Let us now ask, what is this "free agreement" which according to Kropotkine, exists even in capitalist society? He quotes two kinds of examples by way of evidence: (a) those connected with production and the circulation of commodities; (b) those belonging to all kinds of societies of amateurs—learned societies, philanthropic societies, etc.
"Take all the great enterprises: the Suez Canal, e.g., Trans-Atlantic navigation, the telegraph that unites the two Americas. Take, in fine, this organisation of commerce, which provides that when you get up in the morning you are sure to find bread at the bakers' ... meat at the butchers', and everything you want in the shops. Is this the work of the State? Certainly, to-day we pay middlemen abominably dearly. Well, all the more reason to suppress them, but not to think it necessary to confide to the Government the care of providing our goods and our clothing."[57]
Remarkable fact! we began by snapping our fingers at Marx, who only thought of suppressing surplus value, and had no idea of the organisation of production, and we end by demanding the suppression of the profits of the middleman, while, so far as production is concerned, we preach the most bourgeois laissez-faire, laissez passer. Marx might, not without reason, have said, he laughs best who laughs last!
We all know what the "free agreement" of the bourgeois entrepreneur is, and we can only admire the "absolute" naïvété of the man who sees in it the precursor of communism. It is exactly this Anarchic "arrangement" that must be got rid of in order that the producers may cease to be the slaves of their own products.[58]
As to the really free societies of savants, artists, philanthropists, etc., Kropotkine himself tells us what their example is worth. They are "made up of human beings freely seeking one another after having done their work as producers." Although this is not correct—since in these societies there is often not a single producer—this still farther proves that we can only be free after we have settled our account with production. The famous "tendency of the nineteenth century," therefore, tells us nothing on the main question—how the unlimited liberty of the individual can be made to harmonise with the economic requirements of a communistic society. And as this "tendency" constitutes the whole of the scientific equipment of our "Anarchist thinker," we are driven to the conclusion that his appeal to science was merely verbiage, that he is, in spite of his contempt for the Utopians, one of the least ingenious of these, a vulgar hunter in search of the "best Ideal."
The "free agreement" works wonders, if not in Anarchist society, which unfortunately does not yet exist, at least in Anarchist arguments. "Our present society being abolished, individuals no longer needing to hoard in order to make sure of the morrow, this, indeed being made impossible, by the suppression of all money or symbol of value—all their wants being satisfied and provided for in the new society, the stimulus of individuals being now only that ideal of always striving towards the best, the relations of individuals or groups no longer being established with a view to those exchanges in which each contracting party only seeks to 'do' his partner" (the "free agreement" of the bourgeois, of which Kropotkine has just spoken to us) "these relations will now only have for object the rendering of mutual services, with which particular interests have nothing to do, the agreement will be rendered easy, the causes of discord having disappeared."[59]
Question: How will the new society satisfy the needs of its members? How will it make them certain of the morrow?
Answer: By means of free agreements.
Question: Will production be possible if it depends solely upon the free agreement of individuals?
Answer: Of course! And in order to convince yourself of it, you have only to assume that your morrow is certain, that all your needs are satisfied, and, in a word, that production, thanks to free agreement, is getting on swimmingly.