“You do well to talk of revolution; but you do wrong to forget the individual in the race. Your eugenic revolution will not stop the exploitation of the workers by the manufacturers through the state. Give men justice and they will soon be healthy; give them the decent life which is the only just reward for their work, and you will not need eugenics. Instead of bothering about parasitic germs you should attend to parasitic exploiters; it is in this social parasitism that the real danger of degeneration lies. Continued injustice of employers to employees is splitting every western nation into factions; class-loyalty will soon be stronger than loyalty to the community; and the time will come when nations in which this civil war has not been superseded by voluntary mutual aid will crumble into oblivion.
“And yet men are willing to be loyal to the community, if the community is organized to give them justice. If exploitation were to cease there would be such bonds of brotherhood among men as would make the community practically everlasting. All you need do is to let men coöoperate in freedom. They long to coöperate; all evolution shows a growth in the ability to coöoperate; man surpassed the brute just because of this. Nor is law or state needed; coercive government is necessary only in societies founded on injustice. The state has always been an instrument of exploitation; and law is merely the organized violence of the ruling class. It is a subtle scheme; it enables industrial lords to do without any pangs of conscience what but for their statute-books might give them a qualm or two. Notice, for example, how perfectly Christian such slaughters as those in Colorado or Virginia can be made to appear—even to the slaughterers—by the delightful expedient of the statute-book. They kill and call it law, so that they may sleep.
“And then we are told that one must never use violence in labor disputes. But obviously it is precisely violence that is used against labor, and against the free spirit. As a matter of history, rebels did not begin to use violence on the authorities until the authorities had used violence on them. We feel ourselves quite justified in using any means of attack on a system so founded in coercion. The whole question with us is one not of morals but of expediency. We have been moral a little too long.”
5
Individualism
“Precisely,” says the Stirnerite anarchist; “it is all a question of might, not of right; and we exploited ones may be as right as rectitude and never get anywhere unless we can rhyme a little might to our right. Each of us has a right to do whatever he is strong enough to do. ‘One gets farther with a handful of might than with a bagful of right.’ He who wants much, and knows how to get it, has in all times taken it, as Napoleon did the continent, and the French Algeria. Therefore the only point is that the respectful ‘lower classes’ should at length learn to take for themselves what they want.”
6
Individualism Again
And lastly, Advocatus Diaboli, Mr. Status Quo:
“I agree with you right heartily, Sir Stirnerite anarchist; it is time you children came to understand that everything is a question of power. Let the fittest survive and let us all use whatever means we find expedient. I am frank with you now; but you must not be surprised if to-morrow I write out a few checks for the salaries of the liars whom I have in my employ. Why should we tell the truth and go under? Surely you will understand that not all knowledge is good for all men. If it gives you satisfaction, for example, to spread information about birth-control, you will not feel hurt if it gives us satisfaction to oppose you, for the sake of the future armies of unemployed without which our great scheme of industry would be seriously hampered.
“And I agree with your fellow-anarchist, that the state is often a nuisance. I can make use of a little government; but when the state begins to tell me how to run my business then I feel as if your criticism of the state is very just—and convenient. I am an individualist,—a good old American individualist,—like Jefferson and Emerson. The state can’t manage industry half as well as we can. You know—as our Socialists do not—that government ownership is only ownership by politicians, by Hinky-Dinks and Bath-house Johns; and I can tell you from intimate knowledge of these people that they will do anything for money except efficient administrative work.
“Your scheme of having the workers take over the industries is a good scheme—for the millennium. Where would you get men to direct you? They come to us because we pay them well; if your syndicalist shops would pay them as well as we do, they would be the beginning of a new aristocracy; if you think these clever men will work for ‘honor’ you are leaning on an airy dream. Destroy private property and you will have a nation of hoboes and Hindus.