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A CRITIQUE OF ANARCHIST COMMUNISM
by Ken Knudson
A NOTE TO READERS
I address myself in these pages primarily to those
readers of "Anarchy" who call themselves "communist-
anarchists." It is my purpose in this article to show that
this label is a contradiction in terms and that anyone
accepting it must do so by a lack of clear understanding of
what the words "anarchist" and "communist" really mean. It
is my hope that in driving a wedge between these two words,
the communist side will suffer at the expense of the
anarchist.
I make no claims to originality in these pages. Most of
what I have to say has been said before and much better. The
economics is taken primarily from the writings of Pierre-
Joseph Proudhon, William B. Greene, and Benjamin R. Tucker.
The philosophy from Max Stirner, Tucker again, and, to a
lesser extent, James L. Walker.
I hope you won't be put off by my clumsy prose. I'm a
scientist by trade, not a professional writer. I implore
you, therefore, not to mistake style for content. If you
want both the content and good style may I suggest Tucker's
"Instead of a Book". Unfortunately, this volume has been out
of print since 1897, but the better libraries - especially
those in the United States - should have it. If you can
read French, I recommend the economic writings of Proudhon.
"General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century"
is particularly good and has been translated into English by
the American individualist, John Beverley Robinson. (Freedom
Press, 1923). Also in English is Tucker's translation of one
of Proudhon's earliest works, the well-known "What is
Property?". This book is not as good as the "General Idea"
book, but it has the advantage of being currently available
in paperback in both languages. A word of warning: unless
you are thoroughly familiar with Proudhon, I would not
recommend the popular Macmillan "Papermac" edition of
"Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon"; they seem to
have been selected with irrelevance as their only criterion.
Like so many other great writers, Proudhon suffers
tremendously when quoted out of context and this particular
edition gives, on average, less than a page per selection.
Better to read his worst book completely than to be misled
by disconnected excerpts like these. Finally the
individualist philosophy, egoism, is best found in Max
Stirner's "The Ego and His Own". This book suffers somewhat
from a very difficult style (which wasn't aided by Stirner's
wariness of the Prussian censor), but if you can get through
his obscure references and biblical quotes, I think you will
find the task worth the effort.
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H. L. Mencken once observed that just because a rose
smells better than a cabbage doesn't mean to say it makes a
better soup. I feel the same way about individualist
anarchism. At first whiff, the altruist rose may smell
better than the individualist cabbage, but the former sure
makes a lousy soup. In the following pages I hope to show
that the latter makes a better one.
Ken Knudson
Geneva, Switzerland
March, 1971
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COMMUNISM: FOR THE COMMON GOOD
"Communism is a 9 letter word used by inferior magicians
with the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth
into gold."
- Allen Ginsberg
"Wichita Vortex Sutra"
By way of prelude to the individualist critique of
communism, I should like to look briefly at the communist-
anarchists' critique of their Marxist brothers. Anarchists
and Marxists have traditionally been at odds with one
another: Bakunin and Marx split the First International over
their differences a century ago; Emma Goldman virtually made
her living in the 1920's from writing books and magazine
articles about her "disillusionment in Russia"; in May,
1937, the communists and anarchists took time off from their
war against Franco to butcher each other in the streets of
Barcelona; and the May days of '68 saw French anarchists
directing more abuse against the communist CGT than against
the Gaullist government.
What is the nature of these differences? Perhaps the
most concise answer to this question came in 1906 from a
veritable expert on the subject: Joseph Stalin. He wrote in
"Anarchism or Socialism?" that there were essentially three
main accusations which (communist) anarchists leveled
against Marxism:
1) that the Marxists aren't really communists because
they would "preserve the two institutions which constitute
the foundation of [the capitalist] system: representative
government and wage labour"; [1]
2) that the Marxists "are not revolutionaries",
"repudiate violent revolution", and "want to establish
Socialism only by means of ballot papers"; [2]
3) that the Marxists "actually want to establish not
the dictatorship of the proletariat, but their own
dictatorship over the proletariat." [3]
Stalin goes on to quote Marx and Engels to "prove" that
"everything the anarchists say on this subject is either the
result of stupidity, or despicable slander." [4] Today the
anarchists have the advantage of history on their side to
show just who was slandering whom. I won't insult the
reader's intelligence by pointing out how all three
objections to Marxism were sustained by Uncle Joe himself a
few decades later.
But let us look at these three accusations from another
point of view. Aren't the communist-anarchists simply saying
in their holier-than-thou attitude, "I'm more communist than
you, I'm more revolutionary than you, I'm more consistent
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than you?" What's wrong with Marxism, they say, is NOT that
it is for communism, violent revolution and dictatorship,
but that it goes about attaining its goals by half-measures,
compromises, and pussyfooting around. Individualist-
anarchists have a different criticism. We reject communism
per se, violent revolution per se, and dictatorship per se.
My purpose here is to try to explain why.
* * * * *
Before one can get into an intelligent criticism of
anything, one must begin by defining one's terms.
"Anarchism", according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica
dictionary, is "the theory that all forms of government are
incompatible with individual and social liberty and should
be abolished." It further says that it comes from the Greek
roots "an" (without) and "archos" (leader).* As for
"communism", it is "any social theory that calls for the
abolition of private property and control by the community
over economic affairs." To elaborate on that definition,
communists of all varieties hold that all wealth should be
produced and distributed according to the formula "from each
according to his** ability, to each according to his needs"
and that the administrative mechanism to control such
production and distribution should be democratically
organised by the workers themselves (i.e. "workers'
control"). They further insist that there should be no
private ownership of the means of production and no trading
of goods except through the official channels agreed upon by
the majority. With rare exceptions, communists of all
varieties propose to realise this ideal through violent
revolution and the expropriation of all private property.
That no one should accuse me of building up straw men
in order to knock them down, allow me to quote Kropotkin***
--------------------
* Historically, it was Proudhon who first used the word
to mean something other than disorder and chaos: "Although a
firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term)
an anarchist." [5]
** Here Marx uses the masculine pronoun to denote the
generic "one". In deference to easy flowing English grammar,
I'll stick to his precedent and hope that Women's Lib people
will forgive me when I, too, write "his" instead of "one's".
*** I have chosen Kropotkin as a "typical" communist-
anarchist here and elsewhere in this article for a number of
reasons. First, he was a particularly prolific writer, doing
much of his original work in English. Secondly, he is
generally regarded as "probably the greatest anarchist
thinker and writer" by many communist- anarchists, including
at least one editor of "Freedom". [6] Finally, he was the
founder of Freedom Press, the publisher of the magazine you
are now reading.
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to show that communist-anarchism fits in well with the above
definition of communism:
"We have to put an end to the iniquities, the vices, the
crimes which result from the idle existence of some and the
economic, intellectual, and moral servitude of others.... We
are no longer obliged to grope in the dark for the
solution.... It is Expropriation.... If all accumulated
treasure...does not immediately go back to the collectivity
- since ALL have contributed to produce it; if the insurgent
people do not take possession of all the goods and
provisions amassed in the great cities and do not organise
to put them within the reach of all who need them...the
insurrection will not be a revolution, and everything will
have to be begun over again....Expropriation, - that then,
is the watchword which is imposed upon the next revolution,
under penalty of failing in its historic mission. The
complete expropriation of all who have the means of
exploiting human beings. The return to common ownership by
the nation of all that can serve in the hands of any one for
the exploitation of others." [7]
Now let us take our definitions of communism and
anarchism and see where they lead us. The first part of the
definition of communism calls for the abolition of private
property. "Abolition" is itself a rather authoritarian
concept - unless, of course, you're talking about abolishing
something which is inherently authoritarian and invasive
itself (like slavery or government, for example). So the
question boils down to "Is private property authoritarian
and invasive?" The communists answer "yes"; the
individualists disagree. Who is right? Which is the more
"anarchistic" answer? The communists argue that "private
property has become a hindrance to the evolution of mankind
towards happiness" [8], that "private property offends
against justice" [9] and that it "has developed
parasitically amidst the free institutions of our earliest
ancestors." [10] The individualists, far from denying these
assertions, reaffirm them. After all wasn't it Proudhon who
first declared property "theft"?* But when the communist
--------------------
*By property Proudhon means property as it exists under
government privilege, i.e. property gained not through
labour or the exchange of the products of labour (which he
favours), but through the legal privileges bestowed by
government on idle capital.
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says, "Be done, then, with this vile institution; abolish
private property once and for all; expropriate and
collectivise all property for the common good," the
individualist must part company with him. What's wrong with
private property today is that it rests primarily in the
hands of a legally privileged elite. The resolution of this
injustice is not to perpetrate an even greater one, but
rather to devise a social and economic system which will
distribute property in such a manner that everyone is
guaranteed the product of his labour by natural economic
laws. I propose to demonstrate just such a system at the end
of this article. If this can be done, it will have been
shown that private property is not intrinsically invasive
after all, and that the communists in expropriating it would
be committing a most UNanarchistic act. It is, therefore,
incumbent upon all communists who call themselves anarchists
to read carefully that section and either find a flaw in its
reasoning or admit that they are not anarchists after all.
The second part of the definition of communism says
that economic affairs should be controlled by the community.
Individualists say they should be controlled by the market
place and that the only law should be the natural law of
supply and demand. Which of these two propositions is the
more consistent with anarchism? Herbert Spencer wrote in
1884, "The great political superstition of the past was the
divine right of kings. The great political superstition of
the present is the divine right of parliaments." [11] The
communists seem to have carried Spencer's observation one
step further: the great political superstition of the future
shall be the divine right of workers' majorities. "Workers'
control" is their ideology; "Power to the People" their
battle cry. What communist-anarchists apparently forget is
that workers' control means CONTROL. Marxists, let it be
said to their credit, at least are honest about this point.
They openly and unashamedly demand the dictatorship of the
proletariat. Communist-anarchists seem to be afraid of that
phrase, perhaps subconsciously realising the inherent
contradiction in their position. But communism, by its very
nature, IS dictatorial. The communist-anarchists may
christen their governing bodies "workers' councils" or
"soviets", but they remain GOVERNMENTS just the same.
Abraham Lincoln was supposed to have asked, "If you
call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No!
Calling a tail a leg don't MAKE it a leg." The same is true
about governments and laws. Calling a law a "social habit"
[12] or an "unwritten custom" [13] as Kropotkin does,
doesn't change its nature. To paraphrase Shakespeare, that
which we call a law by any other name would smell as foul.
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Let us take a closer look at the type of society the
communists would have us live under and see if we can get at
the essence of these laws. Kropotkin says that "nine-tenths
of those called lazy...are people gone astray." [14] He then
suggests that given a job which "answers" their
"temperament" and "capacities" (today we would hear words
like "relate", "alienation" and "relevancy"), these people
would be productive workers for the community. What about
that other ten percent which couldn't adjust? Kropotkin
doesn't elaborate, but he does say, "if not one, of the
thousands of groups of our federation, will receive you,
whatever be their motive; if you are absolutely incapable of
producing anything useful, or if you refuse to do it, then
live like an isolated man....That is what could be done in a
communal society in order to turn away sluggards if they
become too numerous." [15] This is a pretty harsh sentence
considering that ALL the means of production have been
confiscated in the name of the revolution. So we see that
communism's law, put bluntly, becomes "work or starve."*
This happens to be an individualist law too. But there is a
difference between the two: the communist law is a man-made
law, subject to man's emotions, rationalisations, and
inconsistencies; the individualist law is nature's law - the
law of gastric juices, if you will - a law which, like it or
not, is beyond repeal. Although both laws use the same
language, the difference in meaning is the difference
between a commandment and a scientific observation.
Individualist-anarchists don't care when, where, or how a
man earns a living, as long as he is not invasive about it.
He may work 18 hours a day and buy a mansion to live in the
other six hours if he so chooses. Or he may feel like
Thoreau did that "that man is richest whose pleasures are
the cheapest" [16] and work but a few hours a week to ensure
his livelihood. I wonder what would happen to Thoreau under
communism? Kropotkin would undoubtedly look upon him as "a
ghost of bourgeois society." [17] And what would Thoreau say
to Kropotkin's proposed "contract"?: "We undertake to give
you the use of our houses, stores, streets, means of
transport, schools, museums, etc., on condition that, from
twenty to forty-five or fifty years of age, you consecrate
four or five hours a day to some work recognised [by whom?]
as necessary to existence....Twelve or fifteen hundred hours
--------------------
*Article 12 of the 1936 constitution of the USSR reads:
"In the USSR work is the duty of every able-bodied citizen
according to the principle: 'He who does not work, neither
shall he eat.' In the USSR the principle of socialism is
realised: 'From each according to his ability, to each
according to his work.'"
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of work a year...is all we ask of you." [18] I don't think
it would be pulling the nose of reason to argue that Thoreau
would object to these terms.
But some communist-anarchists would reject Kropotkin's
idea of not giving to the unproductive worker according to
his needs, even if he doesn't contribute according to his
abilities. They might simply say that Kropotkin wasn't being
a good communist when he wrote those lines (just as he
wasn't being a good anarchist when he supported the Allies
during World War I). But this idea, it seems to me would be
patently unjust to the poor workers who would have to
support such parasites. How do these communists reconcile
such an injustice? As best I can gather from the writings of
the classical communist-anarchists, they meet this problem
in one of two ways: (1) they ignore it, or (2) they deny it.
Malatesta takes the first approach. When asked, "How will
production and distribution be organised?" he replies that
anarchists are not prophets and that they have no blueprints
for the future. Indeed, he likens this important question to
asking when a man "should go to bed and on what days he
should cut his nails." [19] Alexander Berkman takes the
other approach (a notion apparently borrowed from the
Marxists*): he denies that unproductive men will exist after
the revolution. "In an anarchist society it will be the most
useful and difficult toil that one will seek rather than the
lighter job." [20] Berkman's view of labour makes the
protestant work ethic sound positively mild by comparison.
For example: "Can you doubt that even the hardest toil would
become a pleasure...in an atmosphere of brotherhood and
respect for labour?" [21] Yes, I can doubt it. Or again: "We
can visualise the time when labour will have become a
pleasant exercise, a joyous application of physical effort
to the needs of the world." [22] And again, in apparent
anticipation of Goebbles' famous dictum about the powers of
repetition, "Work will become a pleasure... laziness will be
unknown." [23] It is hard to argue with such "reasoning". It
would be like a debate between Bertrand Russell and Billy
Graham about the existence of heaven. How can you argue with
faith? I won't even try. I'll just ask the reader, next time
he is at work, to look around - at himself and at his mates
- and ask himself this question: "After the revolution will
--------------------
* At least Berkman is consistent in this matter. Marx,
paradoxically, wanted to both "abolish labour itself" ("The
German Ideology"), AND make it "life's prime want"
("Critique of the Gotha Programme").
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we really prefer this place to staying at home in bed or
going off to the seashore?" If there are enough people who
can answer "yes" to this question perhaps communism will
work after all. But in the meantime, before building the
barricades and shooting people for a cause of dubious
certainty, I would suggest pondering these two items from
the bourgeois and communist press respectively:
"In Detroit's auto plants, weekend absenteeism has reached
such proportions that a current bit of folk wisdom advises
car buyers to steer clear of vehicles made on a Monday or
Friday. Inexperienced substitute workers, so the caution
goes, have a way of building bugs into a car. But in Italy
lately the warning might well include Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Thursday. At Fiat, the country's largest maker,
absenteeism has jumped this year from the normal 4 or 5
percent to 12.5 percent, with as many as 18,000 workers
failing to clock in for daily shifts at the company's Turin
works. Alfa Romeo's rate has hit 15 percent as hundreds of
workers call in each day with 'malattia di comodo' - a
convenient illness.... Italian auto workers seem to be doing
no more than taking advantage of a very good deal. A new
labour contract guarantees workers in state-controlled
industries 180 days of sick leave a year, at full pay, while
workers in private firms (such as Fiat) get the same number
of days at 75 percent of full pay." [24]
When doctors, employed by the state, made an inspection
visit in Turin we are told that they found "that only 20
percent of the 'indisposed' workers they had visited were
even mildly sick." For those who think that this is just a
bourgeois aberration, let us see what revolutionary Cuba,
after 12 years of communism, has to say about such
"parasites". I translate from the official organ of the
Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party:
"Worker's discussion groups are being set up in all work
centres to discuss the proposed law against laziness. These
groups have already proven to be a valuable forum for the
working class. During these assemblies, which for the
moment are limited to pilot projects in the Havana area,
workers have made original suggestions and posed timely
questions which lead one to believe that massive discussion
of this type would make a notable contribution to the
solution of this serious problem. An assembly of boiler
repairmen in the Luyano district was representative of the
general feeling of the workers. They demanded that action be
taken against those parasitic students who have stopped
going to classes regularly or who, although attending
classes, do just enough to get by. The workers were equally
adamant about co-workers who, after a sickness or accident,
refuse to go back to their jobs but go on receiving their
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salaries for months without working. Questions were often
accompanied by concrete proposals. For example, should
criminals receive the same salaries on coming back to work
from prison as when they left their jobs? The workers
thought not, but they did think it all right that the
revolutionary state accord a pension to the prisoner's
family during his stay in the re-education [sic] centre. At
the Papelera Cubana factory the workers made a suggestion
which proved their contempt of these loafers; habitual
offenders should be punished in geometric proportion to the
number of their crimes. They also proposed that workers who
quit their jobs or were absent too often be condemned to a
minimum, not of 6 months, but of one year's imprisonment and
that the worker who refuses three times work proposed by the
Ministry of Labour be considered automatically as a criminal
and subject to punishment as such. The workers also
expressed doubts about the scholastic 'deserters', ages 15
and 16, who aren't yet considered physically and mentally
able to work but who don't study either. They also cited the
case of the self employed man who works only for his own
selfish interests. The dockworkers of Havana port, zone 1,
also had their meeting. They envisioned the possibility of
making this law retroactive for those who have a bad work
attitude, stating forcefully that it wasn't a question of
precedents, because otherwise the law could only be applied
in those cases which occurred after its enactment. The
harbour workers also proposed imprisonment for the
'sanctioned' workers and that, in their opinion, the
punishment of these parasites shouldn't be lifted until they
could demonstrate a change of attitude. The steadfastness of
the workers was clearly demonstrated when they demanded that
punishments not be decided by the workers themselves in
order to avoid possible leniency due to reasons of sympathy,
sentimentality, etc. The workers also indicated that these
parasites should not have the right to the social benefits
accorded to other workers. Some workers considered
imprisonment as a measure much too kind. As you can see, the
workers have made many good proposals, which leads us to
believe that with massive discussion, this new law will be
considerably enriched. This is perhaps the path to social
legislation by the masses."* [25]
These two extracts clearly demonstrate that human nature
remains pretty constant, independent of the social system
the individual workman is subjected to. So it seems to me
that unless human nature can somehow be miraculously
transformed by the revolution - and that WOULD be a
revolution - some form of compulsion would be necessary in
order to obtain "from each according to his abilities."
While on this point, I would like to ask my communist-
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anarchist comrades just who is supposed to determine another
person's abilities? We've seen from the above article that
in Cuba the Ministry of Labour makes this decision. How
would it differ in an anarchist commune? If these anarchists
are at all consistent with their professed desire for
individual freedom, the only answer to this question is that
the individual himself would be the sole judge of his
abilities and, hence, his profession. But this is
ridiculous. Who, I wonder, is going to decide of his own
free will that his real ability lies in collecting other
people's garbage? And what about the man who thinks that he
is the greatest artist since Leonardo da Vinci and decides
to devote his life to painting mediocre landscapes while the
community literally feeds his delusions with food from the
communal warehouse? Few people, I dare say, would opt to do
the necessary "dirty work" if they could choose with
impunity ANY job, knowing that whatever they did - good or
bad, hard or easy - they would still receive according to
their needs.** The individualist's answer to this perennial
question of "who will do the dirty work" is very simple: "I
--------------------
*The Associated Press has since reported the passage of
this law: "Cuba's Communist regime announced yesterday a
tough new labour law that Premier Fidel Castro said is aimed
at 400,000 loafers, bums and 'parasites' who have upset the
country's new social order. The law, which goes into effect
April 1, provides for penalties ranging from six months to
two years of forced labour in 'rehabilitation centres' for
those convicted of vagrancy, malingering or habitual
absenteeism from work or school. The law decrees that all
males between 17 and 60 have a 'social duty' to work on a
daily systematic basis unless they are attending an approved
school. Those who do not are considered 'parasites of the
revolution' and subject to prosecution by the courts or
special labourers' councils. The anti-loafing law - seen as
a tough new weapon to be used mainly against dissatisfied
young people - was prompted by Mr. Castro's disclosure last
September that as many as 400,000 workers were creating
serious economic problems by shirking their duties." [26]
** Anyone who has ever gone to an anarchist summer camp
knows what I mean. Here we have "la creme de la creme", so
to speak, just dying to get on with the revolution; yet who
cleans out the latrines? More often than not, no one. Or,
when it really gets bad, some poor sap will sacrifice
himself for the cause. You don't have solidarity; you have
martyrdom. And no one feels good about it: you have
resentment on the part of the guy who does it and guilt from
those who don't.
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will if I'm paid well enough." I suspect even Mr. Heath
would go down into the London sewers if he were paid 5
million pounds per hour for doing it. Somewhere between this
sum and what a sewer worker now gets is a just wage, which,
given a truly free society, would be readily determined by
competition.
This brings us to the second half of the communist
ideal: the distribution of goods according to need. The
obvious question again arises, "Who is to decide what
another man needs?" Anarchists once more must leave that
decision up to the individual involved. To do otherwise
would be to invite tyranny, for who can better determine a
person's needs than the person himself?* But if the
individual is to decide for himself what he needs, what is
to prevent him from "needing" a yacht and his own private
airplane? If you think we've got a consumer society now,
what would it be like if everything was free for the
needing? You may object that luxuries aren't needs. But that
is just begging the question: what is a luxury, after all?
To millions of people in the world today food is a luxury.
To the English central heating is a luxury, while to the
Americans it's a necessity. The Nazi concentration camps
painfully demonstrated just how little man actually NEEDS.
But is that the criterion communists would use for
determining need? I should hope (and think) not. So it seems
to me that this posses a definite dilemma for the communist-
anarchist: what do you do about unreasonable, irrational, or
extravagant "needs"? What about the man who "needs" a new
pair of shoes every month? "Nonsense," you may say, "no one
needs new shoes that often." Well, how often then? Once a
year? Every five years perhaps? And who will decide? Then
what about me? I live in Switzerland and I'm crazy about
grape jam - but unfortunately the Swiss aren't. I feel that
a jam sandwich isn't a jam sandwich unless it's made with
GRAPE jam. But tell that to the Swiss! If Switzerland were a
communist federation, there wouldn't be a single communal
warehouse which would stock grape jam. If I were to go up to
the commissar-in-charge-of-jams and ask him to put in a
--------------------
* I'm reminded here of the tale of the man who decided
his mule didn't NEED any food. He set out to demonstrate his
theory and almost proved his point when, unfortunately, the
beast died. Authoritarian communism runs a similar risk
when it attempts to determine the needs of others.
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requisition for a few cases, he would think I was nuts.
"Grapes are for wine," he'd tell me with infallible logic,
"and more people drink wine than eat grape jam." "But I'm a
vegetarian," I plead, "and just think of all the money (?)
I'm saving the commune by not eating any of that expensive
meat." After which he would lecture me on the economics of
jam making, tell me that a grape is more valuable in its
liquid form, and chastise me for being a throwback to
bourgeois decadence.
And what about you, dear reader? Have you no
individual idiosyncrasies? Perhaps you've got a thing about
marshmallows. What if the workers in the marshmallow
factories decide (under workers' control, of course) that
marshmallows are bad for your health, too difficult to make,
or just simply a capitalist plot? Are you to be denied the
culinary delights that only marshmallows can offer, simply
because some distant workers get it into their heads that a
marshmallowless world would be a better world?
But, not only would distribution according to need hurt
the consumer, it would be grossly unfair to the productive
worker who actually makes the goods or performs the
necessary services. Suppose, for example, that hardworking
farmer Brown goes to the communal warehouse with a load of
freshly dug potatoes. While there Brown decides he needs a
new pair of boots. Unfortunately there are only a few pairs
in stock since Jones the shoemaker quit his job - preferring
to spend his days living off Brown's potatoes and writing
sonnets about the good life. So boots are rationed. The boot
commissar agrees that Brown's boots are pretty shabby but,
he points out, Smith the astrologer is in even greater need.
Could Brown come back in a month or so when BOTH soles have
worn through? Brown walks away in disgust, resolved never
again to sweat over his potato patch.
Even today people are beginning to complain about the
injustices of the (relatively mild) welfare state. Theodore
Roszak writes that in British schools there has been a
"strong trend away from the sciences over the past four
years" and that people are showing "annoyed concern" and
"loudly observing that the country is not spending its money
to produce poets and Egyptologists - and then demanding a
sharp cut in university grants and stipends."[27] If people
are upset NOW at the number of poets and Egyptologists that
they are supporting, what would it be like if EVERYONE could
simply take up his favourite hobby as his chosen profession?
I suspect it wouldn't be long before our professional
chess players and mountain climbers found the warehouse
stocks dwindling to nothing. Social unrest would surely
increase in direct proportion to the height of the trash
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piling up on the doorsteps and the subsequent yearning for
the "good old days" would bring about the inevitable
counter-revolution. Such would be the fate of the
anarchist-communist utopia.
* * * * *
Peter Kropotkin opens his chapter on "Consumption and
Production" in "The Conquest of Bread" with the following
words:
"If you open the works of any economist you will find that
he begins with PRODUCTION, the analysis of means employed
nowadays for the creation of wealth; division of labour,
manufacture, machinery, accumulation of capital. From Adam
Smith to Marx, all have proceeded along these lines. Only
in the latter parts of their books do they treat of
CONSUMPTION, that is to say, of the means necessary to
satisfy the needs of individuals....Perhaps you will say
this is logical. Before satisfying needs you must create the
wherewithal to satisfy them. But before producing anything,
must you not feel the need of it? Is it not necessity that
first drove man to hunt, to raise cattle, to cultivate land,
to make implements, and later on to invent machinery? Is it
not the study of needs that should govern production?"[28]
When I first came upon these words, I must admit I was
rather surprised. "What have we here," I thought, "is the
prince of anarchist-communism actually going to come out in
favour of the consumer?" It didn't take long to find out
that he wasn't. Most communists try very hard to ignore the
fact that the sole purpose of production is consumption. But
not Kropotkin; he first recognises the fact - and THEN he
ignores it. It's only a matter of three pages before he gets
his head back into the sand and talks of "how to reorganise
PRODUCTION so as to really satisfy all needs." [My emphasis]
Under communism it is not the consumer that counts; it
is the producer. The consumer is looked upon with scorn - a
loathsome, if necessary, evil. The worker, on the other
hand, is depicted as all that is good and heroic. It is not
by accident that the hammer and sickle find themselves as
the symbols of the Russian "workers' paradise." Can you
honestly imagine a communist society raising the banner of
bread and butter and declaring the advent of the "consumers'
paradise"? If you can, your imagination is much more vivid
than mine.
But that's exactly what individualist-anarchists would
do. Instead of the communist's "workers' control" (i.e. a
producers' democracy), we advocate a consumers' democracy.
Both democracies - like all democracies - would in fact be
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dictatorships. The question for anarchists is which
dictatorship is the least oppressive? The answer should be
obvious. But, judging from the ratio of communists to
individualists in the anarchist movement, apparently it's
not. So perhaps I'd better explain.
The workers in some given industry decide that item A
should no longer be produced and decide instead to
manufacture item B. Now consumer X, who never liked item A
anyway, couldn't care less; but poor Y feels his life will
never be the same without A. What can Y do? He's just a lone
consumer and consumers have no rights in this society. But
maybe other Y's agree with him. A survey is taken and it is
shown that only 3% of all consumers regret the passing of A.
But can't some compromise be arrived at? How about letting
just one tiny factory make A's? Perhaps the workers agree to
this accommodation. Perhaps not. In any case the workers'
decision is final. There is no appeal. The Y's are totally
at the mercy of the workers and if the decision is adverse,
they'll just have to swallow hard and hope that next week
item C isn't taken away as well. So much for the producers'
dictatorship.
Let's now take a look at the consumers' dictatorship.
Consumers are finicky people - they want the best possible
product at the lowest possible price. To achieve this end
they will use ruthless means. The fact that producer X asks
more for his product than Y asks for his similar product is
all that the consumer needs to know. He will mercilessly buy
Y's over X's. The extenuating circumstances matter little to
him. X may have ten children and a mother-in-law to feed.
The consumer still buys from Y. Such is the nature of the
consumers' dictatorship over the producer.
Now there is a fundamental difference between these two
dictatorships. In the one the worker says to the consumer,
"I will produce what I want and if you don't like it you can
lump it." In the other the consumer says to the worker, "You
will produce what I want and if you don't I will take my
business elsewhere." It doesn't take the sensitive antennae
of an anarchist to see which of these two statements is the
more authoritarian. The first leaves no room for argument;
there are no exceptions, no loopholes for the dissident
consumer to crawl through. The second, on the other hand,
leaves a loophole so big that it is limited only by the
worker's imagination and abilities. If a producer is not
doing as well as his competitor, there's a reason for it. He
may not be suited for that particular work, in which case he
will change jobs. He may be charging too much for his goods
or services, in which case he will have to lower his costs,
profits, and/or overhead to meet the competition. But one
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thing should be made clear: each worker is also a consumer
and what the individual looses in his role as producer by
having to cut his costs down to the competitive market
level, he makes up in his role as consumer by being able to
buy at the lowest possible prices.*
* * * * *
Let us turn our attention now to the various
philosophies used by communists to justify their social
system. The exponents of any social change invariably claim
that people will be "happier" under their system than they
now are under the status quo. The big metaphysical question
then becomes, "What is happiness?" Up until recently the
communists - materialists par excellence - used to say it
was material well-being. The main gripe they had against
capitalism was that the workers were NECESSARILY in a state
of increasing poverty. Bakunin, echoing Marx, said that "the
situation of the proletariat...by virtue of inevitable
economic law, must and will become worse every year." [29]
But since World War II this pillar of communist thought has
become increasingly shaky - particularly in the United
States where "hard hats" are now pulling in salaries upwards
of four quid an hour. This fact has created such acute
embarrassment among the faithful that many communists are
now seeking a new definition of happiness which has nothing
to do with material comfort.
Very often what they do in discarding the Marxist
happiness albatross is to saddle themselves with a Freudian
one.** The new definition of happiness our neo-Freudian
communists arrive at is usually derived from what Otto
Fenichel called the "Nirvana
--------------------
* The usual objection raised to a "consumers'
democracy" is that capitalists have used similar catch
phrases in order to justify capitalism and keep the workers
in a subjugated position. Individualists sustain this
objection but point out that capitalists are being
inconsistent by not practicing what they preach. If they
did, they would no longer be in a position of privilege,
living off the labour of others. This point is made clear in
the section on capitalism later in this article.
** Wilhelm Reich and R. D. Laing are among the latest
gurus of the libertarian left. And it's not uncommon in
anarchist circles to hear a few sympathetic words about
Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilisation," despite the
author's totalitarian tendencies.
1
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principle." The essence of this theory is that both life-
enhancing behaviour (e.g. sexual intercourse, eating) and
life-inhibiting behaviour (e.g. war, suicide) are
alternative ways of escaping from tension. Thus Freud's life
instinct and death instinct find their common ground in
Nirvana where happiness means a secure and carefree
existence. This sounds to me very much like the Christian
conception of heaven. But with communism, unlike heaven, you
don't have to give up your life to get in - just your
humanity.
Homer Lane used to have a little anecdote which
illustrates the point I'm trying to make about the communist
idea of happiness:
"A dog and a rabbit are running down a field. Both
apparently are doing the same thing, running and using their
capacity to the full. Really there is a great difference
between them. Their motives are different. One is happy, the
other unhappy. The dog is happy because he is trying to do
something with the hope of achieving it. The rabbit is
unhappy because he is afraid. A few minutes later the
position is reversed; the rabbit has reached his burrow and
is inside panting, whilst the dog is sitting outside
panting. The rabbit is now happy because it is safe, and
therefore no longer afraid. The dog is unhappy because his
hope has not been realised. Here we have the two kinds of
happiness of which each one of us is capable - happiness
based on the escape from danger, and happiness based on the
fulfillment of a hope, which is the only true happiness."
[30]
I leave it to the reader as an exercise in triviality
to decide which of these two types of happiness is
emphasised by communism. While on the subject of analogies,
I'd like to indulge in one of my own. Generally speaking
there are two kinds of cats: the "lap cat" and the "mouser."
The former leads a peaceful existence, leaving granny's lap
only long enough to make a discreet trip to its sandbox and
to lap up a saucer of milk. The latter lives by catching
mice in the farmer's barn and never goes near the inside of
the farm house. The former is normally fat and lazy; the
latter skinny and alert. Despite the lap cat's easier life,
the mouser wouldn't exchange places with him if he could,
while the lap cat COULDN'T exchange places if he would. Here
we have two cats - perhaps even from the same litter - with
two completely different attitudes toward life. The one
expects a clean sandbox and food twice a day - and he is
rarely disappointed. The other has to work for a living, but
generally finds the reward worth while. "Now what has this
got to do with the subject at hand?" I hear you cry. Just
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this: the communists would make "lap cats" of us all. "But
what's so bad about that?" you may ask. To which I would
have to reply (passing over the stinky problem of WHO will
change the sandbox), "Have you ever tried to 'domesticate' a
mouser?"
Communism, in its quest for a tranquil, tensionless
world, inevitably harks back to the Middle Ages. Scratch a
communist and chances are pretty good you'll find a
mediaevalist underneath. Paul Goodman, for example, derives
his ideal "community of scholars" from Bologna and Paris
models based in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. [31]
Erich Fromm writes longingly of "the sense of security which
was characteristic of man in the Middle Ages....In having a
distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the
social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a
structuralised whole, and thus life had a meaning which left
no place, and no need, for doubt. A person was identical
with his role in society; he was a peasant, an artisan, a
knight, and not AN INDIVIDUAL who HAPPENED to have this or
that occupation. The social order was conceived as a natural
order, and being a definite part of it gave man a feeling of
security and of belonging. There was comparatively little
competition. One was born into a certain economic position
which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition. [32]
Kropotkin goes even further than Fromm. I'd like to examine
his position in some detail because I think it is very
instructive of how the communist mentality works. In perhaps
his best-known book, "Mutual Aid," Kropotkin devotes two of
its eight chapters to glorifying the Middle Ages, which he
boldly claim were one of "the two greatest periods of
[mankind's] history." [33] (The other one being ancient
Greece. He doesn't say how he reconciles this with the fact
that Greece was based firmly on a foundation of slavery).
"No period of history could better illustrate the
constructive powers of the popular masses than the tenth and
eleventh centuries...but, unhappily, this is a period about
which historical information is especially scarce." [34] I
wonder why? Could it be that everyone was having such a good
time that no one found time to record it? Kropotkin writes
of the mediaeval cities as "centres of liberty and
enlightenment." [35] The mediaeval guilds, he says, answered
"a deeply inrooted want of human nature," [36] calling them
"organisations for maintaining justice." [37] Let's see what
Kropotkin means here by "justice":
"If a brother's house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or
has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren MUST
come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two
brethren MUST keep watch by his bed till he is out of
danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him - a great
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affair in those times of pestilences [Kropotkin must have
been dozing to admit this in his Utopia] - and follow him to
the church and the grave. After his death they MUST provide
for his children....If a brother was involved in a quarrel
with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for
bad and for good; that is, whether he was unjustly accused
of aggression, OR REALLY WAS THE AGGRESSOR, they HAD to
support him....They went to court to support by oath the
truthfulness of his statements, and if he was found guilty
they did not let him go to full ruin and become a slave
through not paying the due compensation; they all paid
it....Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods
which gradually covered the whole of mediaeval life." [38]
(My emphasis)
And such is Kropotkin's conception of "justice," which could
better be described as a warped sense of solidarity. He goes
on to say, "It is evident that an institution so well suited
to serve the need of union, without depriving the individual
of his initiative, could but spread, grow, and fortify."
[39] "We see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and
peasants united in guilds; we also see guilds of priests,
painters, teachers of primary schools and universities,
guilds for performing the passion play, for building a
church, for developing the 'mystery' of a given school of
art or craft, or for a special recreation - even guilds
among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organised
on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual
support." [40] It was such "unity of thought" which
Kropotkin thinks "can but excite our admiration." [41]
But where did the common labourer fit into all this?
Kropotkin makes the remarkable generalisation that "at no
time has labour enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and
such respect." [42] As proof he cites the "glorious
donations" [43] the workers gave to the cathedrals. These,
he says, "bear testimony of their relative well-being." [44]
(Just as the Taj Mahal bears testimony of the relative
well-being of the people of India, no doubt). "Many
aspirations of our modern radicals were already realised in
the Middle Ages [and] much of what is described now as
Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact." [45]
As for the material achievements of the Middle Ages,
Kropotkin can't find a superlative super enough to describe
them - but he tries:
"The very face of Europe had been changed. The land was
dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls
[I wonder why?] which were embellished by towers and gates,
each of them a work of art in itself. The cathedrals,
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conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted
their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form
and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to
attain....[He displays a bit of 'boldness of imagination'
himself (to be quite charitable) when he goes on to say:]
Over large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of
misery; learning had grown and spread. The methods of
science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy
had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the
mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud.
Such were the magic [sic] changes accomplished in Europe in
less than four hundred years." [46]
Just what were these "magic changes" of which Kropotkin
is so proud? He lists about a dozen. [47] Among them are:
printing (neglecting to inform us that the Gutenberg press
was invented in the middle of the 15th century, sometime
after the mediaeval cities "degenerated into centralised
states"); steelmaking (neglecting to inform us that
steelmaking had been mentioned in the works of Homer and was
used continuously since that time); glassmaking (neglecting
to inform us that the Encyclopaedia Britannica - to which he
contributed numerous articles - devotes to the Middle Ages
all of two sentences of a 27 page article on the history of
glassmaking); the telescope (neglecting to inform us that it
wasn't even invented until 1608); gunpowder and the compass
(neglecting to inform us that the Chinese lay earlier claims
to both of these inventions); algebra (neglecting to inform
us that algebra was in common use in ancient Babylonia and
that, although being introduced to mediaeval Europe by the
Arabs, no important contributions were made by Europeans
until the Renaissance); the decimal system (neglecting to
inform us that the Hindus invented the system about a
thousand years before it gained any ground in Europe in the
17th century); calendar reform (neglecting to inform us that
although Roger Bacon suggested such reform to the Pope in
the 13th century, no action was taken until 300 years later
under the reign of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582); chemistry
(neglecting to inform us of an earlier work of his where he
said chemistry was "entirely a product of our [19th]
century." [48]) Indeed the only things he mentions as
products of the Middle Ages which stand up under scrutiny
are counterpoint and, paradoxically, the mechanical clock.
To top it all off, he then has the gall to cite Galileo and
Copernicus as being "direct descendents" of mediaeval
science [49] - somehow managing to ignore the fact that
Galileo spent the last eight years of his life under house
arrest for supporting the Copernican theory, thanks to that
grand mediaeval institution, the Inquisition.
You may be wondering why the people of the Middle Ages
1
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let such a Utopia slip through their fingers. Kropotkin
cites foreign invasions - notably those of the Mongols,
Turks, and Moors [50] - but makes it quite clear that the
"greatest and most fatal error of most cities was to bass
their wealth upon commerce and industry." [51] So here we
have it laid bare for all to see: Kropotkin's ideal
community would not only return us to the dark ages, but
would take away the one thing that could bring us back -
commerce and industry.
Rudolf Rocker, the darling of the anarcho-syndicalists,
similarly eulogises the Middle Ages. He, too, felt that
mediaeval man led a "rich life" [52] which gave "wings to
his spirit and prevent[ed] his mental stagnation." [53] But
unlike Kropotkin - who chalked up mediaeval solidarity to
man's innate "nature" - Rocker (correctly) explains these
"fraternal associations" by means of a most unanarchistic
concept - Christianity:
"Mediaeval man felt himself to be bound up with a single,
uniform culture, a member of a great community extending
over all countries, in whose bosom all people found their
place. It was the community of Christendom which included
all the scattered units of the Christian world and
spiritually unified them....The deeper the concept of
Christianity took root in men, the easier they overcame all
barriers between themselves and others, and the stronger
lived in them the consciousness that all belonged to one
great community and strove toward a common goal." [54]
So we see that the glue that held these idyllic
mediaeval communities together was not Kropotkin's "mutual
aid," but rather Christian mysticism. Rocker was perceptive
enough to see this; Kropotkin apparently was not. But what
both of these men failed to see was that mysticism is the
necessary glue of ANY communist society. The mystical
Garden of Eden is the ultimate goal of every church of the
communist religion. Unfortunately, as every good Christian
will tell you, the only way you can stay in the Garden of
Eden is to abstain from the "tree of knowledge." Communists
are apparently willing to pay this price. Individualists are
not. It is communism's intention to carry religion to its
ultimate absurdity: it would sacrifice man on the cross of
altruism for the sake of - Man.
* * * * *
I'd like to end my diatribe against communism by
quoting another one. This is what one prophetic Frenchman,
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, had to say about communism eight
years before the "Communist Manifesto" appeared like a
1
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spectre to haunt Europe - and like a good French wine, his
words seem to have improved with age:
"Communism - or association in a simple form - is the
necessary object and original aspiration of the social
nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and
establishes itself. It is the first phase of human
civilisation. In this state of society, - which the jurists
have called 'negative communism', - man draws near to man,
and shares with him the fruits of the field and the milk and
flesh of animals. Little by little this communism - negative
as long as man does not produce - tends to become positive
and organic through the development of labour and industry.
But it is then that the sovereignty of thought, and the
terrible faculty of reasoning logically or illogically,
teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of society,
communism is the first species of slavery....The
disadvantages of communism are so obvious that its critics
never have needed to employ much eloquence to thoroughly
disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice
which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions
and repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the
will, the moral torture to which it subjects the conscience,
the debilitating effect which it has upon society; and, to
sum it all up, the pious and stupid uniformity which it
enforces upon the free, active, reasoning, unsubmissive
personality of man, have shocked common sense, and condemned
communism by an irrevocable decree. The authorities and
examples cited in its favour disprove it. The communistic
republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus
employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their
masters, thus enabling the latter to devote themselves
exclusively to athletic sports and to war, Even J. J.
Rousseau - confounding communism and equality - has said
somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality
of conditions possible. The communities of the early Church
did not last the first century out, and soon degenerated
into monasteries....The greatest danger to which society is
exposed today is that of another shipwreck on this rock.
Singularly enough, systematic communism - the deliberate
negation of property - is conceived under the direct
influence of the proprietary prejudice; and property is the
basis of all communistic theories. The members of a
community, it is true, have no private property; but the
community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the
goods, but of the persons and wills. In consequence of this
principle of absolute property, labour, which should be only
a condition imposed upon man by Nature, becomes in all
communities a human commandment, and therefore odious.
Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is
strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always
1
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defective, however wise they may be thought, allows of no
complaint. Life, talent, and all the human faculties are the
property of the State, which has the right to use them as it
pleases for the common good. Private associations are
sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes of
different natures, because to tolerate them would be to
introduce small communities within the large one, and
consequently private property; the strong work for the weak,
although this ought to be left to benevolence, and not
enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious work for the
lazy though this is unjust; the clever work for the foolish,
although this is absurd; and, finally, man - casting aside
his personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his
affections - humbly annihilates himself at the feet of the
majestic and inflexible Commune! Communism is inequality,
but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the
weak by the strong.* Communism is the exploitation of the
strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is
the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised:
physical and mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE;
force of accumulated property, etc. In communism, inequality
springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.
This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and
causes merit to complain; for although it may be the duty of
the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of
generosity, - they never will endure a comparison. Give them
equal opportunities of labour, and equal wages, but never
allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of
unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task.
Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to
obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his
friends; but he wishes to labour when he pleases, where he
pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of
his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose
his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act
from judgement, not by command; to sacrifice himself through
selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is
essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties,
to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan
which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands
of the individual reason and will would end only in changing
the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest
truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words. Thus,
communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience and
equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and
heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by
placing labour and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even
vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort." [55]
--------------------
* See footnote on page 5.
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REVOLUTION: THE ROAD TO FREEDOM?
"It's true that non-violence has been a dismal failure.
The only bigger failure has been violence."
- Joan Baez
There's an old story about a motorist who stopped a
policeman in downtown Manhattan and asked him how he could
get to the Brooklyn Bridge. The officer looked around,
thought a minute, scratched his head and finally replied,
"I'm sorry, but you can't get there from here. Some
anarchists are now wondering if you can get to the free
society from where we stand today. I must confess that I,
too, harbour some doubts. But if there is a way, it is
incumbent upon all who wish to find that way to carefully
examine the important end-means problem.
"The end justifies the means." Few people would argue
with this trite statement. Certainly all apologists of
government must ultimately fall back on such reasoning to
justify their large police forces and standing armies.
Revolutionary anarchists must also rely on this argument to
justify their authoritarian methods "just one more time",
the revolution being for them "the unfreedom to end
unfreedom." It seems that the only people who reject
outright this article of faith are a handful of (mostly
religious) pacifists. The question I'd like to consider
here is not whether the end JUSTIFIES the means (because I,
too, tend to feel that it does), but rather whether the end
is AFFECTED by the means and, if so, to what extent.
That the end is affected by the means should be
obvious. Whether I obtain your watch by swindling you,
buying it from you, stealing it from you, or soliciting it
as a gift from you makes the same watch "graft", "my
property", "booty", or "a donation." The same can be said
for social change. Even so strong an advocate of violent
revolution as Herbert Marcuse, in one of his rare lapses
into sanity, realised this fact:
"Unless the revolution itself progresses through freedom,
the need for domination and repression would be carried over
into the new society and the fateful separation between the
'immediate' and the 'true' interest of the individuals would
be almost inevitable; the individuals would become the
objects of their own liberation, and freedom would be a
matter of administration and decree. Progress would be
progressive repression, and the 'delay' in freedom would
threaten to become self-propelling and self-perpetuating."
[56]
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But despite the truth of Marcuse's observation, we still
find many anarchists looking for a shortcut to freedom by
means of violent revolution. The idea that anarchism can be
inaugurated by violence is as fallacious as the idea that it
can be sustained by violence. The best that can be said for
violence is that it may, in rare circumstances, be used as
an expedient to save us from extinction. But the
individualist's rejection of violence (except in cases of
self-defence) is not due to any lofty pacifist principles;
it's a matter of pure pragmatism: we realise that violence
just simply does not work.
The task of anarchism, as the individualist sees it, is
not to destroy the state, but rather to destroy the MYTH of
the state. Once people realise that they no longer need the
state, it will - in the words of Frederick Engels -
inevitably "wither away" ("Anti-Duehring", 1877) and be
consigned to the "Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the
spinning wheel and the bronze axe" ("Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State", 1884). But unless
anarchists can create a general and well-grounded disbelief
in the state as an INSTITUTION, the existing state might be
destroyed by violent revolution or it might fall through its
own rottenness, but another would inevitably rise in its
place. And why shouldn't it? As long as people believe the
state to be necessary (even a "necessary evil", as Thomas
Paine said), the state will always exist.
We have already seen how Kropotkin would usher in the
millennium by the complete expropriation of all property.
"We must see clearly in private property what it really is,
a conscious or unconscious robbery of the substance of all,
and seize it joyfully for the common benefit." [57] He
cheerfully goes on to say, "The instinct of destruction, so
natural and so just...will find ample room for
satisfaction." [58] Kropotkin's modern-day heirs are no
different. Noam Chomsky, writing in the "New York Review of
Books" and reprinted in a recent issue of "Anarchy",
applauds the heroism of the Paris Commune of 1871,
mentioning only in passing that "the Commune, of course [!],
was drowned in blood." [59] Later in the same article he
writes, "What is far more important is that these ideas
[direct workers' control] have been realised in spontaneous
revolutionary action, for example in Germany and Italy after
World War I and in Spain (specifically, industrial
Barcelona) in 1936." [60] What Chomsky apparently finds
relatively UNimportant are the million-odd corpses which
were the direct result of these "spontaneous revolutionary
actions." He also somehow manages to ignore the fact that
the three countries he mentions - Germany, Italy and Spain -
were without exception victims of fascism within a few years
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of these glorious revolutions. One doesn't need a great deal
of insight to be able to draw a parallel between these
"spontaneous" actions with their reactionary aftermaths and
the spontaneous "trashings" which are currently in fashion
in the United States. But it seems the Weathermen really DO
"need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." [61]
The question of how to attain the anarchist society has
divided anarchists nearly as much as the question of what
the anarchist society actually is. While Bakunin insisted on
the necessity of "bloody revolutions" [62], Proudhon
believed that violence was unnecessary - saying instead that
"reason will serve us better." [63] The same discord was
echoed on the other side of the Atlantic some decades later
when, in the wake of the infamous Haymarket bombing, the
issue of violence came to a head. Benjamin Tucker, writing
in the columns of "Liberty", had this to say about
accusations leveled against him by Johann Most, the
communist-anarchist editor of "Freiheit":
"It makes very little difference to Herr Most what a man
believes in economics. The test of fellowship with him lies
in acceptance of dynamite as a cure-all. Though I should
prove that my economic views, if realised, would turn our
social system inside out, he would not therefore regard me
as a revolutionist. He declares outright that I am no
revolutionist, because the thought of the coming revolution
(by dynamite, he means) makes my flesh creep. Well, I
frankly confess that I take no pleasure in the thought of
bloodshed and mutilation and death. At these things my
feelings revolt. And if delight in them is a requisite of a
revolutionist, then indeed I am no revolutionist. When
revolutionist and cannibal become synonyms, count me out, if
you please. But, though my feelings revolt, I am not
mastered by them or made a coward by them. More than from
dynamite and blood do I shrink from the thought of a
permanent system of society involving the slow starvation of
the most industrious and deserving of its members. If I
should ever become convinced that the policy of bloodshed is
necessary to end our social system, the loudest of today's
shriekers for blood would not surpass me in the stoicism
with which I would face the inevitable. Indeed, a plumb-
liner to the last, I am confident that under such
circumstances many who now think me chicken-hearted would
condemn the stony-heartedness with which I should favour the
utter sacrifice of every feeling of pity to the necessities
of the terroristic policy. Neither fear nor sentimentalism,
then, dictates my opposition to forcible methods. Such being
the case, how stupid, how unfair, in Herr Most, to picture
me as crossing myself at the mention of the word revolution
simply because I steadfastly act on my well-known belief
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that force cannot substitute truth for a lie in political
economy!" [64]
It is this issue of economics which generally sorts
anarchists into the violent and non-violent wings of
anarchism. Individualists, by and large, are pacifists in
practice (if not in theory), whereas the communists tend
toward violent revolution.* Why is this so? One reason I
think is that individualists are more concerned with
changing the conditions which directly affect their lives
than they are with reforming the whole world "for the good
of all." The communists, on the other hand, have a more
evangelical spirit. Like all good missionaries, they are out
to convert the unbeliever - whether he likes it or not. And
inevitably this leads to violence. Another reason communists
are more prone to violence than individualists can be found,
I think, in looking at the nature of the force each is
willing to use to secure and sustain his respective system.
Individualists believe that the only justifiable force is
force used in preventing invasion (i.e. defensive force).
Communists, however, would compel the worker to pool his
products with the products of others and forbid him to sell
his labour or the products of his labour. To "compel" and
"forbid" requires the use of offensive force. It is no
wonder, then, that most communists advocate violence to
achieve their objectives.
If freedom is really what we anarchists crack it up to
be, it shouldn't be necessary to force it down the throat of
anyone. What an absurdity! Even so superficial a writer as
Agatha Christie recognised that "if it is not possible to go
back [from freedom], or to choose to go back, then it is not
freedom." [66] A. J. Muste used to say that "there is no way
to peace - peace IS the way." The same thing is true about
freedom: the only way to freedom is BY freedom. This
statement is so nearly tautological that it should not need
saying. The only way to realise anarchy is for a sufficient
number of people to be convinced that their own interests
demand it. Human society does not run on idealism - it runs
on pragmatism. And unless people can be made to realise that
anarchy actually works for THEIR benefit, it will remain
--------------------
* There are exceptions of course. It is hard to imagine
a more dedicated pacifist than Tolstoy, for example. On the
other side of the coin is Stirner, who quotes with near
relish the French Revolutionary slogan "the world will have
no rest till the last king is hanged with the guts of the
last priest." [65]
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what it is today: an idle pipe dream; "a nice theory, but
unrealistic." It is the anarchist's job to convince people
otherwise.
Herbert Spencer - the great evolutionist of whom Darwin
said, "He is about a dozen times my superior" - observed the
following fact of nature:
"Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified throughout
the Heavens and on the Earth: especially throughout the
organic world; and above all in the animal division of it.
No creature, save the simplest and most minute, commences
its existence in a form like that which it eventually
assumes; and in most cases the unlikeness is great - so
great that kinship between the first and the last forms
would be incredible were it not daily demonstrated in every
poultry-yard and every garden. More than this is true. The
changes of form are often several: each of them being an
apparently complete transformation - egg, larva, pupa,
imago, for example ... No one of them ends as it begins; and
the difference between its original structure and its
ultimate structure is such that, at the outset change of the
one into the other would have seemed incredible." [67]
This universal law of metamorphosis holds not only for
biology, but for society as well. Modern-day Christianity
resembles the early Christian church about as much as a
butterfly resembles a caterpillar. Thomas Jefferson would
have been horrified if he could have foreseen the
"government by the consent of the governed" which today is
the hereditary heir of his Declaration of Independence.
French revolutionaries took turns beheading one another
until that great believer in "les droits de l'homme",
Napoleon Bonaparte, came upon the scene to secure "liberte,
egalite, fraternite" for all. And wasn't it comrade Stalin
who in 1906 so confidently forecast the nature of the coming
revolution?: "The dictatorship of the proletariat will be a
dictatorship of the entire proletariat as a class over the
bourgeoisie and not the domination of a few individuals over
the proletariat." [68] The examples of these ugly duckling
stories in reverse are endless. For as Robert Burns wrote
nearly two centuries ago:
"The best laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a-gley;
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain
For promis'd joy." [69]
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Why is it that Utopian dreams have a habit of turning
into nightmares in practice? Very simply because people
don't act the way the would-be architects of society would
have them act. The mythical man never measures up to the
real man. This point was brought home forcefully in a recent
letter to "Freedom" by S. E. Parker who observed that our
modern visionaries are bound for disappointment because they
are "trying to deduce an 'is' from an 'ought'." [70] Paper
constitutions might work all right in a society of paper
dolls, but they can only bring smiles to those who have
observed their results in the real world. The same is true
of paper revolutions which invariably have to go back to the
drawing board once the reign of terror sets in. And if
communist-anarchists think that their paper social systems
are exempt from this, how do they explain the presence of
anarchist "leaders" in high government positions during the
Spanish Civil War?
Hasn't everyone been surprised at sometime or other
with the behaviour of people they thought they knew well?
Perhaps a relative or a good friend does something "totally
out of character." We can never completely know even those
people closest to us, let alone total strangers. How are we,
then, to comprehend and predict the behaviour of complex
groups of people? To make assumptions about how people must
and will act under a hypothetical social system is idle
conjecture. We know from daily experience that men don't act
as they "ought" to act or think as they "ought" to think.
Why should things be any different after the revolution? Yet
we still find an abundance of revolutionaries willing to
kill and be killed for a cause which more likely than not,
if realised, would bear no recognizable resemblance to what
they were fighting for. This reason alone should be
sufficient to give these people second thoughts about their
methods. But apparently they are too carried away by the
violence of their own rhetoric to be bothered with where it
will lead them.*
There is but one effective way to rid ourselves of the
oppressive power of the state. It is not to shoot it to
death; it is not to vote it to death; it is not even to
persuade it to death. It is rather to starve it to death.
--------------------
* I am reminded here of a Herblock cartoon which came
out during the Johnson-Goldwater presidential campaign of
1964. It pictures Goldwater standing in the rubble of a
nuclear war and proclaiming, "But that's not what I meant!"
I wonder if the Utopia which our idealists intend to usher
in by violent revolution will be what they really "meant"?
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Power feeds on its spoils, and dies when its victims refuse
to be despoiled. There is much truth in the well- known
pacifist slogan, "Wars will cease when people refuse to
fight." This slogan can be generalised to say that
"government will cease when people refuse to be governed."
As Tucker put it, "There is not a tyrant in the civilised
world today who would not do anything in his power to
precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself
confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined
not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army
is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people
who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and
stand back on their rights." [71]
A particularly effective weapon could be massive tax
refusal. If (say) one-fifth of the population of the United
States refused to pay their taxes, the government would be
impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Should they ignore the
problem, it would only get worse - for who is going to
willingly contribute to the government's coffers when his
neighbours are getting away scotfree? Or should they opt to
prosecute, the burden just to feed and guard so many
"parasites" - not to mention the lose of revenue - would be
so great that the other four-fifths of the population would
soon rebel. But in order to succeed, this type of action
would require massive numbers. Isolated tax refusal - like
isolated draft refusal - is a useless waste of resources. It
is like trying to purify the salty ocean by dumping a cup of
distilled water into it. The individualist-anarchist would
no more advocate such sacrificial offerings than the violent
revolutionary would advocate walking into his neighbourhood
police station and "offing the pig." As he would tell you,
"It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the
enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth." Tucker
agrees. Replying to a critic who felt otherwise he said,
"Placed in a situation where, from the choice of one or the
other horn of a dilemma, it must follow either that fools
will think a man a coward or that wise men will think him a
fool, I can conceive of no possible ground for hesitancy in
the selection." [72]
There is a tendency among anarchists these days -
particularly in the United States - to talk about
"alternatives" and "parallel institutions". This is a
healthy sign which individualists very much encourage. The
best argument one can possibly present against "the system"
is to DEMONSTRATE a better one. Some communist-anarchists
(let it be said to their credit) are now trying to do just
that. Communal farms, schools, etc. have been sprouting up
all over the States. Individualists, of course, welcome
these experiments - especially where they fulfill the needs
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of those involved and contribute to their happiness. But we
can't help questioning the over-all futility of such social
landscape gardening. The vast majority of these experiments
collapse in dismal failure within the first year or two,
proving nothing but the difficulty of communal living. And
should an isolated community manage to survive, their
success could not be judged as conclusive since it would be
said that their principles were applicable only to people
well-nigh perfect. They might well be considered as the
exceptions which proved the rule. If anarchy is to succeed
to any appreciable extent, it has to be brought within the
reach of everyone. I'm afraid that tepees in New Mexico
don't satisfy that criterion.
The parallel institution I would like to see tried
would be something called a "mutual bank."* The beauty of
this proposal is that it can be carried out under the very
nose of the man-in-the-street. I would hope that in this
way people could see for themselves the practical advantages
it has to offer them, and ultimately accept the plan as
their own. I'm well aware that this scheme, like any other,
is subject to the law of metamorphosis referred to earlier.
But should this plan fail, unlike those plans which require
bloody revolutions for their implementation, the only thing
hurt would be the pride of a few hair-brained
individualists.
--------------------
* The reader can judge for himself the merits of this
plan when I examine it in some detail later on in this
article.
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EGOISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM
"Many a year I've used my nose
To smell the onion and the rose;
Is there any proof which shows
That I've a right to that same nose?"
- Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller
The philosophy of individualist-anarchism is "egoism."
It is not my purpose here to give a detailed account of this
philosophy, but I would like to explode a few of the more
common myths about egoism and present to the reader enough
of its essence so that he may understand more clearly the
section on individualist economics. I am tempted here to
quote long extracts from "The Ego and His Own," for it was
this book which first presented the egoist philosophy in a
systematic way. Unfortunately, I find that Stirner's
"unique" style does not readily lend itself to quotation.
So what I have done in the following pages is to dress up
Stirner's ideas in a language largely my own.
Voltaire once said, "If God did not exist, it would be
necessary to invent him." Bakunin wisely retorted, "If God
DID exist, it would be necessary to abolish him."
Unfortunately, Bakunin would only abolish God. It is the
egoist's intention to abolish GODS. It is clear from
Bakunin's writings that what he meant by God was what
Voltaire meant - namely the religious God. The egoist sees
many more gods than that - in fact, as many as there are
fixed ideas. Bakunin's gods, for example, include the god
of humanity, the god of brotherhood, the god of mankind -
all variants on the god of altruism. The egoist, in
striking down ALL gods, looks only to his WILL. He
recognises no legitimate power over himself.* The world is
there for him to consume - if he CAN. And he can if he has
the power. For the egoist, the only right is the right of
might. He accepts no "inalienable rights," for such rights -
by virtue of the fact that they're inalienable - must come
from a higher power, some god. The American Declaration of
--------------------
* He does not, of course, claim to be omnipotent. There
ARE external powers over him. The difference between the
egoist and non-egoist in this regard is therefore one mainly
of attitude: the egoist recognises external power as an
enemy and consciously fights against it, while the non-
egoist humbles himself before it and often accepts it as a
friend.
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Independence, for example, in proclaiming these rights found
it necessary to invoke the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's
God." The same was true of the French Revolutionary
"Declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen."
The egoist recognises no right - or what amounts to the
same thing - claims ALL rights for himself. What he can get
by force he has a right to; and what he can't, he has no
right. He demands no rights, nor does he recognise them in
others. "Right - is a wheel in the head, put there by a
spook," [73] says Stirner. Right is also the spook which has
kept men servile throughout the ages. The believer in rights
has always been his own jailer. What sovereign could last
the day out without a general belief in the "divine right of
kings"? And where would Messrs. Nixon, Heath, et. al. be
today without the "right" of the majority?
Men make their tyrants as they make their gods. The
tyrant is a man like any other. His power comes from the
abdicated power of his subjects. If people believe a man to
have superhuman powers, they automatically GIVE him those
powers by default. Had Hitler's pants fallen down during one
of his ranting speeches, the whole course of history might
have been different. For who can respect a naked Fuehrer?
And who knows? The beginning of the end of Lyndon Johnson's
political career might well have been when he showed his
operation scar on coast-to-coast television for the whole
wide world to see that he really was a man after all. This
sentiment was expressed by Stirner when he said, "Idols
exist through me; I need only refrain from creating them
anew, then they exist no longer: 'higher powers' exist only
through my exalting them and abasing myself. Consequently
my relation to the world is this: I no longer do anything
for it 'for God's sake,' I do nothing 'for man's sake,' but
what I do I do 'for my sake'." [74] The one thing that makes
a man different from any other living creature is his power
to reason. It is by this power that man can (and does)
dominate over the world. Without reason man would be a
pathetic non-entity - evolution having taken care of him
long before the dinosaur. Now some people say that man is
by nature a social animal, something like an ant or a bee.
Egoists don't deny the sociability of man, but what we do
say is that man is sociable to the extent that it serves his
own self-interest. Basically man is (by nature, if you will)
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a selfish being. The evidence for this is overwhelming.* Let
us look at a hive of bees to see what would happen if
"reason" were suddenly introduced into their lives:
"In the first place, the bees would not fail to try
some new industrial process; for instance, that of making
their cells round or square. All sorts of systems and
inventions would be tried, until long experience, aided by
geometry, should show them that the hexagonal shape is the
best. Then insurrections would occur. The drones would be
told to provide for themselves, and the queens to labour;
jealousy would spread among the labourers; discords would
burst forth; soon each one would want to produce on his own
account; and finally the hive would be abandoned, and the
bees would perish. Evil would be introduced into the honey-
producing republic by the power of reflection, - the very
faculty which ought to constitute its glory." [75]
So it would appear to me that reason would militate
against blind, selfless cooperation. But by the same token,
reason leads to cooperation which is mutually beneficial to
all parties concerned. Such cooperation is what Stirner
called a "union of egoists." [76] This binding together is
not done through any innate social instinct, but rather as a
matter of individual convenience. These unions would
probably take the form of contracting individuals. The
object of these contracts not being to enable all to benefit
equally from their union (although this isn't ruled out, the
egoist thinks it highly unlikely), but rather to protect one
another from invasion and to secure to each contracting
individual what is mutually agreed upon to be "his."
By referring to a man's selfishness, you know where you
stand. Nothing is done "for free." Equity demands
reciprocity. Goods and services are exchanged for goods and
services or (what is equivalent) bought. This may sound
"heartless" - but what is the alternative? If one depends on
kindness, pity or love the services and goods one gets
become "charity." The receiver is put in the position of a
beggar, offering nothing in return for each "present." If
you've ever been on the dole, or know anyone who has, you
will know that the receiver of such gifts is anything but
gracious. He is stripped of his manhood and he resents it.
Now the egoist isn't (usually) so cold and cruel as this
--------------------
* Many people cite trade unions as a "proof" of man's
solidarity and sociability. Just the opposite is true. Why
else do people strike if not for their own "selfish" ends,
e.g. higher wages, better working conditions, shorter hours?
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description makes him out to be. As often as not he is as
charitable and kind as his altruist neighbour. But he
CHOOSES the objects of his kindness; he objects to
COMPULSORY "love." What an absurdity! If love were
universal, it would have no meaning. If I should tell my
wife that I love her because I love humanity, I would be
insulting her. I love her not because she happens to be a
member of the human race, but rather for what she is to me.
For me she is something special: she possesses certain
qualities which I admire and which make me happy. If she is
unhappy, I suffer, and therefore I try to comfort her and
cheer her up - for MY sake. Such love is a selfish love. But
it is the only REAL love. Anything else is an infatuation
with an image, a ghost. As Stirner said of his loved ones,
"I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them
because love makes ME happy, I love because loving is
natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no 'commandment
of love'." [77]
The lover of "humanity" is bewitched by a superstition.
He has dethroned God, only to accept the reign of the holy
trinity: Morality, Conscience and Duty. He becomes a "true
believer" - a religious man. No longer believing in himself,
he becomes a slave to Man. Then, like all religious men, he
is overcome with feelings of "right" and "virtue." He
becomes a soldier in the service of humanity whose
intolerance of heretics rivals that of the most righteous
religious fanatic. Most of the misery in the world today (as
in the past) is directly attributable to men acting "for the
common good." The individual is nothing; the mass all.
The egoist would reverse this situation. Instead of
everyone looking after the welfare of everyone else, each
would look after his own welfare. This would, in one fell
swoop, do away with the incredibly complicated, wasteful and
tyrannical machinery (alluded to previously) necessary to
see to it that not only everyone got his fair share of the
communal pie, but that everyone contributed fairly to its
production. In its stead we egoists raise the banner of free
competition: "the war of all against all" as the communists
put it. But wouldn't that lead to (dare I say it) ANARCHY?
Of course it would. What anarchist would deny the logical
consequences of the principles he advocates? But let's see
what this "anarchy" would be like.
The egoist believes that the relationships between men
who are alive to their own individual interests would be far
more just and equitable than they are now. Take the
property question for example. Today there is a great
disparity of income. Americans make up about 7% of the
world's population, but they control over half of its
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wealth. And among the Americans, nearly one quarter of the
wealth is owned by 5% of the people.* [78] Such unequal
distribution of wealth is due primarily to the LEGAL
institution of property. Without the state to back up legal
privilege and without the people's acquiescence to the
privileged minority's legal right to that property, these
disparities would soon disappear. For what makes the rich
man rich and the poor man poor if not the latter GIVING the
former the product of his labour?
Stirner is commonly thought to have concerned himself
little with the economic consequences of his philosophy. It
is true that he avoided elaborating on the exact nature of
his "union of egoists," saying that the only way of knowing
what a slave will do when he breaks his chains is to wait
and see. But to say that Stirner was oblivious to economics
is just not so. On the contrary. It was he, after all, who
translated into German both Adam Smith's classic "An Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" and
Jean Baptiste Say's pioneering work on the free market
economy, "Traite d'Economie Politique." The few pages he
devotes to economics in "The Ego and His Own" are among his
best:
"If we assume that, as ORDER belongs to the essence of the
State, so SUBORDINATION too is founded in its nature, then
we see that the subordinates, or those who have received
preferment, disproportionately OVERCHARGE and OVERREACH
those who are put in the lower ranks....By what then is your
property secure, you creatures of preferment?...By our
refraining from interference! And so by OUR protection! And
what do you give us for it? Kicks and disdain you give to
the 'common people'; police supervision, and a catechism
with the chief sentence 'Respect what is NOT YOURS, what
belongs to OTHERS! respect others, and especially your
superiors!' But we reply, 'If you want our respect, BUY it
for a price agreeable to us. We will leave you your
property, if you give a due equivalent for this
leaving.'...What equivalent do you give for our chewing
potatoes and looking calmly on while you swallow oysters?
Only buy the oysters of us as dear as we have to buy the
potatoes of you, then you may go on eating them. Or do you
suppose the oysters do not belong to us as much as to
you?...Let us consider our nearer property, labour...We
distress ourselves twelve hours in the sweat of our face,
--------------------
* Contrary to popular belief, this gulf is getting
larger. Since 1966, despite a constantly mushrooming GNP,
the American factory workers' REAL wages (as opposed to his
apparent, inflationary wages) have actually declined. [79]
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and you offer us a few pennies for it. Then take the like
for your labour too. Are you not willing? You fancy that our
labour is richly repaid with that wage, while yours on the
other hand is worth a wage of many thousands. But, if you
did not rate yours so high, and gave us a better chance to
realise value from ours, then we might well, if the case
demanded it, bring to pass still more important things than
you do for the many thousand pounds; and, if you got only
such wages as we, you would soon grow more industrious in
order to receive more. But, if you render any service that
seems to us worth ten and a hundred times more than our own
labour, why, then you shall get a hundred times more for it
too; we, on the other hand, think also to produce for you
things for which you will requite us more highly than with
the ordinary day's wages. We shall be willing to get along
with each other all right, if only we have first agreed on
this - that neither any longer needs to - PRESENT anything
to the other....We want nothing presented by you, but
neither will we present you with anything. For centuries we
have handed alms to you from good-hearted - stupidity, have
doled out the mite of the poor and given to the masters the
things that are - not the masters'; now just open your
wallet, for henceforth our ware rises in price quite
enormously. We do not want to take from you anything,
anything at all, only you are to pay better for what you
want to have. What then have you? 'I have an estate of a
thousand acres.' And I am your plowman, and will henceforth
attend to your fields only for a full day's wages. 'Then
I'll take another.' You won't find any, for we plowmen are
no longer doing otherwise, and, if one puts in an appearance
who takes less, then let him beware of us. There is the
housemaid, she too is now demanding as much, and you will no
longer find one below this price. 'Why, then it is all over
with me.' Not so fast! You will doubtless take in as much as
we; and, if it should not be so, we will take off so much
that you shall have wherewith to live like us. 'But I am
accustomed to live better.' We have nothing against that,
but it is not our lookout; if you can clear more, go ahead.
Are we to hire out under rates, that you may have a good
living? The rich man always puts off the poor with the
words, 'What does your want concern me? See to it how you
make your way through the world; that is YOUR AFFAIR, not
mine.' Well, let us let it be our affair, then, and let us
not let the means that we have to realise value from
ourselves be pilfered from us by the rich. 'But you
uncultured people really do not need so much.' Well, we are
taking somewhat more in order that for it we may procure the
culture that we perhaps need....'O ill-starred equality!'
No, my good old sir, nothing of equality. We only want to
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count for what we are worth, and, if you are worth more, you
shall count for more right along. We only want to be WORTH
OUR PRICE, and think to show ourselves worth the price that
you will pay." [80]
Fifty years later Benjamin Tucker took over where
Stirner left off:
"The minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy
it will be forced to sell their labour, and then, when there
will be nothing but labour with which to buy labour, the
distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be
wiped out, and every man will be a labourer exchanging with
fellow-labourers. Not to abolish wages, but to make EVERY
man dependent upon wages and secure to every man his WHOLE
wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic
Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to
deprive labour of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of
its reward. It does not hold that labour should not be sold;
it holds that capital should not be hired at usury." [81]
Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his second inaugural
address that "We have always known that heedless self-
interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad
economics." I've tried to show in this section that self-
interest is "good morals." I now intend to show that it is
also good economics.
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CAPITALISM: FREEDOM PERVERTED
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a
nation and I care not who makes its laws."
- Meyer A. Rothchild
Roosevelt, in blaming the depression of the 'thirties
on "heedless self-interest," played a cheap political trick
for which the world has been suffering ever since. The great
crash of 1929, far from being created by "free enterprise,"
was created by government interference in the free market.
The Federal Reserve Board had been artificially controlling
interest rates since 1913. The tax structure of the country
was set up in such a way as to encourage ridiculously risky
speculation in the stock market. "Protective tariffs"
destroyed anything that vaguely resembled a free market.
Immigration barriers prevented the free flow of the labour
market. Anti-trust laws threatened prosecution for charging
less than the competition ("intent to monopolise") and for
charging the same as the competition ("price fixing"), but
graciously permitted charging more than the competition
(commonly called "going out of business.") With all these
legislative restraints and controls, Roosevelt still had the
gall to blame the depression on the "free" market economy.
But what was his answer to the "ruthlessness" of freedom?
This is what he had to say on taking office in 1933:
"If we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and
loyal army willing to sacrifice to the good of a common
discipline, because without such discipline no progress is
made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready
and willing to submit our lives and property to such
discipline because it makes possible a leadership which aims
at a larger good." [82]
We've been on that Keynesian road ever since. The
"larger good" has become larger and larger until today the
only cure the politicians come up with for the economy's
ills is more of the same poison which made it sick in the
first place. The rationale for such a policy was expressed
by G. D. H. Cole in 1933:
"If once a departure is made from the classical method of
letting all the factors [of the economy] alone - and we have
seen enough of that method [have we?] to be thoroughly
dissatisfied with it - it becomes necessary to control ALL
the factors...for interference with one, while the others
are left unregulated, is certain to result in a fatal lack
of balance in the working of the economic system.." [83] (My
emphasis)
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Many people, on hearing the individualist critique of
governmental control of the economy, jump to the erroneous
conclusion that we believe in capitalism. I'm sorry to say
that some anarchists - who should know better - share this
common fallacy. In a letter to "Freedom" a few months ago I
tried to clear up this myth. Replying to an article by one
of its editors, I had this to say:
"First let me look at the term 'anarcho-capitalist.' This,
it seems to me, is just an attempt to slander the
individualist-anarchists by using a supercharged word like
'capitalist' in much the same way as the word 'anarchy' is
popularly used to mean chaos and disorder. No one to my
knowledge accepts the anarcho-capitalist label*, just as no
one up to the time of Proudhon's memoir on property in 1840
accepted the anarchist label. But, unlike Proudhon who could
call himself an anarchist by stripping the word of its
derogatory connotation and looking at its real MEANING, no
one can logically call himself an anarcho-capitalist for the
simple reason that it's a contradiction in terms: anarchists
seek the abolition of the state while capitalism is
inherently dependent upon the state. Without the state,
capitalism would inevitably fall, for capitalism rests on
the pillars of government privilege. Because of government a
privileged minority can monopolise land, limit credit,
restrict exchange, give idle capital the power to increase,
and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, rob
industrious labour of its products." [84]
Now most anarchists when they attack capitalism strike
it where it is strongest: in its advocacy of freedom. And
how paradoxical that is. Here we have the anarchists,
champions of freedom PAR EXCELLENCE, complaining about
freedom! How ridiculous, it seems to me, to find anarchists
attacking Mr. Heath for withdrawing government subsidies
from museums and children's milk programmes. When anarchists
start screaming for free museums, free milk, free subways,
free medical care, free education, etc., etc., they only
show their ignorance of what freedom really is. All these
"free" goodies which governments so graciously shower upon
--------------------
* I have since been informed that "the term 'anarcho-
capitalist' is now in use in the USA - particularly amongst
those who contribute to the Los Angeles publication
'Libertarian Connection'." It seems to me that people
accepting such a label must do so primarily for its shock
value. Very few people like capitalists these days, and
those who do certainly don't like anarchists. What better
term could you find to offend everyone?
1
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their subjects ultimately come from the recipients
themselves - in the form of taxes. Governments are very
clever at concealing just how large this sum actually is.
They speak of a billion pounds here and a few hundred
million dollars there. But what does a figure like
$229,232,000,000.00 (Nixon's proposed budget) actually mean
to the taxpayer? Virtually nothing. It's just a long string
of numbers preceded by a dollar sign. People have no
conception of numbers that size. But let me try to shed some
light on this figure by breaking it down into a number the
individual taxpayer can't help but understand: the average
annual cost per family. This is a number governments NEVER
talk about - for if they did, there would be a revolt which
would make the storming of the Bastille look like a Sunday
school picnic. Here's how to calculate it: you take the
government's annual budget and divide it by the population
of the country; then you multiply the result by the average
size of family (4.5 seems a reasonable number). Doing this
for the American case cited, we come to $4,800 (i.e. 2000
pounds per family per year!*). And that is just the FEDERAL
tax bite. State and local taxes (which primarily pay for
America's "free" education and "free" public highways) have
yet to be considered. I leave it as an exercise to the
British reader to see why their "welfare state" also prefers
to mask budgetary figures by using astronomical numbers.
One thing should be clear from this example: nothing is
for nothing. But the Santa Claus myth dies hard, even - or
should I say especially? - among anarchists. The only
encouraging sign to the contrary I have found in the
anarchist press of late was when Ian Sutherland complained
in the columns of "Freedom": "I object, strongly, to having
a large section of my 'product', my contribution to society,
forcibly removed from me by a paternalistic state to
dispense to a fool with 10 kids." [85] Unfortunately, I
suspect that Mr Sutherland would only replace the
"paternalistic state" by the "paternalistic commune" - and
in so doing would still end up supporting those 10 kids. My
suspicions were nourished by what he said in the very next
paragraph about "laissez faire" anarchists: "perhaps they
--------------------
* I am usually quite conservative in my use of
exclamation marks. When I used this example in a recent
letter to "Freedom", the editors saw fit to insert one where
I had not. In keeping with their precedent, I will do
likewise.
1
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should join the Powellites." Perhaps Mr Sutherland should
learn what laissez faire means.
Laissez faire is a term coined by the French
physiocrats during the eighteenth century. John Stuart Mill
brought it into popular English usage with the publication
in 1848 of his "Principles of Political Economy," where he
examined the arguments for and against government
intervention in the economy. The "con" side of the argument
he called laissez faire. "The principle of 'laissez faire'
in economics calls for perfect freedom in production;
distribution of the returns (or profit) to the factors of
production according to the productivity of each; and
finally, markets in which prices are determined by the free
interplay of forces that satisfy buyers and sellers." [86] I
find it difficult to see how any advocate of freedom could
possibly object to a doctrine like this one. Unfortunately,
what happened in the 19th century was that a handful of
capitalists, who were anything but believers if freedom,
picked up this nice sounding catch phrase and decided to
"improve" upon it. These "improvements" left them with the
freedom to exploit labour but took away labour's freedom to
exploit capital. These capitalists, in perverting the
original meaning of laissez faire, struck a blow against
freedom from which it still suffers to this day. The
capitalist who advocates laissez faire is a hypocrite. If he
really believed in freedom, he could not possibly condone
the greatest invader of freedom known to man: government.
The capitalist necessarily relies on government to protect
his privileged RIGHTS. Let us look at the foremost advocate
of capitalism today, Ayn Rand. Her book "Capitalism: The
Unknown Ideal" has two appendices. The first is on "Man's
Rights" where she say, "INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ARE THE MEANS OF
SUBORDINATING SOCIETY TO MORAL LAW." [87] (Her emphasis)
Once again we are back to "rights" and "morals" which
Stirner so strongly warned us about. And where does this
lead us? Directly to Appendix Two, "The Nature of
Government," where she says that government is "necessary"
because "men need an institution charged with the task of
protecting [you guessed it] their rights." [88] Let's see
what some of these precious rights are:
I. Chapter 11 of Miss Rand's book is devoted to a
defence of patent and copyright laws. In it she calls upon
government to "certify the origination of an idea and
protect its owner's exclusive right to use and disposal."
[89] Realising the absurdity of PERPETUAL property in ideas
("consider what would happen if, in producing an automobile,
we had to pay royalties to the descendants of all the
inventors involved, starting with the inventor of the wheel
1
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and on up." [90]), she goes into considerable mental
acrobatics to justify intellectual property for a LIMITED
time. But by so doing, she only succeeds in arousing our
suspicion of her motives, for it seems strange that a mere
lapse of time should negate something so precious as a man's
"right" to his property. Admitting that "a patented
invention often tends to hamper or restrict further research
and development in a given area of science [91], our
champion of the unhampered economy nevertheless manages to
justify governmental "protection" to secure the inventor's
"rights." As for copyrights, our millionaire author thinks
"the most rational" length of time for this governmental
protection would be "for the lifetime of the author and
fifty years thereafter." [92] How does she justify all this?
The way she justifies most of her inane arguments - by
quoting herself: "Why should Rearden be the only one
permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?" [93] Why indeed?
II. Capitalists are fond of proclaiming the "rights" of
private property. One of their favourite property rights is
the right to own land without actually occupying it. The
only way this can possibly be done is, once again, by
government protection of legal pieces of paper called
"titles" and "deeds." Without these scraps of paper, vast
stretches of vacant land would be open to those who could
use them and exorbitant rent could no longer be extracted
from the non-owning user as tribute to the non-using owner.
There is much talk these days of a "population
explosion." It is claimed that land is becoming more and
more scarce and that by the year such and such there will be
38.2 people per square inch of land. But just how scarce is
land? If all the world's land were divided up equally, every
individual would have more than ten acres apiece. Even
"crowded" islands like Britain and Japan have more than an
acre per person on average. [94] When you consider how few
people actually own any of this land, these figures seem
incredible. It's no wonder then that the absentee landlord
is a strong believer in property rights. Without them his
vulnerable land might actually be used to the advantage of
the user.
III. Capitalists have always been great believers in
the sovereign "rights" of nations. Ayn Rand, for example,
thinks it perfectly consistent with her brand of freedom
that the United States government should tax the people
within its borders to support an army which costs tens of
billions of dollars each year. It is true that Miss Rand
opposes the war in Vietnam. But why? Because "IT DOES NOT
SERVE ANY NATIONAL INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES." [95] (Her
emphasis) So we see that our advocate of "limited
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government" wouldn't go so far as to limit its strongest
arm: the military. Eighty billion dollars a year for
national "defence" doesn't seem to phase her in the least -
in fact, she would like to add on a few billion more to make
"an army career comparable to the standards of the civilian
labour market." [96]
As every anarchist knows, a frontier is nothing more
than an imaginary line drawn by a group of men with vested
interests on their side of the line. That "nations" should
exist is an absurdity. That a highwayman (in the uniform of
a customs official) should rob people as they cross these
imaginary lines and turn back others who haven't the proper
pieces of paper is an obscenity too indecent to relate here
- there may be children reading. But if there are children
reading, perhaps they can enlighten their elders about the
obvious - as they did when the emperor went out in his "new"
clothes. The nationalists of the world are strutting about
without a stitch of reason on. Can only a child see this?
IV. The cruelest "right" - and the one least understood
today - is the exclusive right of governments to issue
money. There was a time about a hundred years ago when
nearly everyone was aware of the currency question. For
several decades in the United States it was THE political
issue. Whole political parties formed around it (e.g. the
Greenback and Populist parties). William Jennings Bryan, the
three-time Democratic candidate for the presidency, rose to
fame with his "easy money" speeches; next to Lincoln's
Gettysburg address, his "cross of gold" speech is probably
the best-known public oration of 19th century America. Yet
today virtually everyone accepts the currency question as
settled. Governments issue the money people use and they
never give it a second thought - it's just there, like the
sun and the moon.
The capitalist is vitally interested in the
government's exclusive right to issue money. The capitalist
is, by definition, the holder of capital; and the
government, by making only a certain type of capital (namely
gold) the legal basis of all money, gives to the capitalist
a monopoly power to compel all holders of property other
than the kind thus privileged, as well as all non-
proprietors, to pay tribute to the capitalist for the use of
a circulating medium and instrument of credit which is
absolutely necessary to carry out commerce and reap the
benefits of the division of labour. A crude example of how
this system works is given by the Angolan "native tax." The
Portuguese whites in Angola found it difficult to get black
labour for their coffee plantations, so they struck upon a
rather ingenious scheme: tax the natives and the natives,
1
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having to pay their tax in MONEY, would be forced to sell
their labour to the only people who could give it to them -
the whiteman. [97]
The same thing goes on today on a more sophisticated
level in our more "civilised" societies. The worker needs
money to carry out the business of everyday life. He needs
food, he needs housing, he needs clothing. To get these
things he needs MONEY. And to get money he has to sell the
only thing he's got: his labour. Since he MUST sell his
labour, he is put into a very bad bargaining position with
the buyers of labour: the capitalists. This is how the
capitalist grows rich. He buys labour in a cheap market and
sells his products back to the worker in a dear one. This is
what Marx called the "surplus value theory" of labour. His
analysis (at least here) was right; his solution to the
problem was wrong.
The way Marx saw out of this trap was to abolish money.
The worker would then get the equivalent of his labour by
pooling his products with other workers and taking out what
he needed. I've already exposed the weak points of this
theory. What is the individualist alternative?
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MUTUALISM: THE ECONOMICS OF FREEDOM
"There is perhaps no business which yields a profit so
certain and liberal as the business of banking and
exchange, and it is proper that it should be open
as far as practicable to the most free competition
and its advantages shared by all classes of people."
- Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, 1837
When it comes to economics, most anarchists reveal an
ignorance verging on the indecent. For example, in the first
piece of the first issue of the new "Anarchy" the California
Libertarian Alliance talks in all seriousness of "Marx's
'labour theory of value,' which causes communist governments
to repress homosexuals." [98] Now, passing over the fact
that Adam Smith developed the principles of this theory long
before Marx was even born, I can't for the life of me see
what the labour theory of value has to do with the
repression of homosexuals - be they communist, capitalist,
or mercantilist. Kropotkin was no better; in his "Conquest
of Bread" he shows a total lack of any economic sense, as he
amply demonstrates by his rejection of the very foundation
of any rational economic system: the division of labour. "A
society that will satisfy the needs of all, and which will
know how to organise production, will also have to make a
clean sweep of several prejudices concerning industry, and
first of all of the theory often preached by economists -
The Division of Labour Theory - which we are going to
discuss in the next chapter....It is this horrible
principle, so noxious to society, so brutalising to the
individual, source of so much harm, that we propose to
discuss in its divers manifestations." [99] He then fills
the next two pages of perhaps the shortest chapter in
history with a discussion of this theory "in its divers
manifestations." In these few paragraphs he fancies himself
as having overturned the economic thought of centuries and
to have struck "a crushing blow at the theory of the
division of labour which was supposed to be so sound." [100]
Let's see just how sound it is.
Primitive man discovered two great advantages to social
life. The first was man's ability to gain knowledge, not
only through personal experience, but also through the
experience of others. By learning from others, man was able
to acquire knowledge which he could never have gained alone.
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This knowledge was handed down from generation to generation
- growing with each passing year, until today every
individual has at his fingertips a wealth of information
which took thousands of years to acquire. The second great
advantage of social life was man's discovery of trade. By
being able to exchange goods, man discovered that he was
able to concentrate his efforts on a particular task at
which he was especially good and/or which he especially
liked. He could then trade the products of his labour for
the products of the labour of others who specialised in
other fields. This was found to be mutually beneficial to
all concerned.
That the division of labour is beneficial when A
produces one thing better than B and when B produces another
thing better than A was obvious even to the caveman. Each
produces that which he does best and trades with the other
to their mutual advantage. But what happens when A produces
BOTH things better than B? David Ricardo answered this
question when he expounded his law of association over 150
years ago. This law is best illustrated by a concrete
example. Let us say that Jones can produce one pair of shoes
in 3 hours compared to Smith's 5 hours. Also let us say
that Jones can produce one bushel of wheat in 2 hours
compared to Smith's 4 hours (cf. Table I). If each man is to
work 120 hours, what is the most advantageous way of
dividing up the work? Table II shows three cases: the two
extremes where one man does only one job while the other man
does the other, and the middle road where each man divides
his time equally between jobs. It is clear from Table III
that it is to the advantage of BOTH men that the most
productive man should devote ALL of his energies to the job
which he does best (relative to the other) while the least
productive man concentrates his energies on the other job
(case 3). It is interesting to note that in the reverse
situation (case 1) - which is also the least productive case
- the drop in productivity is only 6% for Jones (the best
worker), while for Smith it's a whopping 11%. So the
division of labour, while helping both men, tends to help
the least productive worker more than his more efficient
workmate - a fact which opponents of this idea should note
well.
These figures show something which is pretty obvious
intuitively. A skilled surgeon, after many years invested
in schooling, internship, practice, etc., may find his time
more productively spent in actually performing operations
than in washing his surgical instruments in preparation for
these operations. It would seem natural, then, for him to
hire a medical student (say for 1 pound per hour) to do the
washing up job while he does the operating (for say 3 pounds
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PRODUCTIVITY RATES
------------------
Time Necessary to Produce Time Necessary to Produce
One Pair of Shoes (Hours) One Bushel of Wheat (Hours)
------------------------------------------------------------
Jones: 3 2
Smith: 5 4
------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE I
* * * * * *
PRODUCTIVITY UNDER DIVISION OF LABOUR
-------------------------------------
Hours of Hours of Shoes Bushels
Shoemaking Farming Produced of Wheat
--------------------------------------------------------------
Jones 120 0 40 0
Case 1 Smith 0 120 0 30
Total 120 120 40 30
--------------------------------------------------------------
Jones 60 60 20 30
Case 2 Smith 60 60 12 15
Total 120 120 32 45
--------------------------------------------------------------
Jones 0 120 0 60
Case 3 Smith 120 0 24 0
Total 120 120 24 60
--------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE II
* * * * * *
TIME NECESSARY TO PRODUCE THE SAME AMOUNT
OF GOODS WHILE WORKING ALONE (HOURS)
-----------------------------------------
Jones Smith
--------------------------------------------------------------
Case 1: 120 + 60 = 180 200 + 120 = 320
Case 2: 96 + 90 = 186 160 + 180 = 340
Case 3: 72 + 120 = 192 120 + 240 = 360
--------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE III
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per hour). Even if the surgeon could wash his own
instruments twice as fast as the student, this division of
labour would be profitable for all concerned.
If the earth were a homogeneous sphere, equally endowed
with natural resources at each and every point of its
surface, and if each man were equally capable of performing
every task as well as his neighbour, then the division of
labour would have no ECONOMIC meaning. There would be no
material advantage to letting someone else do for you what
you could do equally well yourself. But the division of
labour would have arisen just the same because of the
variety of human tastes. It is a fact of human nature that
not all people like doing the same things. Kropotkin may
think this unfortunate, but I'm afraid that's the way human
beings are built. And as long as this is the case, people
are going to WANT to specialise their labour and trade their
products with one another.
* * * * * *
Given the advantages of the division of labour, what is
to be the method by which man exchanges his products?
Primitive man devised the barter system for this purpose.
But it wasn't long before the limitations of this system
became apparent:
"Let Peter own a horse; let James own a cow and a pig; let
James's cow and pig, taken together, be worth precisely as
much as Peter's horse; let Peter and James desire to make an
exchange; now, what shall prevent them from making the
exchange by direct barter? Again, let Peter own the horse;
let James own the cow; and let John own the pig. Peter
cannot exchange his horse for the cow, because he would lose
by the transaction; neither - and for the same reason - can
he exchange it for the pig. The division of the horse would
result in the destruction of its value. The hide, it is
true, possesses an intrinsic value; and a dead horse makes
excellent manure for a grapevine; nevertheless, the division
of a horse results in the destruction of its value as a
living animal. But if Peter barters his horse with Paul for
an equivalent in wheat, what shall prevent him from so
dividing his wheat as to qualify himself to offer to James
an equivalent for his cow and to John an equivalent for his
pig? If Peter trades thus with James and John the
transaction is still barter, though the wheat serves as
currency and obviates the difficulty in making change."
[101]
Thus currency (i.e, money) was born. Many things have
served as money throughout the ages: slaves, gunpowder, and
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even human skulls, to name but a few. The New Hebrides used
feathers for their money and in Ethiopia salt circulated as
the currency for centuries. But by far the most popular
medium of exchange became the precious metals, gold and
silver. There were several reasons for this: (1) Unlike
feathers or skulls, they have intrinsic value as metals.
(2) They are sufficiently rare as to impose difficulty in
producing them and sufficiently common as to make it not
impossible to do so. (3) Their value fluctuates relatively
little with the passing of time. Even large strikes - such
as those in California and Alaska - failed to devalue gold
to any appreciable extent. (4) They are particularly sturdy
commodities, loosing relatively little due to the wear and
tear of circulation. (5) They are easily divisible into
fractional parts to facilitate small purchases. For these
and other reasons, gold and silver became universally
recognised as standards of value. Certain quantities of
these metals became the units by which man measured the
worth of an object. For example, the pound sterling, lira,
and ruble were originally terms for metallic weight while
the drachma means literally a handful.
As long as these metals served purely as just another
commodity to be bartered - albeit a very useful commodity -
there was no inherent advantage in possessing these metals
as such. It was not until governments declared them the sole
LEGAL medium of exchange that gold and silver became
intrinsically oppressive. Governments, by monetising gold
and silver automatically demonetised every other item of
capital.* It is this monopoly which has been the chief
obstacle in preventing men from obtaining the product of
their labour and which permitted the few men who controlled
the money supply to roll up such large fortunes at the
expense of labour.
As long as the monetary structure was directly tied to
gold and silver, the volume of money was limited by the
amount of gold and silver available for coinage. It is for
this reason that paper money - backed by "hard money" - came
into being. The paper money was simply a promise "to pay the
bearer on demand" its equivalent in specie (i.e. gold or
--------------------
* A natural question arises here: "That may have been
true up until 40 years ago, but haven't governments since
abandoned the gold standard?" The answer is no. As long as
the United States government promises to buy and sell gold
at $35 an ounce and as long as the International Monetary
Fund (which stabilises the exchange rates) is based on gold
and U.S. dollars, the world remains on the gold standard.
1
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silver). Hence the words "note" and "bill," which imply
debt. Governments were at first reluctant to issue paper
money. But the scarcity of money in an increasingly
commercial world soon forced them to recant. The men of
wealth, well aware of the threat that "easy money" posed to
their "hard money," insisted that such money be based solely
on the wealth they already possessed. Governments readily
fell into line. In the United States, from 1866, anyone
issuing circulating notes was slapped with a tax of 10%
until it was completely outlawed in 1936. The British
government was even more severe; it gave the Bank of England
monopoly rights to issue "bank notes" as early as 1844.
[102]
When a man is forced to barter his products for money,
in order to have money to barter for such other products
that he might want, he is put at a disadvantage which the
capitalist is all too ready to exploit. William B. Greene
was one of the first to observe this fact:
"Society established gold and silver as a circulating
medium, in order that exchanges of commodities might be
FACILITATED; but society made a mistake in so doing; for by
this very act it gave to a certain class of men the power of
saying what exchanges shall, and what exchanges shall not,
be FACILITATED by means of this very circulating medium. The
monopolisers of the precious metals have an undue power over
the community; they can say whether money shall, or shall
not, be permitted to exercise its legitimate functions.
These men have a VETO on the action of money, and therefore
on exchanges of commodity; and they will not take off their
VETO until they have received usury, or, as it is more
politely termed, interest on their money. Here is the great
objection to the present currency. Behold the manner in
which the absurdity inherent in a specie currency - or, what
is still worse, in a currency of paper based upon specie -
manifests itself in actual operation! The mediating value
which society hoped would facilitate exchanges becomes an
absolute marketable commodity, itself transcending all reach
of mediation. The great natural difficulty which originally
stood in the way of exchanges is now the private property of
a class, and this class cultivates this difficulty, and make
money out of it, even as a farmer cultivates his farm and
makes money by his labour. But there is a difference between
the farmer and the usurer; for the farmer benefits the
community as well as himself, while every dollar made by the
usurer is a dollar taken from the pocket of some other
individual, since the usurer cultivates nothing but an
actual obstruction." [103]
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The legitimate purpose of money is to facilitate
exchange. As Greene shows, specie - or money based on specie
- accomplishes this purpose, but only at a terrible price to
the user. The solution to the problem is to devise a money
which has no value as a COMMODITY, only as a circulating
medium. This money should also be available in such quantity
as not to hamper any exchanges which may be desired. The
organ for creating such a currency Greene called a "mutual
bank."*
Before considering the operations of a mutual bank, I'd
like to look at how an ordinary bank functions. Let us say
that Mr Brown, who owns a farm worth a few thousand pounds,
needs 500 pounds to buy seed and equipment for the coming
year. Not having that kind of money on hand, he goes to the
bank to borrow it. The bank readily agrees - on the
condition that at the end of the year Brown not only pays
back the 500 pounds borrowed, but also 50 pounds which they
call "interest." Farmer Brown has no choice; he needs MONEY
because that is all the seed dealer will accept as "legal
tender." So he agrees to the conditions set down by the
bank. After a year of hard work, and with a bit of luck from
the weather, he harvests his crops and exchanges (i.e.
"sells") his produce - for money. He takes 550 pounds to the
bank and cancels his debt. The net result of all this is
that some banker is 50 pounds richer for doing a minimal
amount of work (perhaps a few hours of bookkeeping) at no
risk to himself (the farm was collateral), while Mr Brown is
50 pounds out of pocket.
Now let's see where Greene's idea leads us. A group of
people get together and decide to set up a mutual bank. The
bank will issue notes which all members of the bank agree to
accept as "money." Taking the above example, Mr Brown could
get five hundred of these notes by mortgaging his farm and
discounting with the bank a mortgage note for that sum. With
the notes, he buys his seed from Smith and some tools from
Jones. Smith and Jones in turn exchange some of these newly
acquired notes for some things they need. And so on until
the end of the year when Brown exchanges his farm produce
and receives for them - mutual bank notes. Does all this
sound familiar? It should, for up until now, from all
outward appearances, there has been no difference between
our mutual bank and an ordinary specie bank. But it's here,
--------------------
* Proudhon's bank, "la banque du peuple," is
essentially the same. For a detailed account of the
workings of each bank see Greene's "Mutual Banking" and
Proudhon's "Solution of the Social Problem" and "Revolution
in the Nineteenth Century."
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however, that the change comes in. Mr Brown goes to the
mutual bank with his notes and gives the bank 500 of them
plus ONE OR TWO extra to help pay for the operating expenses
of the bank over the past year. The bank cancels his
mortgage and Mr Brown walks away thinking how nice it is to
be a member of such a wonderful bank.
Now notice that it was never mentioned that Smith and
Jones were members of the bank. They may have been, but it
wasn't necessary. Smith, the seed dealer, might not belong
to the bank and yet be willing to accept its notes. He's in
business, after all, and if the only money Brown has is
mutual money, that's all right with him - as long as he can
get rid of it when HE wants to buy something. And of course
he can because he knows there are other members of the bank
pledged to receiving these notes. Besides, Brown will need
at least 500 of them eventually to pay off his mortgage. So
Smith accepts the money, and he too profits from this novel
scheme. In fact, the only one who seems to be any the worse
is the poor usurous banker. But I'm afraid he will just have
to find himself an honest job and work for his living like
everyone else.
John Stuart Mill defined capital as "wealth
appropriated to reproductive employment." In our example
above, farmer Brown's 500 pounds is capital since he intends
to use it for creating new wealth. But Mr Brown can use his
capital in any number of ways: he may decide to use it to
buy seeds for planting corn; or he may decide that his
ground is better suited for growing wheat, or he may decide
to invest in a new tractor. This 500 pounds, then, is liquid
capital or, as Greene called it, disengaged capital. When Mr
Brown buys his seeds and tools, these things are still
designed for "reproductive employment," and are therefore
still capital. But what kind of capital? Evidently, frozen
or engaged capital. He then plants his seeds and harvests
his crops with the aid of his new tractor. The produce he
grows is no longer capital because it is no longer capable
of being "appropriated to reproductive employment." What is
it, then? Evidently, it is product. Mr Brown then takes his
goods to town and sells them at market value for somewhat
more than the 500 pounds he originally started out with.
This "profit" is entirely due to his labour as a farmer (and
perhaps to some extent his skill as a salesman). The money
he receives for his goods become, once again, liquid
capital. So we have came full circle: liquid capital
becomes frozen capital; frozen capital becomes product;
product becomes liquid capital. And the cycle starts all
over again.
A society is prosperous when money flows freely - that
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is when each man is able to easily convert his product into
liquid capital. A society is unprosperous when money is
tight - that is, when exchange is difficult to effect.
Mutual banking makes as much money available as is
necessary. When a man needs money he simply goes to his
friendly mutual bank, mortgages some property, and receives
the notes of the bank in return. What this system does is to
allow a man to circulate his CREDIT. Whoever goes to a
mutual bank and mortgages some of his property will always
receive money, for a mutual bank can issue money to any
extent. This money will always be good because it is all
based on actual property which, if necessary, could be sold
to pay off bad debts. The mutual bank, of course, would
never give PERSONAL credit, for to do so would give the
notes an element of risk and render them unstable. But what
about the man with no property to pledge? Greene answered
this question as follows:
"If we knew of a plan whereby, through an act of the
legislature, every member of the community might be made
rich, we would destroy this petition and draw up another
embodying that plan. Meanwhile, we affirm that no system
was ever devised so beneficial to the poor as the system of
mutual banking; for if a man having nothing to offer in
pledge, has a friend who is a property holder and that
friend is willing to furnish security for him, he can borrow
money at the mutual bank at a rate of 1% interest a year;
whereas, if he should borrow at the existing banks, he would
be obliged to pay 6%. Again as mutual banking will make
money exceedingly plenty, it will cause a rise in the rate
of wages, thus benefiting the man who has no property but
his bodily strength; and it will not cause a proportionate
increase in the price of the necessaries of life: for the
price of provisions, etc., depends on supply and demand; and
mutual banking operates, not directly on supply and demand,
but to the diminution of the rate of interest on the medium
of exchange. But certain mechanics and farmers say, 'We
borrow no money, and therefore pay no interest. How, then
does this thing concern us?' Harken, my friends! let us
reason together. I have an impression on my mind that it is
precisely the class who have no dealings with the banks, and
derive no advantages from them, that ultimately pay all the
interest money that is paid. When a manufacturer borrows
money to carry on his business, he counts the interest he
pays as a part of his expenses, and therefore adds the
amount of interest to the price of his goods. The consumer
who buys the goods pays the interest when he pays for the
goods; and who is the consumer, if not the mechanic and the
farmer? If a manufacturer could borrow money at 1%, he could
afford to undersell all his competitors, to the manifest
advantage of the farmer and mechanic. The manufacturer would
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neither gain nor lose; the farmer and mechanic, who have no
dealings with the bank, would gain the whole difference; and
the bank - which, were it not for the competition of the
mutual bank, would have loaned the money at 6% interest -
would lose the whole difference. It is the indirect relation
of the bank to the farmer and mechanic, and not its direct
relation to the manufacturer and merchant, that enables it
to make money." [104]
Mutual banking, by broadening the currency base, makes
money plentiful. The resulting stimulus to business would
create an unprecedented demand for labour - a demand which
would always be in excess of the supply. Then, as Benjamin
Tucker observed:
"When two labourers are after one employer, wages fall, but
when two employers are after one labourer, wages rise.
Labour will then be in a position to dictate its wages, and
will thus secure its natural wage, its entire product. Thus
the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.
But this is not all. Down will go profits also. For
merchants, instead of buying at high prices on credit, will
borrow money of the banks at less than one percent, buy at
low prices for cash, and correspondingly reduce the prices
of their goods to their customers. And with the rest will go
house-rent. For no one who can borrow capital at one percent
with which to build a house of his own will consent to pay
rent to a landlord at a higher rate than that." [105]
Unlike the "boom and bust" cycles we now experience
under the present system, mutualism would know nothing but
"boom." For the present "busts" come when the economy is
"overheated" and when there is so-called "overproduction."
As long as most of humanity lead lives of abject poverty, we
can never speak realistically of "over-production." And as
long as each hungry belly comes with a pair of hands,
mutualism will be there to give those hands work to fill
that belly.
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AN AFTERWORD TO COMMUNIST-ANARCHIST READERS
What generally distinguishes you from your communist
brother in some authoritarian sect is your basic lack of
dogmatism. The state socialist is always towing some party
line. When it comes to creative thinking his brain is in a
mental straitjacket, with no more give and take in his mind
than you will find in the mind of a dog watching a rabbit
hole. You, on the contrary, pride yourself on being "your
own man." Having no leaders, prophets, Messiahs, or Popes to
refer to for divine guidance, you can afford to use YOUR
mind to analyse the facts as YOU see them and come up with
YOUR conclusions. You are, in your fundamental metaphysics,
an agnostic. You are broad minded to a fault...how else
could you have read this far?
But when it comes to economics, your mind suddenly
becomes rigid. You forget your sound anarchist principles
and surrender without a struggle the one thing that makes
you an anarchist: your freedom. You suddenly develop an
enormous capacity for believing and especially for believing
what is palpably not true. By invoking a set of second hand
dogmas (Marxist hand-me-downs) which condemn outright the
free market economy, you smuggle in through the back door
authoritarian ideas which you had barred from the main
entrance. In commendably searching for remedies against
poverty, inequality and injustice, you forsake the doctrine
of freedom for the doctrine of authority and in so doing
come step by step to endorse all the fallacies of Marxist
economics. A few years ago S. E. Parker wrote an open
letter to the editors of "Freedom" in which he said:
"The trouble is that what you call 'anarchism' is at best
merely a hodge-podge, halfway position precariously
suspended between socialism and anarchism. You yearn for the
ego-sovereignty, the liberating individualism, that is the
essence of anarchism, but remain captives of the
democratic-proletarian-collectivist myths of socialism.
Until you can cut the umbilical cord that still connects you
to the socialist womb you will never be able to come to your
full power as self-owning individuals. You will still be
lured along the path to the lemonade springs and cigarette
trees of the Big Rock Candy Mountains." [106]
This article was written for you in hopes of relieving
you of your schizophrenic condition. The fact that you call
yourself an anarchist shows that you have an instinctual
"feeling" for freedom. I hope that this article will
encourage you to seek to put that feeling on a sound
foundation. I am confident that when you do, you will
reject your communist half.
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REFERENCES
1. Joseph Stalin, "Anarchism or Socialism" (Moscow; Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1950), p. 85. Written in 1906
but never finished.
2. Ibid., pp. 90-1.
3. Ibid., p.95.
4. Ibid., p. 87.
5. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "What is Property: An Inquiry
into the Principle of Right and of Government," trans.
Benjamin R. Tucker (London: William Reeves), p. 260.
Originally published in French in 1840.
6. Bill Dwyer, "This World", "Freedom," March 27, 1971.
7. Pierre Kropotkine, "Paroles d'un Revolte" (Paris: Ernest
Flammarion, 1885), pp. 318-9.
8. Paul Eltzbacher, "Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist
Philosophy," trans. Steven T. Byington, ed. James J. Martin
(London: Freedom Press, 1960), p. 108. "Der Anarchismus" was
originally published in Berlin in 1900.
9. Ibid., p. 109.
10. Ibid., p. 110.
11. Herbert Spencer, "The Man Versus The State," ed. Donald
MacRae (London: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 151. Originally
published in 1884.
12. Prince Peter Kropotkin, "The Conquest of Bread" (London:
Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1906), p. 41.
13. Eltzbacher, op. cit., p. 101.
14. Kropotkin, op. cit., p. 209.
15. Ibid., p. 206.
16. Henry David Thoreau, "Journal," March 11, 1856.
17. Kropotkin, op. cit., p. 206.
18. Ibid., p. 205.
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19. Errico Malatesta, "Anarchy" (London: Freedom Press,
1949), p. 33. Originally published in 1907.
20. Alexander Berkman, "A.B.C. of Anarchism" (London:
Freedom Press, 1964), p. 27. This is the abbreviated version
of the Vanguard Press "ABC of Communist Anarchism" which
appeared in 1929.
21. Ibid., p. 28.
22. Ibid., p. 29.
23. Ibid., p. 25.
24. "Italy: An Illness of Convenience," "Newsweek," January
4, 1971, p. 44.
25. "Un Forum Legislatif de la Classe Ouvriere?", "Granma"
(French edition), January 31, 1971, p. 3.
26. "Cuba Announces Labor Penalties For Loafers," "The
International Herald Tribune," March 19, 1971, p. 4.
27. Theodore Roszak, "The Making of a Counter Culture"
(Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 29.
28. Kropotkin, op. cit., pp. 236-7.
29. Mikhail Bakunin, "The Political Philosophy of Bakunin:
Scientific Anarchism," ed. G. P. Maximoff (New York: The
Free Press, 1953), p. 285.
30. Homer Lane, "Talks to Parents and Teachers" (London:
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1928), p. 121.
31. Paul Goodman, "Compulsory Mis-education" and "The
Community of Scholars" (New York: Vintage Books, 1962,
1964), p. 174.
32. Erich Fromm, "Fear of Freedom" (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1960), p. 34. First published in the
United States in 1942 under the title "Escape from Freedom."
33. Petr Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution"
(Boston: Extending Horizons Books, 1955), p. 297. This book
first appeared in London in 1902.
34. Ibid., p. 166.
35. Ibid., p. 169.
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36. Ibid., p. 176.
37. Ibid., p. 176.
38. Ibid., pp. 172-3.
39. Ibid., p. 176.
40. Ibid., p. 174.
41. Ibid., p. 177.
42. Ibid., p. 194.
43. Ibid., p. 194.
44. Ibid,, p. 194.
45. Ibid., pp. 194-5.
46. Ibid., pp. 209-10.
47. Ibid., p. 214.
48. Kropotkine, "Paroles," p. 333.
49. Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid," p. 215.
50. Ibid., p. 217.
51. Ibid., p. 219.
52. Rudolf Rocker, "Nationalism and Culture," trans. Ray E.
Chase (Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1937), p.
92.
53. Ibid., p. 91.
54. Ibid., p. 92.
55. Proudhon, op. cit., pp. 248-51.
56. Herbert Marcuse, "Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the
Rise of Social Theory" (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
Ltd., 1967), p. 435. This quotation was taken from the
supplementary chapter written in 1954. The original book was
first published by Oxford University Press in 1941.
57. Kropotkine, Paroles, p. 341.
58. Ibid., p. 342.
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59. Noam Chomsky, "Notes on Anarchism," "Anarchy 116,"
October, 1970, p. 316.
60. Ibid., p. 318.
61. Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," 1965.
62. Eltzbacher, op. cit., p. 89.
63. Ibid., p. 57.
64. Benjamin R. Tucker, "Instead of a Book (By a Man Too
Busy to Write One)" (New York: Benj. R. Tucker, 1897), p.
401. Reprinted from "Liberty," May 12, 1888.
65. Max Stirner (Johann Kaspar Schmidt), "The Ego and His
Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority," trans.
Steven T. Byington (New York: Libertarian Book Club, 1963),
p. 298. "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" was written in 1844
and translated into English in 1907, when it was published
in New York by Benj. Tucker.
66. Agatha Christie, "Destination Unknown" (London: Fontana
Books), p. 98.
67. Spencer, op, cit., pp. 323-4.
68. Stalin, op. cit., p. 97.
69. Robert Burns, "To a Mouse," 1785, stanza 7.
70. S. E. Parker, "Letters", "Freedom," February 27, 1971.
71. Tucker, "Instead of a Book," p. 413. Reprinted from
"Liberty," October 4, 1884.
72. Tucker, "Instead of a Book," p. 422. Reprinted from
"Liberty," June 23, 1888.
73. Stirner, op. cit., p. 210.
74. Ibid., p. 319.
75. Proudhon, op. cit., pp. 243-4.
76. Stirner, op. cit., p. 179.
77. Ibid., p. 291.
78. "At the Summit of the Affluent U.S. Society," "The
International Herald Tribune." March 19, 1971, p. 1.
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79. "Newsweek," February 1, 1971 , p. 44.
80. Stirner, op. cit., pp. 270-2.
81. Tucker, "Instead of a Book," p. 404. Reprinted from
"Liberty," April 28, 1888.
82. Quoted from Charles A. Reich's article in "The New
Yorker" magazine, "The Greening of American," September 26,
1970.
83. G. D. H. Cole, "What Everybody Wants To Know About
Money" (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1933), pp. 526-7.
84. Ken Knudson, "Letters", "Freedom," November 14, 1970.
85. Ian S. Sutherland, "Doomsday & After," "Freedom,"
February 27, 1971.
86. "Laissez Faire," "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1965, vol.
XIII, p. 606.
87. Ayn Rand, "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" (New York:
Signet Books, 1967), p 320.
88. Ibid., p. 331.
89. Ibid., p. 131.
90. Ibid., pp. 131-2.
91. Ibid., pp. 132-3.
92. Ibid., p, 132.
93. Ibid., p. 134.
94. "Geographical Summaries: Area and Population,"
Encyclopaedia Britannica Atlas," 1965, p. 199.
95. Rand, op. cit., p. 224.
96. Ibid., p. 229.
97. Douglas Marchant, "Angola," "Anarchy 112," June, 1970,
p. 184.
98. "Libertarian Message to Gay Liberation," "Anarchy,"
February, 1971, p. 2.
99. Kropotkin, "Conquest of Bread," pp. 245 & 248.
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100. Ibid., p. 250.
101. William B. Greene, "Mutual Banking," from Proudhon's
"Solution of the Social Problem," ed. Henry Cohen (New York:
Vanguard Press, 1927), p. 177.
102. "Money," "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1965, vol. XV, p.
703.
103. Greene, op. cit., p. 180.
104. Ibid., pp. 196-7.
105. Tucker, "Instead of a Book" p. 12, Reprinted from
"Liberty," March 10, 1888.
106. S. E. Parker, "Enemies of Society: An Open Letter to
the Editors of Freedom," "Minus One," October-December,
1967, p. 4.