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]