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Title: Anarchy Author: Hugh Owen Pentecost Date: July 4, 1889 Language: en Topics: Libertarian Labyrinth, Christ Source: Retrieved on June 11, 2020 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/hugh-o-pentecost-anarchy-1889/ Notes: Delivered on June 30, 1889 to the Unity Congregation at Newark, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Published in Twentieth Century on July 4, 1889 — The Editor
Good people who hold opinions not commonly understood generally have a
bad name. The world is ready to believe almost anything of a man except
that he is a genuinely good man. If his life is stainless but
unconventional, the world suspects some hidden shame or base motive. So
far are most people from understanding or desiring what is true and
right that the highest truth is often believed to be the lowest lie, and
the purest right is looked upon as the blackest wrong.
Thus Jesus, who was the incarnation of earnest goodness, was said by the
Pharisees to be possessed of a devil. That was because their own souls
were so false that their moral vision was distorted. They looked upon
goodness and thought it was badness. Thus also the early Christians were
accused of indulging in lecherous orgies, when in reality they were
living lives of great purity. It was only that they held unpopular
doctrines: doctrines which most people did not, perhaps could not,
understand. Many people know their own selfishness, deceitfulness, and
greediness and they cannot understand that there may be others who are
unselfish, frank and generous.
Now, all this applies to the people in our midst who are commonly called
anarchists. They are looked upon as a bloodthirsty set of murderers who
desire to destroy society in order to reap a little gain from pillage
among the ruins. To call a man an anarchist to today is to heap as much
disgrace upon him as it was to call a man a Christian in the first
century or an abolitionist before the war.
Few of us realize that Jesus was arrested, flung into jail and hanged
with the odium of the community, attached to him just as it attached to
the men who were recently hanged in Chicago. But such was the case. Art
and religion have made the hanging of Jesus a very splendid affair. But
in reality it was a much less important matter when it happened than the
Chicago hanging. He was probably dragged into what we now call a police
court, put through some sort of rough trial, and hanged as a common
tramp whom society wished to get rid of, would now be hanged.
There is a man going through the Southern states now, claiming to be
Jesus Christ come to earth again. The negroes are following him to some
extent. He dispatches of last week say that the police authorities are
trying to arrest him. They have evidently offered him money in order to
establish the charge of vagrancy against him, because the dispatches say
he will not take money publicly. But they say he gets along somehow or
other, and “it is feared” –that is the language of the dispatch –that he
cannot be arrested as a vagrant.
Now, here is a man doing just what Jesus Christ did. He is poor. He has
gathered a few disciples. He is going from place to place preaching. He
is not trying to make money. There is nothing against his character. He
seems to be a good man. And the police, backed up, of course, by all the
respectable people, are trying to find an excuse to arrest the man and
throw him into prison. And they will find the excuse yet, no doubt,
because society has no use for a poor man that he will not suppress nor
sell for money. A millionaire may be an Infidel, a Socialist, an
Anarchist, or a Free Lover and society only smiles and calls him an
eccentric. Society rather likes him better for his oddities, but if a
poor man thinks out of the orthodox groves and acts a little differently
from other people, it will go hard on him, especially if he happens to
be a very high-minded, pure and good man.
What I started to say is that Jesus Christ was, in his day, in about the
same relation to society that this poor man down south, who thinks he is
imitating him, is in. He was in about the same relation to society that
an Anarchist is now. That is to say, he thought about the same doctrines
that the anarchists do, and was about as badly hated as the anarchists
now are.
An anarchist was drawn to serve on a jury the other day in Chicago, and
when he was examined as to his fitness to serve, he said he did not
believe in punishing people by law. He believed in preventing people
from becoming criminals. The judge asked him if he would vote to
sentence the prisoner if he were found to be guilty of violating the
statute law. The anarchist said that he would not. “Officer, take this
man to jail and let him stay there till morning,” said the judge. This
is how the newspapers reported the occurrence, and it is about what
would have happened if Jesus had been before that judge.
Now, it is curious that the Christian world worships Jesus and
persecutes the only people who believe in his teachings. And yet it
isn't very curious either, because the Christian world does not pretend
to believe in what Jesus taught. There is probably not one minister in
this city who believes that the Golden Rule will work, or that it is
wise to take careful, anxious thought for the morrow, or that the
strongest force that can be used is to return good for evil, is to speak
the truth and take the consequences, nor resisting when physical force
is used.
It costs a good deal to worship Jesus, I admit, but it doesn’t cost
anything like what it does to follow his teachings. And that is, no
doubt, one reason why so many people worship him and at the same time
persecute the few people who teach about what he taught.
It is often said that Jesus was a Socialist. That is true, but he was
not a governmental Socialist, or what is commonly called a State
Socialist. He was more like what would now be called a Communist –an
Anarchist-Communist. I suppose it sounds rather strangely for me to say
so, but I think in so far as Jesus had any social views they were very
close to those of John Most,1 except that Herr Most believes in using
physical force to bring his ideas into practice and Jesus did not.
Jesus seemed to think that all persons should enjoy their property in
common, governed by no law, except that each should do to the others
what he would wish them to do to him. I don’t think he ever carried the
idea out to include a whole city or a whole nation. He seemed to think
that groups of people should live in that way, submitting to the laws of
the State, just or unjust, quietly and peaceably. But when his idea is
carried out, it becomes Communistic-Anarchism; so that the two most
hateful words in the English language describe almost exactly the manner
in which the nominal founder of the Christian church taught us that we
should live in our social relations.
Ah,.. My friends, this is a queer world. We worship men who said and did
certain things long, long ago, but we persecute and slay the men who say
and do substantially the same things today. It is a queer world, isn’t
it?
It is very difficult to define anarchism and to tell you just what the
anarchists want, but the reason why it is difficult is because Anarchism
is such a simple science and the anarchists want just what the laws of
the universe would give us if we should obey them in all things.
Anarchism is something that you have to understand just as you
understand love. It is not a theory; it is not a system. There for it is
very difficult to explain. What is love? It is something that I feel,
that moves me, that gives me joy, that tends to keep me pure and good.
It is something that I experience toward this person and not that. I
love my wife not because she is beautiful, or homely or bright or dull
or tall or short; I love my friend not because he is this or that or the
other. In both cases it is because there is something in my wife and my
friend that awakens my love. But I cannot explain my love to you. I can
only say: “Were you ever in love? Then you know what love is.”
Now Anarchy is something so simple and natural that it cannot be
defined. Do you understand what natural law means? Do you know what I
mean by the order of the universe? Do you understand what is meant by
human nature? Well Anarchism means to live in accordance with the laws
of the universe in general and of human nature in particular. But, you
see, if you do not know what it means to live in accordance with natural
law, you cannot understand what Anarchism is. Just as is you have never
been in love you cannot understand what love is by any amount of
explaining.
No doubt, many persons will be greatly surprised to hear me say this,
because the common idea is that Anarchists wish to destroy society with
dynamite. It is perfectly true that there are many Anarchists who
believe that a bloody is impending, and that it will be their duty to
use that revolution for all it is worth to establish the new and better
order. And it is true that some anarchists believe that society can only
be redeemed by successive revolutions; much on the principle that was
observed at Johnstown when they blew up the mass of debris at the
railroad bridge. 2 Trees, houses, locomotives and other things were
jammed in there so tightly that nothing but an explosion could loosen
them. And so some anarchists think that society is so crystallized into
wrong forms that nothing but a revolution can bring any change for the
better.
But you make a great mistake if you think of these men as cutthroats and
assassins. They are just such true patriots as Washington, and Warren 3
and Marion 4 and the rest of our noble “traitors” and “rebels” were a
hundred years ago, Washington once put his fingers around his neck, in
the dark days of the revolution, and said: “I wonder how it would feel
to have a rope around that? We get so dazzled with the glories f our
past that all our heroes would have been hanged, just as we hang the
Anarchist heroes –if they hadn’t succeeded in their revolution.
But the revolutionary part of the Anarchist scheme is wholly incidental.
I don’t believe in that part of it, although I do not know but that good
does sometimes result from the use of physical force. But, of course, if
a man takes up arms against the Government he knows what he must expect:
If he succeeds he will be a crowned hero, if he fails he will be a
hanged criminal. He who takes up the sword cannot complain if he
perishes by the sword.
Anarchism, however, does not involve forceful revolution, it certainly
does not involve that the Anarchists should incite or carry on the
revolution. Anarchism means what I have said: living under natural law
instead of statute law. When it is said that Anarchists wish to abolish
law and government, it is perfectly true in the sense that they wish to
establish natural law and human fraternity in place of statute law and
the organized injustice that we now call government.
But it may be asked: if Anarchism is so manifestly just, why does not
everybody believe in it? Because very few people understand what it
means. I have a fried who is an Anarchist, but he will never call
himself an Anarchist. He says he prefers to call himself a Christian,
because there is less prejudice against the name, and pure Christianity
and pure Anarchism are the same thing. Good people are reading this
man’s writings from week to week –people who abhor the name of Anarchism
–and because he calls what he writes Christianity, they think it very
high and pure doctrine, which it is. But if he called it Anarchism, they
wouldn’t read a word of it.
As I said a few minutes ago: This is a queer world.
And then, too, few persons are Anarchists because few persons believe
that their God knows more than the legislature or the common council. It
is just as I told you. Jesus is good enough to worship but he knew
nothing about business. At least so the average Christian thinks. And
with the average Christian, religion is one thing and business quite
another. Most people think that God knows how to run the universe in
general, but it takes Tammany Hall 5 to run the City of New York, and
the great and glorious legislature at Trenton to run the State of New
Jersey, and the august conclave of piety and worldly wisdom that centers
on Washington to run the United States. In other words, most people have
no faith at all in natural law, notwithstanding the fact that it is
perfectly apparent that no statute that was ever made can be enforced
against natural law.
Most people think they can rob one another by law, by methods that have
nice business names, and then prevent the robbery that goes by the name
of pick-pocketing, burglary, and the like. But they can’t. Most people
think that men can be made to pay their debts or their taxes by law. But
they can’t. Most people think that sobriety and morality can be enforced
by law. But they can’t. Most people think that when you bring an
injustice into this world by law, you can prevent it from being followed
to its natural consequences by another law. But you can’t.
When you allow men to own land that they will not use, thus crowding
someone else of who needs it and would use it; when you allow men to say
how much or how little money can circulate, thus making the products of
labor as cheap or as dear as they please; when you make a law that
restrains men from buying what they need where they please, or that
restrains them from eating and drinking what and where they please, you
rob them and you unjustly oppress them. The natural consequence will be
poverty and crime, and all your subsequent law cannot prevent those
consequences.
Now, Anarchism says: The road to happiness and goodness is through
unmaking all these unjust and oppressive laws and allowing me to live
together in perfect freedom to do right, which they do not have. I have
already said I cannot explain this to you if you have not the ability to
think the thing out yourself, but I can illustrate a little. For
example: Anarchism would have no compulsory taxation. All money
necessary for society would be voluntarily contributed. A man would own
only as much land as he could and actually did occupy. All unoccupied
land would be free for use by anyone who wished it. People would trade
among themselves in their own way, using any kind of money they pleased.
All things that were for the common good would be done in common by as
many as choose to cooperate for that purpose.
Everyone would be allowed to do just as he pleased, but he would, of
course, have to take the consequences. A man would be allowed to work as
little or as much as he liked, or not at all if he wished to run the
risk of starving to death. If he chose to become a slave he would be
allowed to do so; but, of course, he would go free when he wished to. If
I should say that if a man pleased to murder another man and run the
risk of what his neighbors would do to him, I suppose it would sound
very awful, But that is exactly what men do now –they murder people and
run the risk of being hanged, but there is also a chance that they will
become quite rich and respectable afterward. If a man wanted to hoard
his money he would be at liberty to do so, but there would be no State
to take care of it for him. He would have to guard it himself.
But why go on? You must think the thing out for yourself. If you are
steeped in conservatism and crusted over with conventionality you will
not like the doctrine because you cannot understand it. But if your
brain is clear, if your mind is pure, if you are selfish with only the
highest of selflessness, viz: that which seeks your own good by seeing
to it that everyone else has his rights as well as yourself, or, indeed,
whether you do or do not; if you understand how much stronger public
opinion, or what we call fashion, is than law; if you believe in reason,
conscience, love; if you believe that the laws of the universe are wise
and beneficent you must see that this doctrine of Justice, Fraternity,
and Freedom, that this commonly called Anarchy, is the bedrock of Truth
upon the social question. Short of it the logical mind, the just soul,
the pure heart cannot stop. Beyond it is impossible to go.
Of course the question at once arises: Will it work? –and how can it
work? I do not know how you would answer such questions, but as for me I
do not know what to trust better than Truth. If a thing is true, I will
trust it. If a thing is true, it will work. If a thing is true, the
people will find a way to get there some day.
No, I suppose it will be said that I am an Anarchist. But I distinctly
declare that I am not. I am no kind of an “ist.” He word Anarchist, like
every other party name, means more things than any one man can believe,
and it is adopted by some people whose characters and proposed methods
no right-minded person can approve. I am not an Anarchist. But I do
believe that the social question in all its relations will not be solved
until we reach Justice, Fraternity, and Freedom through obedience to
natural law or, if you please, God’s law, alone.