[1070] See Fourier, Œuvres; Pellarin, Fourier; Sargant, Social Innovators.
[1071] See Noyes, History of American Socialism; Nordhoff, Communistic Societies of the United States.
[1072] Bliss, Encyclopedia of Social Reform, p. 319.
CHAPTER XXX[ToC]
SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM
Socialism is, on the whole, hostile to the State. All Socialists hate the State as at present constituted, because it protects the property which they wish to seize. However, many Socialists hate not only the State in its present form. They have become doubtful whether private capital or the State is the greater evil. They long for liberty, and would not welcome the restraint of any State, and least of all that of the absolute, all-regulating, and constantly interfering Socialistic State. Hence many Socialists have become Anarchists. Socialists may be divided into two classes—Communists and Anarchists—and Prince Kropotkin, the foremost Anarchist leader living, described the two Socialistic sections as follows: "A section of Socialists believes that it is impossible to attain Socialism without sacrificing personal liberty on the altar of the State. Another section, to which we belong, believes, on the contrary, that it is only by the abolition of the State, by the conquest of perfect liberty by the individual, by free agreement, association, and absolute free federation, that we can reach Communism."[1073] Many Socialists, seeing the enemy rather in the State than in private capital, express their passionate hatred of the State: "The State at present is simply a huge machine for robbing and slave-driving the poor by brute force."[1074] "The Parliament ever cries for more money, more money for the service of the State. Just heavens! Of what service is the State? Of very little service to honest, industrious men,"[1075] The philosopher of British Socialism frankly confesses himself a revolutionary Anarchist: "As an international revolutionist I have always been strongly sympathetic with all movements for local autonomy as most directly tending to destroy the modern 'nation' or centralised bureaucratic State."[1076] "It is quite true that Socialism will have to take over the accursed legacy of existing national frontiers from the bourgeois world-order; but Socialism will take it over merely with the view of killing it off and burying it at the earliest possible moment. The modern nation or centralised State is a hideous monstrosity, the offspring of capitalism in its various phases; in its present shape the outcome of the developed capitalism of the great industry. We quite admit that in form it may, and probably will, survive the earlier stage of Socialism, but its ultimate disappearance is none the less certain. The sentiment of the national patriotism will then, let us hope, be reduced to its last expression—the holding of annual dinners, or some harmless festivity of this sort, such as is affected by the natives of certain English counties resident in the metropolis. The Nationalist movement, therefore, is an old Radical 'plank' which clearly no longer belongs to us as Socialists."[1077]
The Socialist-Anarchist hates State government in every form. To him a Social-Democratic State is quite as hateful as any other form of government: "The State is the evil, the inveterate foe of labour—be the Government Autocratic, Bureaucratic, or Social-Democratic. For what, after all, is our vaunted nose-counting, majority-ridden Democracy but an expansion of the old-time tyranny of monarch and oligarch, inasmuch as the Governmentalist, whatever his stripe, is doomed to act on the two root principles of statecraft—force and fraud? And, obviously, so long as that is so, his particular profession of political faith is almost a matter of indifference."[1078] "What was, what is the State, wherever it exists, but a community of human beings barbarically held together by a well-drilled gang of magistrates, soldiers, policemen, gaolers, and hangmen?"[1079] Mr. Blatchford, who is apparently never quite sure in his mind whether he is a Socialist, a Communist, or an Anarchist, gives voice to his Anarchist sentiments in the words: "Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to godship, kingship, lordship, priestship. Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to imperialism, militarism, and conquest. Rightly or wrongly, I am for universal brotherhood and universal freedom."[1080]