II. In the next stage of evolution, which, as has been shown, mankind must soon reach, the place of the State will be taken by a social human life on the basis of the legal norm that contracts must be lived up to. Anarchism is the "inevitable"[518] "next phase,"[519] "higher form,"[520] of society.
1. Even after the State is done away men will live together socially; but they will no longer be held together in society by a governmental authority, but by the legally binding force of contract. "Free expansion of individuals into groups and of groups into associations, free organization from the simple to the complex as need and inclination are felt,"[521] will be the future form of society.
We can at present perceive a growing Anarchistic movement; that is, "a movement towards limiting more and more the sphere of action of government. After having tried all kinds of government, humanity is trying now to free itself from the bonds of any government whatever, and to respond to its needs of organization by the free understanding between individuals prosecuting the same common aims."[522] "Free associations are beginning to take to themselves the entire field of human activity."[523] "The large organizations resulting merely and simply from free agreement have grown recently. The railway net of Europe—a confederation of so many scores of separate societies—is an instance; the Dutch Beurden, or associations of ship and boat owners, are extending now their organizations over the rivers of Germany, and even to the shipping trade of the Baltic; the numberless amalgamated manufacturers' associations, and the syndicats of France, are so many instances in point. But there also is no lack of free organizations for nobler pursuits: the Lifeboat Association, the Hospitals Association, and hundreds of like organizations. One of the most remarkable societies which has[524] recently arisen is the Red Cross Society. To slaughter men on the battle-fields, that remains the duty of the State; but these very States recognize their inability to take care of their own wounded; they abandon the task, to a great extent, to private initiative."[525] "These endeavors will attain to free play, will find a new and vast field for their application, and will form the foundation of the future society."[526]
"The agreement between the hundreds of companies to which the European railroads belong has been entered into directly, without the meddling of any central authority that prescribed laws to the several companies. It has been kept up by conventions at which delegates met to consult together and then to lay before their principals plans, not laws. This is a new procedure, utterly different from any government whether monarchical or republican, absolute or constitutional. It is an innovation which at first makes its way into European manners only by hesitating steps, but to which the future belongs."[527]
2. "To rack our brains to-day about the details of the form which public life shall take in the future society, would be silly. Yet we must come to an agreement now about the main outlines."[528] "We must not forget that perhaps in a year or two we shall be called on to decide all questions of the organization of society."[529]
Communes will continue to exist; but "these communes are not agglomerations of men in a territory, and know neither walls nor boundaries; the commune is a clustering of like-minded persons, not a closed integer. The various groups in one commune will feel themselves drawn to similar groups in other communes; they will unite themselves with these as firmly as with their fellow-citizens; and thus there will come about communities of interest whose members are scattered over a thousand cities and villages."[530]
Men will join themselves together by "contracts"[531] to form such communes. They will "take upon themselves duties to society,"[532] which on its part engages to do certain things for them.[533] It will not be necessary to compel the fulfilment of these contracts,[534] there will be no need of penalties and judges.[535] Fulfilment will be sufficiently assured by "the necessity, which every one feels, of finding co-operation, support, and sympathy among his neighbors;"[536] he who does not live up to his obligations can of course be expelled from fellowship.[537]
In the commune every one will "do what is necessary himself, without waiting for a government's orders."[538] "The commune will not first destroy the State and then set it up again."[539] "People will see that they are freest and happiest when they have no plenipotentiary agents and depend as little on the wisdom of representatives as on that of Providence."[540] Nor will there be prisons or other penal institutions;[541] "for the few anti-social acts that may still take place the best remedy will consist in loving treatment, moral influence, and liberty."[542]
The communes on their part will join themselves together by contracts[543] quite in the same way as do the members of the individual communes. "The commune will recognize nothing above it except the interests of the league that it has of its own accord made with other communes."[544] "Owing to the multiplicity of our needs, a single league will soon not be enough; the commune will feel the necessity of entering into other connections also, joining this or that other league. For the purpose of obtaining food it is already a member of one group; now it must join a second in order to obtain other objects that it needs,—metal, for instance,—and then a third and fourth too, that will supply it with cloth and works of art. If one takes up an economic atlas of any country, one sees that there are no economic boundaries: the areas of production and exchange for the different objects are blended, interlaced, superimposed. Thus the combinations of the communes also, if they followed their natural development, would soon intertwine in the same way and form an infinitely denser network and a far more consummate 'unity' than the States, whose individual parts, after all, only lie side by side like the rods around the lictor's axe."[545]
3. The future society will be able easily to accomplish the tasks that the State accomplishes at present.