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Title: Anarchy Author: Elisée Reclus Date: 1895 Language: en Topics: introductory Source: Ishill, Joseph. (1927). Élisée and Élie Reclus: In Memoriam. Compiled, ed. and printed by Joseph Ishill. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Oriole Press. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/reclus/ishill/ishill345-351.html Notes: Extracts from a lecture delivered at South Place Institute, London on Monday July 29th, 1895.
YOU know that we, the Anarchists, are considered as a set of most
desperate and wicked men; and recently, perusing by mere chance an
English review which had already published some of my scientific papers,
I found, to my surprise, that I was spoken of by name as belonging to a
“gang of ruffians.” Now, this is indeed a very bad introduction to you;
still I hope you will not condemn me at once. If you have read and heard
the attacks, you are bound by fair play to hear also the defense, and
even a counter-attack.
Our name explains perfectly what our aim is — at least our negative aim.
We wish to do away with government because every organization from the
outside prevents the free working of spontaneous organization.
Government, under all its various shapes, is but another name for a body
of people having got the power to enforce their will, which they call
and make Law; and this will, this Law, represents not the society’s
interest, but their own. If mankind’s ideal is the happiness of all,
government cannot and will not ever fulfil it, because its first concern
is for its own members. Subjects come always after the ruler; and even
were they sensuously pleased as a herd of well-fed swine, they will
never enjoy that true happiness which exists between friends and equals.
A drudging servant never enjoys life nobly and manfully side by side
with his master, never a slave with a free man; never a poor fellow
picking up in the mud his morsel of bread with the rich, who does not
care for bread, because dainties are better for him.
Our ideal of society is quite different from the actual state of things,
quite different from the imagined Utopias of most ancient and modern
writers. High people, who have enjoyed the privileges of birth, wealth,
and education are always prone to believe themselves to be a chosen
tribe; and even when they feel kindly towards the lowborn poor, they
want them to be led by strings, like children, and taught good morals by
their betters. And who are their betters? The aristocracy, of course —
those who enjoy already the advantages of a pleasant life, and who by
their very position are induced to maintain inequality in their own
favor.
The society we imagine, and whose evolution we are studying in the
present chaotic crowd of conflicting units, is a society in which work
is going on, not by the behest of a whole hierarchy of chiefs and
sub-chiefs, but by the comprehension of common interests and the natural
working of mutual aid and sympathy; in which order is kept, not by the
strong arm of law, by prisons, cat-o’-nine-tails, hanging-ropes,
guillotines, and wholesale blowings-up, but by universal education, by
respect of everyone for himself and for others; in which happiness will
be ensured, not by intermittent and disdainful charities, but by real
and substantial welfare, and by the common enjoyment of riches due to
the common work.
In fact, the change we propose in society is precisely the change which
is going on in the family itself, where the old idea of a ruling master,
having the right, and even the duty, to chastise with the rod wife and
children, is gradually abandoned, and where love, mutual respect, and
permanent kindness are considered the only natural ties between all. And
everywhere the same evolution is going on in social morals. People feel
that a new departure must be taken in the methods of social activity.
Even in workshops and great manufactories, the best way of going on
smoothly for employers and employed is to have, in spite of the
difference in wages, a link of mutual respect. You all remember the
saying of the chief engineer of the Forth Bridge at the opening of that
most stupendous work of the age: “If all we fellow-workers had not
labored together in the glorious undertaking with the same mind and the
same heart, it never would have been achieved. Every nail is necessary
to the whole; everyone of us has been necessary to this splendid end!”
Such were the words of the illustrious constructor; he felt that
enthusiasm for the achievement of a great work had been throughout the
chief motor, although, generally and quite naturally, hatred and envy
are bred by the difference of social standing and salaries. That
enthusiasm for high aims is to take the place of continual compulsion.
Of course, we know that the change in society brought about by the
substitution of inner natural organization for the outer artificial
organization of caprice, force, and law, will be a change of capital
importance, and, in consequence, accompanied by numerous and formidable
events. Every general evolution brings in its wake corresponding
revolutions. It must be so, and we cannot alter the course of history;
but this we know, that howsoever great may be the dangers following the
change from governance to spontaneous grouping, these dangers can never
compare with the actual evils which result from the exercise of personal
authority and the extortions of law....
There is a proverbial phrase which is very commonly uttered, even by the
most conservative people: “The best government is that which governs the
least!” This is also our opinion, and we follow it logically by adding
that government, when reduced to a mere cypher, leaves society free to
attain its final perfection. But everywhere, the so-called “civilized”
nations groan under the pressure of a more or less strong government,
and certainly I can show you in no part of the world any large community
which lives entirely free, without the intervention of people who
consider themselves as rulers, givers of work and superintendents of the
whole political and social machinery.
All Anarchical existing groups (and there are many of them) are only
small tribes, enjoying their entire freedom from general or local
governments in forests and in open plains. There are, also, some groups
of agriculturists who have still the good luck in mountain fastnesses to
escape conquest, and the laws of monarchies or republics. We must add a
few consciously Anarchical and Communist societies that have arisen
during this century in Western Europe and America. I must especially
mention the old Icarians, who began some fifty years ago as
authoritarians and law-abiders, who had a chief or rather a pope, but
who, by a long series of vicissitudes lost, so to say, their first skin
and, changing their constitution from time to time, finished by
abolishing it altogether, and now live happily and simply without any
other rule of life than self and mutual respect and love.
But if I can show you only comparatively small Anarchical communities,
history exemplifies to us in a splendid way how among nations progress
is always in exact proportion to the increase of freedom, to the
decrease of strength in government and power in laws.
Look first at Greece, the land to which we trace our spiritual birth.
Certainly it had governments, even many of them, aristocracies and
democracies and oligarchies and so on, but with the single exception of
barbarous Sparta, entirely composed of warriors, who were forbidden to
think, to speak, even to read, all the Greek republics were in a state
of constant evolution and revolution; governments built on the sand were
continually shaken; they had no time to take hold of the public mind, to
become a kind of religion, correlative with the belief in a heavenly
god, and the strife of thought went on between parties and parties,
between men and men. The spirit of freedom was not crushed among them as
it had been in Babylon, in Persia, in Egypt, and that is why knowledge
increased immensely in all directions. Art attained a perfect beauty
which was considered for two thousand years as a definite standard; all
sciences began or developed themselves, and the outlines of every course
of study which we are now trying to complete were distinctly marked;
history made its appearance in literary master-pieces; the theories of
evolution, which most people falsely think a new conquest, grow
splendidly in Epicurus out of the treasury of facts; and, lastly, morals
progressed at the same pace as science, as is shown by the admirable,
and I say eternal, books of the Stoics, so well sustained by their noble
life. That period of time is always the pride and glory of mankind.
And now let us turn to another period, when the long night of the
middle-ages gave way to the first light of the dawn. For more than one
thousand years triumphant barbarian chiefs and Christian monks had
utterly prevented any freedom of speech and thought; but under those
ashes gleamed still some fire, and flames rose again. The history of
communes, that history which has not yet been written, but which, I
hope, will be taken up by some of our thinkers, began in all parts of
Europe and even of Mussulman Africa. There was everywhere, as in ancient
Greece, a clashing of states against states, of barons against cities,
of peasantry against knights: innumerable conflicts and revolutions
shook the old state of things, and people were born to new thoughts.
Again that happy struggle, which weakened the idea of strong government,
allowed human intellect to free itself and a new period of science,
literature, art, discovery, morals, developed itself throughout Europe.
Some of the most splendid pages that have been written belong to that
time, which culminates with the Renaissance, that is with the new birth
of mankind, when old Greece was discovered again.
The names of the Spanish comuneros, of the French communes, of the
English yeomen, of the free cities in Germany, of the Republic of
Novgorod and of the marvelous communities of Italy must be, with us
Anarchists, household words: never was civilized humanity nearer to real
Anarchy than it was in certain phases of the communal history of
Florence and NĂĽrnberg.
Great monarchies prevailed over these many free republics and the gloom
of subjection seemed to darken our Western Europe; but it was difficult
to eradicate entirely free speech and free thought. In spite of the
great kings, in spite of Philip of Spain and Louis XIV of France, the
little common wealth of Netherlands had writers and printers to keep
tyranny in check. Afterwards the struggle went on also in France, in
England, in America, minds emancipated themselves and gave rise to those
revolutions, which were the beginning of our modern world. Without those
revolutions society would have been at a stand-still in industry, in
science, art, social philosophy; and we Anarchists, instead of speaking
to you on the destruction of capitalist society, would have certainly no
opportunity of grouping ourselves all over the world in new communities.
And now do you not think it is too late for government to put a gag in
our mouth, to let silence reign again over a subject people? We have
behind us the impulse of all former acquisitions in science and in
morals and these drive us forward with an irresistible force.
Certainly, we seem to be weak in numbers, in material strength, and we
are very poor in money; meanwhile governments have on their side armies,
ammunition, millions and millions of pounds, the reasonings of the
political economists and the blessing of the priests. But there is one
thing which is wanting to them and which we have. This will be the
reason for our final and decided victory. They know already that they
are wrong: they don’t believe in their own morals. We, on the contrary,
know that we are right and that our idea is just; for we are working and
fighting for the equality of men, for the happiness of all human beings.