[1345] This idea finds frequent expression both with Reclus and Kropotkin. “The fact that we have instituted, regulated, codified, and encompassed with constraints and penalties, with gendarmes and jailers, the larger part of our more or less incoherent collection of political, religious, moral and social conceptions of to-day in order to enforce them upon the citizens of to-morrow is in itself sufficiently absurd, and it is bound to have contradictory results. Life, which is always improving and renewing itself, can never submit to regulations which have been drawn up in some period now past.” (Reclus, loc. cit., pp. 108-9.) “Anarchist society,” writes Kropotkin, “is one to which any pre-established, crystallised form of law will always be repugnant. It is also one which looks for harmony, which can only be temporary and fugitive perhaps, in the equilibrium between the mass of different forces and influences of every kind which pursue their course without the slightest deflection, and which because they are quite untrammelled beget reaction and arouse those activities which are favourable to them when they move in the direction of progress.” (L’Anarchie, pp. 17, 18.)
[1346] Memoirs of a Revolutionist.
[1347] Proudhon had already set the problem as follows: “Can we find a method of transacting business that will unite divergent interests and identify individuals with the general well-being, replace the inequality of nature by equality of education, and remove all political and economic contradictions; when each individual will be at once both producer and consumer, citizen and sovereign, ruler and ruled; when liberty will always expand without involving any counter-loss; when the well being of each will grow indefinitely without involving any damage to the property, the labour, or the revenue of any of his fellow-citizens, or of the State itself, without weakening the interests he has in common with his fellow-men, without alienating their good opinion or destroying their affection for him?” (Idée générale, p. 145.) Says Jean Grave: “Were society established on natural bases, individual and general interests would never conflict.” (Société future, p. 156.)
[1348] La Société future, p. 16. “We cannot disguise the fact,” says Kropotkin, “that if complete liberty of thought and action were once given to the individual we should see some exaggerations, possibly extravagant exaggerations, of our principles.” (Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 413.)
[1349] “The only great and all-powerful authority at once rational and natural that we can respect is the public spirit of a collective society founded upon equality and solidarity, upon liberty and respect for the human qualities of all its members. It will be a thousand times more powerful than all your authorities, whether divine, theological, metaphysical, political, or juridical, whether instituted by Church or by State; more powerful than all your criminal codes, all your jailers and hangmen.” (Bakunin, Œuvres, vol. iii, p. 79.)
[1350] Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 414. This is also one of the favourite doctrines of the Liberals.
[1351] Kropotkin, Conquest of Bread, p. 206.
[1352] Grave, op. cit., p. 297. Proudhon is even more severe. “By making a contract you become a member of the fraternity of free men. In case of infringement, either on their side or on yours, you are responsible to one another, and the responsibility might even involve excommunication and death.” (Idée générale, p. 343.)
[1353] Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, p. 17.
[1354] “In our opinion, and speaking strictly, there is no such thing as a really idle person. There are a few individuals, perhaps, who have not developed as they might have done and whose activity has never found a proper outlet under existing conditions. In a society where everyone would be allowed to choose his own sphere of work the idlest people would be found doing something.” (J. Grave, La Société future, pp. 277-278.) Kropotkin writes in the same strain (Conquest of Bread, chapter on Objections).