Anarchism: A Criticism and History of the Anarchist Theory

by E. V. Zenker

If it is right, as one of our most acute thinkers says, to declare that mankind has placed his tools between himself and the animal world, then another proposition follows directly from this, namely, that man has placed property between himself and animals. It is true that the animal develops as far as the family, for if this also is founded merely upon thought, it cannot be a conscious one. Property presupposes a definite mental equipment, which even in the case of primitive men must be important, implying subjectively an already clear consciousness of self; objectively a certain capacity for measuring even the remoter consequences of an action; for the desire for special possession could only exist with reference to a pronounced consciousness of the self, and to the recognised purpose and further utility of an object. Neither of these mental presuppositions are anywhere fulfilled in the animal world. It need hardly be mentioned that labour in the technical sense has developed naturally and gradually from physiological labour and the bodily functions; that is, that even between the natural implement and the artificial there is no hiatus.

Espinas says (Animal Communities, by A. Espinas, p. 338): "Every living being, however lonely its life may be, can in case of need build itself some protective covering, and that is the beginning of the artistic impulse (Kunst-trieb), unless, perhaps, this is to be found in the formation of the organism itself. Leaving out of consideration the tubicolous annelidæ, the mussels and stone-boring molluscs, the weaving caterpillars, and finally spiders, even the non-social hymenoptera present, among many insects, examples of a very skilful adaptation of materials. But it is equally undeniable that, since the appearance of communities whose purpose is the rearing of their offspring, the artistic tendency receives a considerable impulse and produces unexpected marvels. Here it decidedly abandons its usual procedure in order to take up a new one. Hitherto the lower animals have, to a great extent, taken the materials for their places of refuge and their implements from their own bodies: the former an extension of the organism that produces it; the latter, as in the case of the spider, only an enlargement of the animal itself which forms the centre. The productions of the social artistic impulse, on the other hand, are made out of materials which are more and more foreign to the substance of the artificer, and are worked up externally by means which become more and more exclusively mechanical. Hence it follows that the living body is no longer so directly interested in the preservation of its work; it can alter and again build up this structure to an almost infinite extent—in short, the structure becomes more and more an implement instead of an organ. That was the inevitable result of animal life, which, being essentially capable of transference, and presupposing an intercourse of several separate existences, must necessarily raise itself above external substances, or else organise them according to the purposes of its life. But must we now conceive its operations as altogether distinct from those of physiological life?

"If one reflects that unnoticed steps connect the unconscious work which produces the organ with the conscious work which produces the implement, then it does not appear so. Speaking exactly, the waxen cell in which the larvæ of the bee wait for their daily food is external for every individual of the race, but internal for the whole of the community; since this forms one single consciousness, or a collective individuality. The mind of the race is to some extent a common function, its body a common apparatus; the one is only the material translation of the other, and the implement performs its function as faithfully as does the organ. One might even go farther and maintain that the implement in the full sense of the word is an organ; for it serves a function that is vital for the community, and this is exposed to every change, and derives benefit from every growth which circumstances bring to it."

The work of animals, therefore, only differs in its highest developments from purely physiological functions, in that the animal becomes more independent of its implements and of the product of its labour. Notice, for instance, the progress which is shown in the series of the mussel's shell, the spider's web, the bee's cell, the bird's nest, and the mole's burrow. The progressive differentiation of the products of labour keeps step with the progressive individualisation of the labourer and with the growing material independence of the body from its products. Mussel shell, cobweb, and bee's cell are still produced from the secretions of the body; but while the mussel is inseparable from its shell, the spider, at least without immediate harm, can be detached from its web; while the bee is still further emancipated from its structure of cells. The bird's nest and the mole's burrow have been formed already by a manipulation of materials foreign to the body, though in the case of the first still by the help of secretions from the body. In both cases the animal is almost completely independent of its product. Still the most complicated product of animal labour is, after all, connected inseparably with the body of the worker; and to a much less extent can the animal be separated from its implements; therefore complete emancipation never takes place in the animal world.

Even in the case of the anthropoid apes the transition to the instrument and to a product of labour entirely artificial and perfectly independent of the animal's own body, is only very slowly completed. This is clear from a consideration of the slow process by which man has progressed in perfecting the implements which he has invented. From the action of the bird which beats open a nut with its beak, or the squirrel which cracks it with its teeth, up to that of man who, in order to open the nut, makes use of a stone lying near him, is only a step, and yet by that step the destiny of the genus homo is settled. The application of natural objects, such as sticks and stones, to the purposes of daily life, to defence against animals and men, to hunting, to cutting down fruits, and so on, does not certainly become a habit all at once. Indeed, a very long time elapsed before this adaptation became a general and even a conscious one, and it was only possible when the advantages of such objects had been perceived through many experiences.

It needed a still longer time before man learned to choose between the various objects offered to him by nature, and understood how to distinguish a more pointed and sharper or a harder stone from one of those less useful for his purpose. Perhaps it required the experience and disappointments of uncounted ages to bring the consciousness of purpose even up to this point. But when this was once done, when man could judge as to the usefulness of the implement which nature offered him, then a further step of progress, and certainly the most important in this series of developments, was taken. To natural selection follows immediately artificial. The need for suitable and useful implements became more general and greater, and at the same time it became more difficult to satisfy, since nature is not so generous with objects of this kind, and (as was soon seen) only very few substances united all these qualities which hitherto had been recognised as necessary or useful. But by this time individuals who were already better provided for had made other discoveries; they had, for example, in cracking a nut, broken a stone with which they cracked it, and noticed that the broken pieces had greater sharpness and pointedness on their edges than those which nature afforded; or they had found the pieces of some tree split by lightning, and discovered their greater hardness and capacity for resistance. What was more natural under the pressure of the necessity, than to produce intentionally those processes by which the objects afforded by nature became more usable—to break the stone in pieces or to burn the wood?

And now at last the artificial implement was produced, and all future progress was but a trifle compared to the development which had gone before. The wonders of modern technical art are child's-play compared to the difficulties with which the anthropoid ape succeeded in making the first stone celt. The most urgent need of primitive life, the bitterest competition for the necessities of existence, and the concentration of the highest mental gifts then possessed, were necessary to guide the sight of primitive man to the remoter consequences of an action or of a quality. That his sight became sharper and sharper in proportion as the implement once invented showed itself to be insufficient, and became more and more differentiated in its adaptation to the different kinds of labour, follows as a matter of course. But the decisive action occurred when the anthropoid ape for the first time mechanically worked up natural objects, for by doing so he was enabled to exploit nature rationally, according to his desires and requirements, to emancipate himself from the limitations of existence as regards place and climate, to break those chains of partial action which weigh upon everything belonging to the animal world.

One must take fully into consideration the difficulties under which primitive man made his first tools; but one must, however, realise still more the immeasurable advantages which proceed from the possession, and the disadvantages which arise from the want, of a tool, in order to perceive that man had a vital interest in preserving permanently by him the objects which he had produced. If in his inexperience he at first threw away his laboriously acquired treasure after using it, yet soon the oft-recurring need for it, and the trouble of remaking it, must have taught him better. And by not leaving the tool behind him for someone else, he made not only a tremendous step in advance in the satisfaction of his needs, but also took a step higher in the social scale of his tribe. The others had need of him, admired him, feared or flattered him; they perhaps sought to take his treasured tool away from him; he had therefore to defend himself against others, and all these facts formed still more strongly the desire to keep it for himself permanently and exclusively. The conception of property flashed upon the human mind. It sprang from the sweat of labour; and human culture begins not with equality but with property.

This rather lengthy digression has been necessary in order that we may be able to oppose actual facts to the logical subtlety of Proudhon, which appears to-day to have a greater power than ever of leading men astray. The question whether the producer of a stone celt was merely the user of its advantages (Latin, possessor) or its actual owner and master; whether he also had the right to the substances of which it was composed, appears, after what we have said above, to be simply childish. The property, which was absolutely labour-property, was at once perceived to be such, to be dominium and not merely possessio; it never occurred to anybody either to doubt it or to believe it. Now, Proudhon declares that general consent cannot justify property, because general consent to an injustice cannot form the basis of justice. But apart from the fact that the innate sense of justice in society is merely a fiction of Proudhon's, as of all earlier or later Utopians, this proposition may perhaps belong to metaphysics or ethics, but certainly not to the empirical science of sociology. For he who puts on the crown, and whom all agree to obey, is really king, even if he has waded to the throne through seas of blood. The question, in so far as it is neither political nor a justification of his mode of action, is not a legal one but purely ethical. The answer to this question prejudges nothing either as to life or society, and history knows cases enough of actions which cannot be approved from the moral standpoint, and yet have turned out to the advantage of the community.

The opinion that agrarian communism, or the village community, is the most primitive form of property and the natural form of society, is also quite untenable. In the first place, because the word naturally cannot be taken in the sense that it implies an unalterable normal condition, or something fixed; for, in reality, naturally means that which develops itself, and therefore something in the highest degree changeable. In the second place, because tribal communism is by no means such a primitive condition as the Socialists, from Rousseau's time downwards, seem to believe, and wish to make others believe. Rather, a state preceded it, in which only movable property, the jus utendi atque abutendi re, was known to man. Races have been found which possess very scanty conceptions of religion, which have not recognised the family in the widest implication of the idea; whereas, on the other hand, no race has been found to whom the idea of property was not known. Certainly in this case it was only a question of the possession of weapons and ornaments, and so forth; possession of land, especially as a communal possession, has only been found among a comparatively small number of primitive peoples, and implies a very advanced state of social culture. But, however little this condition is the natural one, [Greek: kat' exochên], still less is it particularly moral or just.