Human Evolution: Clearing out the deadwood - developing the body - tuning the mind - accessing the spirit
Vision
The Place of
Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution
by Peter Kropotkin
1921 approx
Kropotkin is a prototype of the non-Marxist Russian revolutionary thinker of the 19th century. In him were combined the major themes of the revolutionary socialists: populism, materialism, communalism, anarchism, and scientism. Kropotkin's distinctive contribution was to combine these themes into an original philosophy of anarchism based on mutual aid.
You must often have asked
yourselves what is the cause of Anarchism,
and why, since there are already so many Socialist schools, it is
necessary to found an additional one -- that of Anarchism. In order to
answer this question I will go back to the close of last century.
You all know the characteristics
which marked that epoch: there
was all expansion of intelligence a prodigious development of the
natural sciences, a pitiless examination of accepted prejudices, the
formation of a theory of Nature based on a truly scientific foundation,
observation and reasoning. In addition to these there was criticism of
the political institutions bequeathed to Humanity by preceding ages,
and a movement towards that ideal of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
which has in all times been the ideal of the popular masses. Fettered
in its free development by despotism and by the narrow selfishness of
the privileged classes, this movement being at the same time favoured by
an explosion of popular indignation engendered the Great Revolution
which had to force its way through the midst of a thousand obstacles
both without and within.
The Revolution was
vanquished, but its ideas remained. Though
at first persecuted and derided, they became the watchword for a whole
century of slow evolution. The history
of
the nineteenth century is summed up
in an effort to put in practice the principles elaborated at the end of
last century: this is the lot of revolutions: though vanquished they
establish the course of the evolution which follows them. In the domain
of politics these ideas are abolition of aristocratic privileges,
abolition of personal government, and equality before the law. In the
economic order the Revolution proclaimed freedom of business
transactions; it said -- "Sell and buy freely." Sell, all of you, your
products, if you can produce, and if you do not possess the implements
necessary for that purpose but have only your arms to sell, sell them,
sell your labour to the highest bidder, the State will not interfere!
Compete among yourselves, contractors! No favour shall be shown, the
law of natural selection will take upon itself the function of killing
off those who do not keep pace with the progress of industry, and will
reward those who take the lead.
The above is at least the theory
of the Revolution of 1789, and
if the State intervenes in the struggle to favour some to the detriment
of others, as we have lately seen when the monopolies of mining and
railway companies have been under discussion, such action is regarded
by the liberal school as a lamentable deviation from the grand
principles of the Revolution.
What has been the
result?
You know only too well, both women
and men, idle opulence for a few and uncertainty for the morrow and
misery for the greater number; crises, and wars for the conquest of
markets, and a lavish expenditure of public money to find openings for
industrial speculators. All this is because in proclaiming liberty of
contract an essential point was neglected by our fathers. Not but what
some of them caught sight of it, the best of them earnestly desired but
did not dare to realise it, While liberty of transactions that is to
say conflict between the members of society, was
proclaimed,
the
contending parties were not equally matched, and the powerful armed for
the contest by the means inherited from their fathers, have gained the
upper hand over the weak. Under such conditions the millions of poor
ranged against a few rich could not could not do otherwise than give
in.
Comrades! you have often asked
yourselves -- "Whence comes the
wealth of the rich? Is it from their labor?" It would be a
mockery to
say that it was so. Let us suppose that M. Rothschild has worked all
his life: well, you also, every one of you working men have also laboured: then why should the fortune of M. Rothschild be measured by
hundreds of millions while your possessions are so small? The reason is
simple: you have exerted yourselves to produce by your own labor, while
M. Rothschild has devoted himself to accumulating the product of the labour of others -- the whole matter lies in that.
But some one may say to me; --
"How comes it that millions of
men thus allow the Rothschild's and the Mackay's to appropriate the fruit
of their labor?" Alas, they cannot help themselves under the existing
social system! But let us picture to our minds a city all of whose
inhabitants find their lodging, clothing, food and occupation secured
to them, on condition of producing things useful to the community, and
let us suppose a Rothschild to enter this city bringing with him a cask
full of gold. If he spends his gold it will diminish rapidly; if he
locks it up it will not increase, because gold does not grow like seed,
and after the lapse of twelve months he will not find £110 in his
drawer if he only put £100 into it. If he sets up a factory and
proposes to the inhabitants of the town that they should work in it for
four shillings a day while producing to the value of eight
shillings a
day they will reply --
Among us you'll find no one
willing to work on those terms. Go
elsewhere and settle in some town where the unfortunate people have
neither clothing, bread, nor work assured to them, and where they will
consent to give up to you the lion's share of the result of their labor
in return for the barest necessaries of life. Go where men starve!
there you will make your fortune!
The origin of the wealth of the
rich is your misery. Let there be no poor, then we shall have no
millionaires.
The facts I have just stated
were such as the Revolution of last
century did not comprehend or else could not act upon. That Revolution
placed face to face two opposing ranks, the one consisting of a hungry,
ill-clad army of former serfs, the other of men well provided with
means. It then said to these two arrays -- "Fight out your battle." The
unfortunate were vanquished. They possessed no fortunes, but they had
something more precious than all the gold in the world--their arms; and
these arms, the source of all wealth, were monopolised by the wealthy.
Thus we have seen those immense fortunes which are the characteristic
feature of our age spring up on all sides. A king of the last century,
"the great Louis the Fourteenth" of mercenary historians, would never
have dreamed of possessing a fortune such as are held by those kings of
the nineteenth century, the Vanderbilts' and the Mackay's.
On the other hand we
have
seen the poor reduced still more and
more to toil for others, and while those who produced on their own
account have rapidly disappeared, we find ourselves compelled under an
over increasing pressure to labour more and more to enrich the rich.
Attempts have been made to remove these evils. Some have said -- "Let
us give equal instruction to all," and forth with education has been
spread abroad. Better human machines have been turned out, but these educated machines still labour
to enrich
others. This illustrious scientist, that renowned novelist, despite
their education are still beasts of burden to the capitalist.
Instruction improves the cattle to be exploited but the exploitation
remains. Next, there was great talk about association, but the workers
soon learned that they could not get the better of capital by
associating their miseries, and those who cherished this illusion most
earnestly were compelled to turn to Socialism.
Timid at the outset, Socialism
spoke at first in the name of
Christian sentiment and morality: men profoundly imbued with the moral
principles of Christianity --principles which it possesses in common
with all other religions -- came forward and said -- "A Christian has
no right to exploit his brethren!" But the ruling classes laughed in
their faces with the reply -- "Teach the people Christian
resignation,
tell them in the name of Christ that they should offer their left cheek
to whosoever smites them on the right, then you will be welcome; as for
the dreams of equality which you find in Christianity, go and meditate
on your discoveries in prison."
Later on Socialism spoke in the
name of Governmentalism; it
said -- "Since it is the special mission of the State to protect the
weak against the strong, it is its duty to aid working men's
associations; the State alone can enable working men to fight against
capital and to oppose to capitalistic exploitation the free workshop of
workers pocketing the entire value of the produce of their labor." To
this the Bourgeoisie replied with grapeshot in 1848.
It was not until
between
twenty to thirty years later, at a
time when the popular masses were invited to express their mind in the
International Working Men's Association, that Socialism spoke in the
name of the people, and formulating itself little by little in the Congresses of the great Association and
later
on among
its successors, arrived at some such conclusion as the following:
All accumulated wealth is the
product of the labour of all -- of
the present and of all preceding generations. This hall ill which we are now assembled derives its value from the fact that it is situated
in Paris -- this magnificent city built by the labors of twenty
successive generations. If this same hall were conveyed amid the snows
of Siberia its value would be next to nothing. The machinery which you
have invented and patented bears within itself the intelligence of five
or six generations and is only possessed of value because it forms part
of that immense whole that we call the progress of the nineteenth
century. If you send your lace-making machine among the natives of New
Guinea it will become valueless. We defy any mall of genius of our
times to tell us what share his intellect has had in the magnificent
deductions of the book, the work of talent which he has produced!
Generations have toiled to accumulate facts for him, his ideas have
perhaps been suggested to him by a locomotive crossing the plains, as
for elegance of design he has grasped it while admiring the Venus of
Milo or the work of Murillo, and finally, if his book exercises any
influence over us, it does so thanks to all the circumstances of our
civilization.
Everything belongs to
all!
We defy anyone soever to tell us
what share of the general wealth is due to each individual. See the
enormous mass of appliances which the nineteenth century has created;
behold those millions of iron slaves which we call machines and which
plane and saw, weave and spin for us, separate and combine the raw
materials, anti work the miracles of our times. No one has the right
to monopolise any one of these machines and to say to others -- "This
is mine. If you wish to make use of it you must pay me a tax on each article you
produce,"
any more
than the feudal lord of the middle ages had the right to say to the
cultivator -- "This hill and this meadow are mine and you must pay me
tribute for every sheaf of barley you bind, and on each haycock you
heap up."
All belongs to everyone! And
provided each man and woman
contributes his and her share of labor for the production of necessary
objects, they have a right to share in all that is produced by
everybody.
PART II.
ALL things belong to all, and
provided that men and women contribute
their share of labour for the production of necessary objects, they are
entitled to their share of all that is produced by the community at
large. "But this is Communism," you may say. Yes, it is Communism, but
it is the Communism which no longer speaks in the name of religion or
of the state, but in the name of the people. During the past fifty
years a great awakening of the working-class has taken place: the
prejudice in favour of private property is passing away. The worker
grows mere and more accustomed to regard the factory, the railway, or
the mine, not as a feudal castle belonging to a lord, but as an
institution of public utility which the public has the right to
control. The idea of possession in common has not been worked out from
the slow deductions of some thinker buried in his private study, it is
a thought which is germinating in the brains of the working masses, and
when the revolution, which the close of this century has in store for
us, shall have hurled confusion into the camp of our exploiters, you
will see that the mass of the people will demand Expropriation, and
will proclaim its right to the factory, the locomotive, and the
steamship.
Just as the sentiment of the
inviolability of the home has
developed during the latter half of our century, so also the sentiment
of collective right to all that serves for the production of wealth has
developed among the masses. It is a fact, and he who, like ourselves.
wishes to share the popular life and follow its development, must
acknowledge that this affirmation is a faithful summary of the people's
aspirations. The tendency of this closing century is towards Communism,
not the monastic or barrack-room Communism formerly advocated, but the
free Communism which places the products reaped or manufactured in
common at the disposal of all, leaving to each the liberty to consume
them as he pleases in his own home.
This is the solution
of
which the mass of the peoplecan most readily take hold, and it is the solution
which
the people
demands at the most solemn epochs. In 1848 the formula "From each
according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" was the one
which went straight to the heart of the masses, and if they acclaimed
the Republic and universal suffrage, it was because they hoped to
attain to Communism through them. In I87I, also, when the people
besieged m Paris desired to make a supreme effort to resist the
invader, what was their demand? -- That free rations should be served
out to everyone. Let all articles be put into one common stock and let
them be distributed according to the requirements of each. Let each one
take freely of all that is abundant and let those objects which are
less plentiful be distributed more sparingly and in due proportions --
this is the solution which the mass of the workers understand best.
This is also the system which is commonly practiced in the rural
districts (of France). So long as the common lands afford abundant
pasture, what Commune seeks to restrict their use? When brushwood and
chestnuts are plentiful, what Commune forbids its members to take as
much as they want? And when the larger wood begins to grow scarce, what
course does the peasant adopt? -- The allowancing of individuals.
Let
us take from the common stock the articles which are abundant, and let
those objects whose production is more restricted be served out in
allowances according to requirements, giving preference to children and
old persons, that is to say, to the weak. And, moreover, let all be
consumed, not in public, but at home, according to individual tastes
and in company with one's family and Friends. This is the ideal of the
masses.
But it is not enough to argue
about,
"Communism" and
"Expropriation;" it is furthermore necessary to know who should have
the management of the common patrimony, and it is especially on this
question that different schools of Socialists are opposed to one
another, some desiring authoritarian Communism, and others, like
ourselves, declaring unreservedly in favour of anarchist Communism. In order to judge between
these
two, let us return once again to our starting point, the Revolution of
last century.
In overturning royalty the
Revolution proclaimed the sovereignty
of the people; but, by an inconsistency which was very natural at that
time, it proclaimed, not a permanent sovereignty, but an intermittent
one, to be exercised at certain intervals only, for the nomination of
deputies supposed to represent the people. In reality it copied its
institutions from the representative government of England. The
Revolution was drowned in blood, and, nevertheless, representative
government became the watchword of Europe. All Europe, with the
exception of Russia, has tried it, under all possible forms, from
government based on a property qualification to the direct government
of the little Swiss republics. But, strange to say, just in proportion
as we have approached nearer to the ideal of a representative
government, elected by a perfectly free universal suffrage, in that
same proportion have its essential vices become manifest to us, till we
have clearly seen that this mode of government is radically defective.
Is it not indeed absurd to take a certain number of men from out the
mass, and to entrust them with the management of all
public-affairs, saying to them, "Attend to these matters, we exonerate
ourselves from the task by laying it upon you: it is for you to make
laws on all manner of subjects -- armaments and mad dogs, observatories
and chimneys, instruction and street-sweeping: arrange these things as
you please and make laws about them, since you are the chosen ones whom
the people has voted capable of doing everything! "It appears to me
that if a thoughtful and honest man were offered such a post, he would
answer somewhat in this fashion:
"You entrust me with a
task
which I am unable to fulfil. I am
unacquainted with most of the questions upon which I shall be called on
to legislate. I shall either have to work to some extent in the dark,
which will not be to your advantage, or I shall appeal to you and
summon meetings in which you will yourselves seek to come to an
understanding on the questions at issue, in which case my office will be unnecessary.
If you
have
formed an opinion and have formulated it, and if you are anxious to
come to an understanding with others who have also formed an opinion on
the same subject, then all you need do is to communicate with your
neighbours and send a delegate to come to an understanding with other
delegates on this specific question; but you will certainly reserve to
yourselves the right of taking an ultimate decision; you will not
entrust your delegate with the making of laws for you. This is how
scientists and business men act each time that they have to come to an
agreement."
But the above reply would be a
repudiation of the
representative system, and nevertheless it is a faithful expression of
the idea which is growing everywhere since the vices of representative
government have been exposed in all their nakedness. Our age, however,
has gone still further, for it has begun to discuss the rights of the
State and of Society in relation to the individual; people now ask to
what point the interference of the State is necessary in the
multitudinous functions of society.
Do we require a
government
to educate our children? Only let
the worker have leisure to instruct himself, and you will see that,
through the free initiative of parents and of persons fond of tuition,
thousands of educational societies and schools of all kinds will spring
up, rivalling one another in the excellence of their teaching. If we
were not crushed by taxation and exploited by employers, as we now are,
could we not ourselves do much better than is now done for us? The
great centres would initiate progress and see the example, and you may
be sure that the progress realised would be incomparably superior to
what we now attain through our ministeries. -- Is the State even
necessary for the defence of a territory? If armed brigands attack a
people, is not that same people, armed with good weapons, the surest
rampart to oppose to the foreign aggressor? Standing armies are always
beaten by invaders, and history teaches that the latter are to be
repulsed by a popular rising alone. --
While Government is an excellent
machine to protect monopoly, has it ever been able to protect us against
ill-disposed
persons? Does it not, by creating misery, increase the number of crimes
instead of diminishing them? In establishing prisons into which
multitudes of men, women, and children are thrown for a time in order
to come forth infinitely worse than when they went in, does not the
State maintain nurseries of vice at the expense of the tax-payers? In
obliging us to commit to others the care of our affairs, does it not
create the most terrible vice of societies -- indifference to public
matters?
On the other hand, if we analyse
all the great advances made in
this century -- our international traffic, our industrial discoveries,
our means of communication -- do we find that we owe them to the State
or to private enterprise? Look at the network of railways which cover
Europe. At Madrid, for example, you take a ticket for St. Petersburg
direct. You travel along railroads which have been constructed by
millions of workers, set in motion by dozens of companies; your
carriage is attached in turn to Spanish, French, Bavarian, and Russian
locomotives: you travel without losing twenty minutes anywhere, and the
two hundred francs which you paid in Madrid will be divided to a nicety
among the companies which have combined to forward you to your
destination. This line from Madrid to St. Petersburg has been
constructed in small isolated branches which have been gradually
connected, and direct trains are the result of an understanding which
has been arrived at between twenty different companies. Of course there
has been considerable friction at the outset, and at times some
companies, influenced by an unenlightened egotism have been unwilling
to come to terms with the others; but, I ask, was it better to put up
with this occasional friction, or to wait until some Bismarck,
Napoleon, or Genghis Khan should have conquered Europe, traced the lines
with a pair of compasses, and regulated the despatch of the trains? If
the latter course had been adopted, we should still be in the days of
stage-coaches.
The network of railways is the work of the human mind
proceeding from the simple to the complex by the spontaneous efforts of
the parties interested, and it is thus that all the great enterprises of our age have
been
undertaken. It is quite true, indeed, that we pay too much to the
managers of these enterprises; this is an additional reason for
suppressing their incomes, but not for confiding the management of
European railways to a central European government.
What thousands of examples one
could cite in support of this
same idea! Take all great enterprises such as the Suez Canal, the lines
of Atlantic steamers, the telegraph which connects us with North and
South America. Consider also that commercial organisation which enables
you on rising in the morning to find bread at the baker's -- that is,
if you have the money to pay for it, which is not always the case
now-a-days -- meat at the butcher's, and all other things that you want
at other shops Is this the work of the State? It is true that we pay
abominably dearly for middlemen; this is, however, an additional reason
for suppressing, them, but not for believing that we must entrust
government with the care of providing for our feeding and clothing. If
we closely scan the development of the human mind in our times we are
struck by the number of associations which spring up to meet the varied
requirement of the individual of our age -- societies for study, for
commerce, for pleasure and recreation; some of them, very small, for
the propagation of a universal language or a certain method of
short-hand writing; others with large arms, such as that which has
recently been established for the defence of the English coast, or for
the avoidance of lawsuits, and so on. To make a list of the
associations which exist in Europe, volumes would be necessary, and it
would be seen that there is not a single branch of human activity with
which one or other does not concern itself. The State itself appeals to
them in the discharge of its most important function -- war; it says,"
We undertake to slaughter, but we cannot take care of our victims; form
a Red Cross Society to gather up the wounded on the battle. field and
to take care of them."
Let others, if they will,
advocate
industrial barrack: or the monastery of Authoritarian Communism, we declare that the
tendency of
society is in an opposite direction.
We foresee millions and millions of groups freely constituting
themselves for the satisfaction of all the varied needs of human beings
-- some of these groups organised by quarter, street, and house; others
extending hands across the walls of cities, over frontiers and oceans.
All of these will be composed of human beings who will combine freely,
and after having performed their share of productive labour will meet
together, either for the purpose of consumption, or to produce objects
of art or luxury, or to advance science in a new direction. This is the
tendency of the nineteenth century, and we follow it; we only ask to
develop it freely, without any governmental interference. Individual
liberty!" Take pebbles," said Fourrier, "put them into a box and shake
them, and they will arrange themselves in a mosaic that you could never
get by entrusting to anyone the work of arranging them harmoniously."
PART III.
NOW let me pass to the third
part of my subject -- the most important with respect to the future.
There is no more room for
doubting
that religions are going, the
nineteenth century has given them their death blow. But religions --
all religions -- have a double composition. They contain in the first
place a primitive cosmogony, a rude attempt at explaining nature, and
they furthermore contain a statement of the public morality born and
developed within the mass of the people. But when we throw religions
overboard or store them among our public records as historical
curiosities, shall we also relegate to museums the moral principles
which they contain. This has sometimes been done, and we have seen
people declare that as they no longer believed in the various religions
so they despised morality and boldly proclaimed the maxim of bourgeois
selfishness," Everyone for himself." But a Society, human or animal,
cannot exist without certain rules and moral habits springing up within it; religion
may
go, morality remains. If we were to come
to consider that a man did well in lying, deceiving his neighbours, or
plundering them when possible (this is the middle-class business
morality), we should come to such a pass that we could no longer live
together. You might assure me of your friendship, but perhaps you might
only do so in order to rob me more easily; you might promise to do a
certain thing for me, only to deceive me; you might promise to forward
a letter for me, and you might steal it just like an ordinary governor
of a jail. Under such conditions society would become impossible, and
this is so generally understood that the repudiation of religions in no
way prevents public morality from being maintained, developed, and
raised to a higher and ever higher standard. This fact is so striking
that philosophers seek to explain it by the principles of
utilitarianism, and recently Spencer sought to base the morality which
exists among us upon physiological causes and the needs connected with
the preservation of the race.
Let me give you an example in
order to explain to you what we think on the matter.
A child is drowning,
and
four men who stand upon the bank see it
struggling in the water, One of them does not stir, he is a partisan of
" Each one for himself," the maxim of the commercial middle-class;
this one is a brute and we need not speak of him further The next one
reasons thus: "If I save the child, a good report of my action will be
made to the ruler of heaven, and the Creator will reward me by
increasing my flocks and my serfs," and thereupon he plunges into the
water. Is he therefore a moral man? Clearly not! He is a shrewd
calculator, that is all. The third, who is an utilitarian, reflects
thus (or at least utilitarian philosophers represent him as so
reasoning): " Pleasures can be classed in two categories, inferior
pleasures and higher ones, To save the life of anyone is a superior
pleasure infinitely more intense and more durable than others;
therefore I will save the child." Admitting that any man ever reasoned
thus, would he not be a terrible egotist? and, moreover, could we ever
be sure that his
sophistical brain would not at some given moment
cause his
will to
incline towards an inferior pleasure, that is to say, towards
refraining from troubling himself? There remains the fourth individual.
This man has been brought up from his childhood to feel himself one
with the rest of humanity: from his childhood he has always regarded
men as possessing interests in common: he has accustomed himself to
suffer when his neighbours suffer, and to feel happy when everyone
around him is happy. Directly he hears the heart. rending cry of the
mother, he leaps into the water, not through reflection but by
instinct, and when she thanks him for saving her child, he says, "What
have I done to deserve thanks, my good woman? I am happy to see you
happy; I have acted from natural impulse and could not do otherwise!"
You recognise in this case the
truly moral man, and feel that
the others are only egotists in comparison with him. The whole
anarchist morality is represented in this example. It is the morality
of a people which does not look for the sun at midnight -- a morality
without compulsion or authority, a morality of habit. Let us create
circumstances in which man shall not be led to deceive nor exploit
others, and then by the very force of things the moral level of
humanity will rise to. a height hitherto unknown. Men are certainly not
to be moralised by teaching them a moral catechism: tribunals and
prisons do not diminish vice; they pour it over society in floods. Men
are to be moralised only by placing them in a position which shall
contribute to develop in them those habits which are social, and to
weaken those which are not so. A morality which has become instinctive
is the true morality, the only morality which endures while religions
and systems of philosophy pass away.
Let us now combine the three
preceding elements, and we shall have Anarchy and its place in
Socialistic Evolution.
Emancipation of the producer
from the yoke of capital;
production in common and free consumption of all the products of the
common labourEmancipation from the
governmental
yoke; free development of individuals in groups and federations)
free organisation ascending from the simple to the complex, according
to mutual needs and tendencies.
Emancipation from religious
morality; free morality, without
compulsion or authority, developing itself from social life and
becoming habitual.
The above is no dream of
students, it is a conclusion which
results from an analysis of the tendencies of modern society: Anarchist
Communism is the union of the two fundamental tendencies of our society
-- a tendency towards economic equality, and a tendency towards
political liberty. So long as Communism presented itself under an
authoritarian form, which necessarily implies government, armed with
much greater power than that which it possesses to-day, inasmuch as it
implies economic in addition to political power -- so long as this was
the case, Communism met with no sufficient response. Before 1848 it
could, indeed, sometimes excite for a moment the enthusiasm of the
worker who was prepared to submit to any all-powerful government,
provided it would release him from the terrible situation in which he
was placed, but it left the true friends of liberty indifferent.
Anarchist Communism
maintains that most valuable of all
conquests -- individual liberty -- and moreover extends it and gives it
a solid basis -- economic liberty - without which political liberty is
delusive; it does not ask the individual who has rejected god, the
universal tyrant, god the king, and god the parliament, to give unto
himself a god more terrible than any of the preceding -- god the
Community, or to abdicate upon its altar his independence, his will,
his tastes, and to renew the vow of asceticism which he formerly made
before the crucified god. It says to him, on the contrary, "No society
is free so long as the individual is not so". Do not seek to modify
society by imposing upon it an authority which shall make everything
right; if you do, you will fail as popes and emperors have failed.
Modify society so that your fellows may not be any longer your enemies
by the force of circumstances: abolish the conditions which allow some
to monopolise the fruit of the labour of others; and instead of
attempting to construct society from top to bottom, or from the centre
to the circumference, let it develop itself freely from the simple to the composite by the
free
union of
free groups. This course, which is so much obstructed at present, is
the true forward march of society: do not seek to hinder it, do not
turn your back on progress, but march along with it I Then the
sentiment of sociability which is common to human beings, as it is to
all animals living in society, will be able to develop itself freely,
because our fellows will no longer be our enemies, and we shall thus
arrive at a state of things in which each individual will be able to
give free rein to his inclinations, and even to his passions, without
any other restraint than the love and respect of those who surround
him."
This is our ideal, and it is the
ideal which lies deep in the
hearts of peoples -- of all peoples. We know full well that this ideal
will not be attained without violent shocks; the close of this century
has a formidable revolution in store for us: whether it begins in
France, Germany, Spain, or Russia, it will be a European one, and
spreading with the same rapidity as that of our fathers, the heroes of
1848, it will set all Europe in a blaze. This coming Revolution will
not aim at a mere change of government, but will have a social
character; the work of expropriation will commence, and exploiters will
be driven out. Whether we like it or not, this will be done
independently of the will of individuals, and when hands are laid on
private property we shall arrive at Communism, because we shall be
forced to do so. Communism, however, cannot be either authoritarian or
parliamentary, it must either be anarchist or nonexistent; the mass of
the people does not desire to trust itself again to any saviour, but
will seek to organise itself by itself.
We do not advocate
Communism
and Anarchy because we imagine men
to be better than they really are; if we had angels among us we might
be tempted to entrust to them the task of organising us, though
doubtless even they would show the cloven foot very soon. But
it is just because we take men as they are that we say: "Do not entrust
them with the governing of you. This or that despicable minister might
have been an excellent man if power had not been given to him.
The only way of arriving at harmony of interests
is by
a
society without exploiters and without rulers." It is precisely because
men are not angels that we say, "Let us arrange matters so that each
man may see his interest bound up with the interests of others, thien
you will no longer have to fear his evil passions."
Anarchist Communism being the
inevitable result of existing
tendencies, it is towards this ideal that we must direct our steps,
instead of saying, " Yes; Anarchy is an excellent ideal," and then
turning our backs upon it. Should the approaching revolution not
succeed in realising the whole of this ideal, still all that shall have
been effected in the direction of it will remain; but all that shall
have been done in a contrary direction will be doomed to disappear. It
is a general rule that a popular revolution may be vanquished, but
that, nevertheless, it furnishes a motto for the evolution of the
succeeding century. France expired under the heel of the allies in
1815, and yet the action of France had rendered serfdom impossible of
continuance, all over Europe and representative government inevitable;
universal suffrage was drowned in blood, and yet universal suffrage is
the watchword of the century. In 1871 the Commune expired under volleys
of grapeshot, and yet the watchword in France to-day is "the Free
Commune." And if Anarchist Communism is vanquished in the coming
revolution, after having asserted itself in the light of day, not only
will it leave behind it the abolition of private property not only will
the working man have learned his true place in society, not only will
the landed and mercantile aristocracy have received a mortal blow, but
Communist Anarchism will be the goal of the evolution of the twentieth
century.
Anarchist Communism sums up all
that is most beautiful and most
durable in the progress of humanity; the sentiment of justice, the
sentiment of liberty, and solidarity or community of interest. It
guarantees the free evolution, both of the individual and of society.
Therefore, it will triumph.
Human Evolution Introduction Vision
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