What wonderful logicians these "companions" are, and what a beautiful ideal is that which has no other foundation than an illogical assumption!

"It has been objected that in leaving individuals free to organise as they like, there would arise that competition between groups which to-day exists between individuals. This is a mistake, for in the society we desire money would be abolished, consequently there would no longer be any exchange of products, but exchange of services. Besides, in order that such a social revolution as we contemplate can have been accomplished we must assume that a certain evolution of ideas will have taken place in the mind of the masses, or, at the least, of a considerable minority among them. But if the workers have been sufficiently intelligent to destroy bourgeois exploitation, it will not be in order to re-establish it among themselves, especially when they are assured all their wants will be supplied."[60]

It is incredible, but it is incontestably true: the only basis for the "Ideal" of the Anarchist-Communists, is this petitio principii, this "assumption" of the very thing that has to be proved. Companion Grave, the "profound thinker," is particularly rich in assumptions. As soon as any difficult problem presents itself, he "assumes" that it is already solved, and then everything is for the best in the best of ideals.

The "profound" Grave is less circumspect than the "learned" Kropotkine. And so it is only he who succeeds in reducing the "ideal" to "absolute" absurdity.

He asks himself what will be done if in "the society of the day after the revolution" there should be a papa who should refuse his child all education. The papa is an individual with unlimited rights. He follows the Anarchist rule, "Do as thou wouldst." No one has any right, therefore, to bring him to his senses. On the other hand, the child also may do as he likes, and he wants to learn. How to get out of this conflict, how resolve the dilemma without offending the holy laws of Anarchy? By an "assumption." "Relations" (between citizens) "being much wider and more imbued with fraternity than in our present society, based as it is upon the antagonism of interests, it follows that the child by means of what he will see passing before his eyes, by what he will daily hear, will escape from the influence of the parent, and will find every facility necessary for acquiring the knowledge his parents refuse to give him. Nay more, if he finds himself too unhappy under the authority they try to force upon him, he would abandon them in order to place himself under the protection of individuals with whom he was in greater sympathy. The parents could not send the gendarmes after him to bring back to their authority the slave whom the law to-day gives up to them."[61]

It is not the child who is running away from his parents, but the Utopian who is running away from an insurmountable logical difficulty. And yet this judgment of Solomon has seemed so profound to the companions that, it has been literally quoted by Emil Darnaud in his book "La Société Future" (Foix. 1890, p. 26)—a book especially intended to popularise the lucubrations of Grave.

"Anarchy, the No-government system of Socialism, has a double origin. It is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the economical and the political fields which characterise our century, and especially its second part. In common with all Socialists, the Anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear; and that all requisites of production must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the producers of wealth. And, in common with the most advanced representatives of political Radicalism, they maintain that the ideal of the political organisation of society is a condition of things where the functions of government are reduced to a minimum, and the individual recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfying, by means of free groups and federations—freely constituted—all the infinitely varied needs of the human being. As regards Socialism, most of the Anarchists arrive at its ultimate conclusion, that is, at a complete negation of the wage-system, and at Communism. And with reference to political organisation, by giving a farther development to the above-mentioned part of the Radical programme, they arrive at the conclusion that the ultimate aim of society is the reduction of the functions of governments to nil—that is, to a society without government, to Anarchy. The Anarchists maintain, moreover, that such being the ideal of social and political organisation they must not remit it to future centuries, but that only those changes in our social organisation which are in accordance with the above double ideal, and constitute an approach to it, will have a chance of life and be beneficial for the commonwealth."[62]

Kropotkine here reveals to us, with admirable clearness, the origin and nature of his "Ideal." This Ideal, like that of Bakounine, is truly "double;" it is really born of the connection between bourgeois Radicalism, or rather that of the Manchester school, and Communism; just as Jesus was born in connection between the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary. The two natures of the Anarchist ideal are as difficult to reconcile as the two natures of the Son of God. But one of these natures evidently gets the better of the other. The Anarchists "want" to begin by immediately realising what Kropotkine calls "the ultimate aim of society," that is to say, by destroying the "State." Their starting point is always the unlimited liberty of the individual. Manchesterism before everything. Communism only comes in afterwards.[63] But in order to reassure us as to the probable fate of this second nature of their Ideal, the Anarchists are constantly singing the praises of the wisdom, the goodness, the forethought of the man of the "future." He will be so perfect that he will no doubt be able to organise Communist production. He will be so perfect that one asks oneself, while admiring him, why he cannot be trusted with a little "authority."

FOOTNOTES:

[47] The few Individualists we come across are only strong in their criticism of the State and of the law. As to their constructive ideal, a few preach an idyll that they themselves would never care to practise, while others, like the editor of Liberty, Boston, fall back upon an actual bourgeois system. In order to defend their Individualism they reconstruct the State with all its attributes (law, police, and the rest) after having so courageously denied them. Others, finally, like Auberon Herbert, are stranded in a "Liberty and Property Defence League"—a League for the defence of landed property. La Révolte, No. 38, 1893, "A lecture on Anarchism."