anarchists with horror. To their mind that is a faithful picture of society as it exists to-day. In reality, however, man is a social being. The individual and society are correlative: it is impossible to imagine the one without thinking of the other.
No one has given more forcible expression to this truth than Bakunin; and this is possibly because no one ever had a keener sense of social solidarity. “Let us do justice once for all,” he remarks, “to the isolated or absolute individual of the idealists. But that individual is as much a fiction as that other Absolute—God.… Society, however, is prior to the individual, and will doubtless survive him, just as Nature will. Society, like Nature, is eternal; born of the womb of Nature, it will last as long as Nature herself.… Man becomes human and develops a conscience only when he realises his humanity in society; and even then he can only express himself through the collective action of society. Man can only be freed from the yoke of external nature through the collective or social effort of his fellow-men, who during their sojourn here have transformed the surface of the earth and made the further development of mankind possible. But freedom from the yoke of his own nature, from the tyranny of his own instincts, is only possible when the bodily senses are controlled by a well-trained, well-educated mind. Education and training are essentially social functions. Outside the bounds of society, man would for ever remain a savage beast.”[1341]
Whether we read Proudhon or Kropotkin, we always meet with the same emphasis on the reality of the social being, on the pre-existence of the State, or at least of its necessary coexistence, if the individual is ever to reach full development. It is true that there are a few anarchists, such as Jean Grave, who still seem to uphold the old futile distinction between the individual and society, and who conceive of society as made up of individuals just as a house is built of bricks.
But is there no element of contradiction between this idea and the previous declaration of individual autonomy? How is it possible to exalt social life and at the same time demand the abolition of all traditional social links?[1342]
The apparent antinomy is resolved by emphasising a distinction which Liberalism had drawn between government and society. Society is the natural, spontaneous expression of social life. Government is an artificial organ, or, to change the metaphor, a parasite preying upon society.[1343] Liberals from the days of Smith onward had applied the distinction to economic institutions; the anarchists were to apply it to every social institution. Not only the economic but every form of social life is the outcome of the social instinct which lies deep in the nature of humanity. This instinct of solidarity urges men to seek the help of their fellow-men and to act in concert with them. It is what Kropotkin calls mutual aid, and seems as natural to man and as necessary for the preservation of the species as the struggle for existence itself. What really binds society together, what makes for real cohesion, is not constraint (which, contrary to the time-honoured belief of the privileged classes, is really only necessary to uphold their privileges), but this profound instinct of mutual help and reciprocal friendship, whose strength and force have never yet been adequately realised. “There is in human nature,” says Kropotkin, “a nucleus of social habits inherited from the past, which have not been as fully appreciated as they might. They are not the result of any restraint and transcend all compulsion.”[1344]
Law, instead of creating the social instinct, simply presupposes it. Laws can only be applied so long as the instinct exists, and fall into desuetude as soon as the instinct refuses to sanction them. Government, far from developing this instinct, opposes it with rigid, stereotyped institutions which thwart its full and complete development. To free the individual from external restraint is also to liberate society by giving it greater plasticity and permitting it to assume new forms which are obviously better adapted to the happiness and prosperity of the race.[1345] Kropotkin in his delightful book Mutual Aid gives numerous examples of this spontaneous social instinct. He shows how it assumes different forms in the economic, scientific, educational, sporting, hygienic, and charitable associations of modern Europe; in the municipalities and corporations of the Middle Ages; and how even among animals this same instinct, which forms the real basis of all human societies, has enabled them to overcome the natural dangers that threaten their existence.
Anarchist society must not be conceived as a bellum omnium contra omnes, but as a federation of free associations which everyone would be at liberty to enter and to leave just as he liked. This society, Kropotkin tells us, would be composed of a multitude of associations bound together for all purposes that demand united action. A federation of producers would have control of agricultural and industrial, and even of intellectual and artistic, production; an association of consumers would see to questions of housing, lighting, health, food, and sanitation. In some cases the federation of producers would join hands with the consumers’ league. Still wider groups would embrace a whole country, or possibly several countries, and would include people employed in the same kind of work, whether industrial, intellectual, or artistic, for none of these pursuits would be confined to some one territory. Mutual understanding would result in combined efforts, and complete liberty would give plenty of scope for invention and new methods of organisation. Individual initiative would be encouraged; every tendency to uniformity and centralisation would be effectively checked.[1346]
In such a society as this complete concord between the general and the individual interests, hitherto so vainly sought after by the bourgeoisie, would be realised once for all in the absolute freedom now the possession of both the individual and the group, and in the total disappearance of all traces of antagonism between possessors and non-possessing, between governors and governed. Again we note a revival of the belief in the spontaneous harmony of interests which was so prominent a feature of eighteenth-century philosophy.[1347]
Such an attractive picture of society was bound to invite criticism. The anarchists foresaw this, and have tried to meet most of the arguments.
In the first place, would such extravagant freedom not beget abuse, unjustifiable repudiation of contracts, crimes and misdemeanours? Would it not give rise to chronic instability? and would the conscientious never find themselves the victims of the fickle and the fraudulent?
The anarchists agree that there may be a few pranks played, or, as Grave euphemistically calls them, “certain acts apparently altogether devoid of logic.”[1348] But can we not reckon upon criticism and disapproval checking such anti-social instincts? Public opinion, if it were once freed from the warping influence of present-day institutions, would possess far greater coercive force.[1349] Our present system of building prisons, “those criminal universities,” as Kropotkin calls them, will never check these anti-social instincts. “Liberty is still the best remedy for the temporary excesses of liberty.”[1350] Moreover, such a system would enjoy a superior sanction in the possible refusal of other people to work with those who could not keep their word.[1351] “You are a man and you have a right to live. But as you wish to live under special conditions and leave the ranks, it is more than probable that you will suffer for it in your daily relations with other citizens.”[1352]
But there is still a more serious objection. Were there no compulsion, would anyone be found willing to work? The host of idlers is at the present time vast, and without the sting of necessity it would become still greater. Kropotkin remarks that “it is only about the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the sugar refineries of Europe that robbery, laziness, and very often drunkenness become quite usual with the bees.”[1353] Is it not possible that men are just imitating the bee?
The anarchists point out that many a so-called idler to-day is simply a madcap who will soon discover his true vocation in the free society of the future, and will thus be gradually transformed into a useful member of society.[1354] Moreover, does not the fact that so many people shun work altogether prove that the present method of organising society must be at once cruel and repugnant? The certainty of being confined in an unhealthy workshop for ten or twelve hours every day, with mind and body “to some unmeaning task-work given,” in return for a wage that is seldom sufficient to keep a family in decent comfort, is hardly a prospect that is likely to attract the worker. One of the principal aims of the anarchist régime—and in this respect it resembles the Phalanstère of Fourier—will be to make labour both attractive and productive.[1355] Science will render the factory healthy well lighted and thoroughly ventilated. Machinery will even come to the rescue of the housewife and will relieve her of many a disagreeable task. Inventors, who are generally ignorant of the unpleasant nature of many of these tasks, have been inclined to ignore them altogether. “If a Huxley spent only five hours in the sewers of London, rest assured that he would have found the means of making them as sanitary as his physiological laboratory.”[1356] Finally, and most important of all, the working day could then be reduced to a matter of four or five hours, for there would no longer be any idlers, and the systematic application of science would increase production tenfold.
The wonderful expansion of production under the influence of applied science is a favourite theme of the anarchists. Kropotkin has treated us to some delightful illustrations of this in his Conquest of Bread. He begins by pointing out the wonders already accomplished by market gardeners living in the neighbourhood of Paris. One of these, employing only three men working twelve to fifteen hours a day, was able, thanks to intensive cultivation, to raise 110 tons of vegetables on one acre of ground. Taking this as his basis, he calculates that the 3,600,000 inhabitants in the departments of the Seine and the Seine-et-Oise could produce all the corn, milk, vegetables, and fruit which they could possibly need in the year with fifty-eight half-days labour per man. By parity of reasoning he arrives at the conclusion that twenty-eight to thirty-six days’ work per annum would secure for each family a healthy, comfortable home such as is occupied by English working men at the present time. The same thing applies to clothing. American factories produce on an average forty yards of cotton in ten hours. “Admitting that a family needs two hundred yards a year at most, this would be equivalent to fifty hours’ labour, or ten half-days of five hours each,[1357] and that all adults save women bind themselves to work five hours a day from the age of twenty or twenty-two to forty-five or fifty.… Such a society could in return guarantee well-being to all its members.”[1358] Élisée Reclus shares these hopes. It seems to him that “in the great human family hunger is simply the result of a collective crime, and it becomes an absurdity when we remember that the products are more than double enough for all the needs of consumers.”[1359]
Amid such superabundant wealth, in a world thus transformed into a land of milk and honey, distribution would not be a very difficult problem. Nothing really could be easier. “No stint or limit to what the community possesses in abundance, but equal sharing and dividing of those commodities which are scarce or apt to run short.”[1360] Such was to be the guiding principle. In practice the women and children, the aged and the infirm, were to come first and the robust men last, for such even is the etiquette of the soup kitchen, which has become a feature of some recent strikes. As to the laws of value which are supposed to determine the present distribution of wealth, and which the economists fondly believe to be necessary and immutable, the anarchists regard them as being no concern of theirs. The futility of such doctrines is a source of some amusement to them.[1361]
IV: REVOLUTION
But how is the beautiful dream to be realised? The way thither, from the miserable wilderness wherein we now dwell to the Promised Land of which they have given us a glimpse, lies through Revolution—so the anarchist tells us.
A theory of revolution forms a necessary part of the anarchist doctrine. In the mind of the public it is too often thought to be the only message which the anarchists have to give. We must content ourselves with a very brief reference to it, for the non-economic ideas of anarchism have already detained us sufficiently long.
Proudhon is soon out of the running. We have already had occasion to refer to his disapproval of violence and revolution. It seemed to him that the anarchic ideal was for ever impossible apart from a change of heart and a reawakening of conscience. But his successors were somewhat less patient. To their minds revolution seemed an unavoidable necessity from which escape was impossible. Even if we could imagine all the privileged individuals of to-day agreeing among themselves on the night of some fourth of August to yield up every privilege which they possess and to enter the ranks of the proletariat of their own free will, such a deed would hardly be desirable. The people, says Reclus, with their usual generosity, would simply let them do as they liked, but would say to their former masters, “Keep your privileges.” “It is not because justice should not be done, but things ought to find a natural equilibrium. The oppressed should rise in their own strength, the despoiled seize their own again, and the slaves regain their own liberty. Such things can only really be attained as the result of a bitter struggle.”[1362]
It is not that Bakunin, Kropotkin, or their disciples revel in bloodshed or welcome outbreaks of violence. Bloodshed, although inevitably and inseparably connected with revolution, is none the less regrettable, and should always be confined within the narrowest limits. “Bloody revolutions are occasionally necessary because of the crass stupidity of mankind; but they are always an evil, an immense evil, and a great misfortune; not only because of their victims, but also because of the pure and perfect character of the aims in view of which they are carried out.”[1363] “The question,” says Kropotkin,[1364] “is not how to avoid revolutions, but how to secure the best results by checking civil war as far as possible, by reducing the number of victims, and by restraining the more dangerous passions.” To do this we must rely upon people’s instincts, who, far from being sanguinary, “are really too kind at heart not to be very soon disgusted with cruelty.”[1365] The attack must be directed not against men but against their position, and the aim must be not individuals but their status. Hence Bakunin lays great stress upon setting fire to the national archives, and to papers of all kinds relating to title in property, upon the immediate suppression of all law courts and police, upon the disbanding of the army, and the instant confiscation of all instruments of production—factories, mines, etc. Kropotkin in the Conquest of Bread gives us a picture of an insurgent commune laying hold of houses and occupying them, seizing drapers’ establishments and taking whatever they need, confiscating the land, cultivating it, and distributing its products. If revolutionists only proceeded in this fashion, never respecting the rights of property at all (which was the great mistake made by the Commune in its dealing with the Bank of France during the rising of 1871), the revolution would soon be over and society would speedily reorganise itself on a new and indestructible basis and with a minimum of bloodshed.
But the tone is not always equally pacific. Bakunin during at least one period of his life preached a savage and merciless revolution against privilege of every kind. At that time, indeed, he might justly have passed as the inventor of the active propaganda which, strenuously pursued for many years by a few exasperated fanatics, had the effect of rousing public opinion everywhere against anarchism. “We understand revolution,” someone has remarked, “in the sense of an upheaval of what we call the worst passions, and we can imagine its resulting in the destruction of what we to-day term public order.” “Brigandage,” it is remarked elsewhere, “is an honourable method of political propaganda in Russia, where the brigand is a hero, a defender and saviour of the people.”[1366] In a kind of proclamation entitled The Principles of Revolution, which, as some writers point out, ought not to be attributed to Bakunin, but which at any rate appears to give a fair representation of his ideas at this period of his life, we meet with the following words: “The present generation should blindly and indiscriminately destroy all that at present exists, with this single thought in mind—to destroy as much and as quickly as possible.”[1367] The means advocated are of a most varied description: “Poison, the dagger, and the sword … revolution makes them all equally sacred. The whole field is free for action.”[1368] Bakunin had always shown a good deal of sympathy for the rôle of the conspirator. In the Statutes of the International Brotherhood, which prescribed the rules of conduct for a kind of revolutionary association created by Bakunin in 1864, are some passages advocating violence which are as bloodcurdling as anything contained in Netchaieff’s famous Revolutionary Catechism. It is difficult to find lines more full of violent revolutionary exasperation than that passage of the Statutes of the International Socialist Alliance which forms the real programme of the anarchists. Since it also seems to us to give a fairly faithful expression of Bakunin’s thoughts on the matter, it will afford a fitting close to our exposition.
“We want a universal revolution that will shake the social and political, the economic and philosophical basis of society, so that of the present order, which is founded upon property, exploitation, dominion, and authority, and supported either by religion or philosophy, by bourgeois economics or by revolutionary Jacobinism, there may not be left, either in Europe or anywhere else, a single stone standing. The workers’ prayer for peace we would answer by demanding the freedom of all the oppressed and the death of everyone who lords it over them, exploiters and guardians of every kind. Every State and every Church would be destroyed, together with all their various institutions, their religious, political, judicial, and financial regulations; the police system, all university regulations, all social and economic rules whatsoever, so that the millions of poor human beings who are now being cheated and gagged, tormented and exploited, delivered from the cruellest of official directors and officious curates, from all collective and individual tyranny, would for once be able to breathe freely.”[1369]
A discussion of anarchist doctrine lies beyond our province. Moreover, such sweeping generalisations disarm all criticism. Their theories are too often the outbursts of passionate feeling and scarcely need refuting. Let us, then, try to discover the kind of influence they have had.
We are not going to speak of the criminal outrages which unfortunately have resulted from their teaching. Untutored minds already exasperated by want found themselves incapable of resisting the temptations to violence in face of such doctrines. Such deeds, or active propaganda as they call it, can have no manner of justification, but find an explanation in the extreme fanaticism of the authors. It is not very easy to attribute such violence to a social doctrine which, according to the circumstances, may on the one hand be considered as the philosophy of outrage and violence, and on the other as an ideal expression of human fraternity and individual progress.
The influence of which we would speak is the influence which anarchy has had upon the working classes in general. Undoubtedly it has led to a revival of individualism and has begotten a reaction against the centralising socialism of Marx. Its success has been especially great among the Latin nations and in Austria, where it seemed for a time as if it would supplant socialism altogether. Very marked progress has also been made in France, Italy, and Spain. Is it because individuality is stronger in those countries than elsewhere? We think not. The fact is that wherever liberty has only recently been achieved, order and discipline, even when freely accepted, seem little better than intolerable signs of slavery.
An anarchist party came into being between 1880 and 1895. But since 1895 it seems to have declined. This does not mean that the influence of anarchism has been on the wane, but simply that it has changed its character. In France especially many of the older anarchists have joined the Trade Union movement, and have occasionally managed to get the control of affairs into their own hands, and under their influence the trade unions have tried to get rid of the socialist yoke. The Confédération générale du Travail has for its motto two words that are always coupled together in anarchist literature, namely, “Welfare and liberty.” It has also advocated “direct action”—that is, action which is of a definitely revolutionary character and in defiance of public order. Finally, it betrays the same impatience with merely political action, and would have the workers concentrate upon the economic struggle.
The prophets of revolutionary syndicalism deny any alliance with anarchy. But, despite their protests, it would be a comparatively easy matter to point to numerous analogies in the writings of Bakunin and Kropotkin. Moreover, they admit that Proudhon, as well as Marx, has contributed something to the syndicalist doctrine; and we have already noted the intimate connection which exists between Proudhon and the anarchists.
The first resemblance consists in their advocacy of violence as a method of regenerating and purifying social life. “It is to violence,” writes M. Sorel, “that socialism owes those great moral victories that have brought salvation to the modern world.”[1370] The anarchists in a similar fashion liken revolution to the storm that clears the threatening sky of summer, making the air once more pure and calm. Kropotkin longs for a revolution because it would not merely renew the economic order, but would also “stir up society both morally and intellectually, shake it out of its lethargy, and revive its morals. The vile and narrow passion of the moment would be swept aside by the strong breath of a nobler passion, a greater enthusiasm, and a more generous devotion.”[1371]
In the second place, moral considerations, which find no place in the social philosophy of Marx, are duly recognised by Sorel and by the anarchist authors. Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Proudhon especially demand a due respect for human worth as the condition of every man’s liberty. They also proclaim the sovereignty of reason as the only power that can make men really free. M. Sorel, after showing how the new school may be easily distinguished from official socialism by the greater stress which it lays upon the perfection of morals, proceeds to add that on this point he is entirely at one with the anarchists.[1372]
Finally, their social and political ideals are the same. In both cases the demand is for the abolition of personal property and the extinction of the State. “The syndicalist hates the State just as much as the anarchist. He sees in the State nothing but an unproductive parasite borne upon the shoulder of the producer and living upon his substance.”[1373] And Sorel regards socialism as a tool in the hands of the workers which will some day enable them to get rid of the State and abolish the rights of private property.[1374] “Free producers working in a factory where there will be no masters”[1375]—such is the ideal of syndicalism, according to Sorel. There is also the same hostility shown towards democracy as at present constituted and its alliance with the State.
But despite many resemblances the two conceptions are really quite distinct. The hope of anarchy is that spontaneous action and universal liberty will somehow regenerate society. Syndicalism builds its faith upon a particular institution, the trade union, which it regards as the most effective instrument of class war. On this basis there would be set up an ideal society of producers founded upon labour, from which intellectualism would be banished. Anarchy, on the other hand, contents itself with a vision of a kind of natural society, which the syndicalist thinks both illusory and dangerous.
It has not been altogether useless, perhaps, to note the striking analogy that exists between these two currents of thought which have had such a profound influence upon the working-class movement during the last fifteen years, and which have resulted in a remarkable revival of individualism.