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Title: Anarchism Versus Socialism Author: William C. Owen Date: 1922 Language: en Topics: Freedom, socialism Source: Retrieved on 15 June 2011 from http://www.anarchyisorder.org/CD%234/TXT-versions/Owen%20WM.C.%20-%20Anarchism%20versus%20socialism.txt Notes: Printed and Published by the Freedom Press, 127, Ossulston Street, London, N.W.1.
“Anarchy versus Socialism,” which Freedom now reissues, after it has run
through its columns (1921–22), was published first some eighteen years
ago. Emma Goldman was then one of the most popular lecturers in the
United States, and, being questioned constantly as to the difference
between the Anarchist and Socialist philosophies, felt the need of a
treatise that would explain that difference. At her suggestion I
undertook the task.
The title showed my conviction that between these two philosophies of
life no honest alliance is possible. I considered then that both sides
suffered seriously from the persistent efforts made to reconcile the
incompatible, for thought grew more and more confused, and action
degenerated into sterile opportunism. I think so more than ever now. As
I see it, either you believe in the right of the Individual to govern
himself, which is the basis of Anarchism, or you believe that he must be
governed by others, which is the cornerstone of all those creeds which
should be grouped generically as Socialism. One or the other must be the
road to human progress. Both cannot be.
To me Man is manifestly destined to be master of himself and his
surroundings, individually free. His capacity for achievement has shown
itself practically boundless, whenever and wherever it has been
permitted the opportunity of expansion; and no less an ideal than equal
and unfettered opportunity — that is to say, individual freedom — should
satisfy him. I accept Turgenev’s saying that “human dignity is the goal
of life,” and consider all forms of slavery a refusal to recognise Man’s
dignity or native worth.
At this epoch-making moment men stand irresolute, distracted by opposing
counsels. It would be, indeed, more accurate to say that for the most
part they squat, as they have squatted for centuries untellable,
distrustful of their own capacity to think correctly, and believing that
the solution of life’s problems is the proper business of a few wiser
heads. So long as this self-distrust prevails, so long as the ordinary
individual remains unconscious of his proper dignity as the great
thinking animal, slavery, in my judgment, will continue. The first
essential business, therefore, is to awaken thought; to get men to look
at things as they are; to induce them to hunt for truth. Whatever is not
true, whatever cannot stand the test of investigation, should die.
We are passing through a period of intense suffering, from which none of
the so-called civilised countries is exempt. As I see things, however,
it is not by any iron law of Nature that millions to-day are starving.
It is not because the earth is niggardly, or because industrial
development is backward, that grinding poverty, with all the mental and
spiritual degradation grinding poverty entails, is still the almost
universal lot. Poverty exists because, even to-day, the masses regard
themselves as doomed to helplessness, and are well satisfied if some
outside power gives them a chance to make a living. Yet Man is not
naturally helpless. By his inventive genius he has now conquered his
environment, and want and the fear of want are to-day unnatural and
artificial ills.
Thus, as I understand it, do Anarchists regard the social problem, and
here our quarrel with the Socialists comes immediately into full view.
To us the problem is not merely economic. We do not think that a certain
stage of industrial development must be reached before men are ripe for
freedom. Still less do we believe in the fatalistic dogma that by the
necessary evolution of the present system the problem will solve itself.
We hold that man is servile because he has been drilled into servility,
and remains helpless because he accepts ills helplessness as
unalterable. To us, therefore, the promotion of individuality, and the
encouragement of the spirit of revolt against whatever institutions may
be unworthy of humanity, are everything. We are rebels against slavery,
and we understand that men will win their way to freedom only when they
yearn to be free.
For my part, I take the sombre view that Freedom’s great struggle has
yet to come. I see the masses caught in a net woven so cunningly that
they do not sense their danger; trapped by the mechanism of a system
they cannot understand, divorced from the control of their own lives by
forces as impalpable as are the fancied deities before whom the Savage
grovels. The Man of the People is thrown on the street to-day because
the law of demand and supply ordains it, because the exchanges are
topsy-turvy, because certain of his economic rulers calculate that they
can make money by restricting production. He is the mere plaything of
the speculator, and if he ventures to protest Government claps him into
gaol as a disturber of the peace or hangs him as a rebel. That means
unceasing discontent and, ultimately, Civil War. It is utterly unhealthy
and unstable. It cannot last.
Back of all this infamy stands always the Government machine; dead to
all human sympathy, as are all machines; bent only on increasing its
efficiency as a machine, and enlarging its power; organised expressly to
keep things, in all essentials, precisely as they are. It is the
arch-type of immobility, and, therefore, the foe of growth. It is the
quintessence of compulsion, and, therefore, the enemy of freedom. To it
the individual is a subject, of whom it demands unquestioning obedience.
Necessarily we Anarchists are opposed to it. We do not dream, as do the
Socialists, of making it the one great Monopolist, and therefore the
sole arbiter of life. On the contrary, we seek to whittle away its
powers, that it may be reduced to nothingness and be succeeded by a
society of free individuals, equipped with equal opportunities and
arranging their own affairs by mutual agreement.
The Anarchist type of social structure is the industrial type, and for
it the true industrialist, the working man, should stand. On the other
hand, he who cries for more Government is declaring himself an advocate
of the military type, wherein society is graded into classes and all
life’s business conducted by inferiors obeying orders issued by the
superior command. That offers the worker only permanent inferiority and
enslavement, and against that he should revolt. Man is, by the very
essence of his being and by the quality of his natural gifts, too fine
to be treated as an inferior. He is meant to be a co-operator, uniting
with his fellow-creatures on a basis of equality and clothed, as a
member of the human race, with equal rights. This is his proper due, and
I am very positive that nothing less than this can bring us social
peace. Here no compromise is possible, and if established institutions
bar the way, Man owes it to his own dignity to abolish or model and
remodel them, until they are brought into harmony with this fundamental
law of life.
Obviously this line of thought carries us far, and I desire to point out
that it involves the whole future of our race. In our opinion, the man
who thinks of himself as inferior, and is content to be classed as such,
thereby becomes inferior; and it is by inferiority that civilisations
are wrecked. By the Barbarian within their own gates they are destroyed,
and the barbarism fatal to them is not the violence of the rebel but the
growing inertia and cowardice of the ordinary citizen, who accepts life
on the lower level because he lacks the energy and courage to accept
personal responsibility and to lead the higher life personal
responsibility demands. Thus the whole tone of the community’s life is
lowered; its vitality ebbs more and more; decay sets in and death
ensues.
We Anarchists are fully conscious of this appalling and completely
established historical fact; and we hate the State because it deprives
men of personal responsibility, robs them of their natural virility,
takes out of their hands the conduct of their own lives, thereby reduces
them to helplessness, and thus insures the final collapse of the whole
social structure. The last seven years have shown conclusively that we
are right. By no possibility could the hideous slaughter of the War have
taken place had not the towering governments, which had been permitted
to take all power into their clutches, previously reduced the mass to
helplessness. There it still is held, and its State-created helplessness
is still its most pitiful undoing.
These were the thoughts that occupied my mind when I was writing this
pamphlet, eighteen years ago. Later experiences have strengthened the
convictions I then tried to express. I see no reason, therefore, for
changing in one iota the general structure of the pamphlet; but in
certain places I have substituted illustrations which seem to me more up
to date. I still say to every human being: “Your first and most
important business is to be master of your own life.“I need hardly add
that, in my opinion, Anarchism is at once the most destructive and
constructive of philosophies, the uncompromising foe of the Barbarism
now triumphant, and the architect of the Civilisation still struggling
to be born.
This pamphlet endeavours to explain the positions occupied respectively
by Anarchism and Socialism in their efforts to interpret Life. It
presents the Anarchist interpretation as based on the conception that
the Individual is the natural fount of all activity, and that his claim
to free and full development of all his powers is paramount. The
Socialist interpretation, on the other hand, is presented as resting on
the conception that the claim of the Collectivity is paramount, and that
to its welfare, real or imagined, the Individual must and should
subordinate himself.
On the correct interpretation of Life everything depends, and the
question is as to which of these two conflicting interpretations is
correct. Always and everywhere the entire social struggle hinges on that
very point, and every one of us has his feet set, however unconsciously,
in one or other of these camps. Some would sacrifice the Individual, and
all minorities, to the supposed interests of the collective whole.
Others are equally convinced that a wrong inflicted on one member
poisons the whole body, and that only when it renders full justice to
the Individual will society be once more on the road to health.
The dispute, therefore, between Anarchism and Socialism is precisely as
to the point from which we should start and the direction in which we
should move, since start and move we must. No one is satisfied with
things as they are, and no one can be satisfied; for the existing system
is a miserable compromise between Anarchism and Socialism with which
neither can be content. On the one hand, the Individual is instructed to
play for his own hand, however fatally the cards are stacked against
him. On the other hand, he is adjured incessantly to sacrifice himself
to the common weal. Special Privilege, when undisturbed, preaches always
individual struggle, although it is Special Privilege that robs the
ordinary individual of all his chances of success. Let Special Privilege
be attacked, however, and it appeals forthwith to the Socialistic
principle declaring vehemently that the general interests of society
must be protected at any cost. Such a hotch-potch of illogical
opportunisms obviously has no solid foothold, cannot and should not
last; is a mere transition stage through which, thanks to thoughtless
indifference, we are passing all too slowly. The downfall of the present
ruin, sooner or later, is inevitable. It is of the first importance,
therefore, to clarify our minds as to the form of social structure that
should succeed it. Between ignorant change and ignorant opposition to
change we stand to-day in deadly peril.
In this pamphlet Anarchism is treated at the greater length for two
reasons: First, because it is by far the less understood of the two
philosophies; and, secondly, because a full analysis of the Anarchist
position will be found to have cleared the way for a consideration of
the claims of Socialism.
When a man says he is an Anarchist he puts on himself the most definite
of labels. He announces that he is a “no rule” man. “Anarchy” —
compounded of the Greek words “ana,” without, and “arche,” rule — gives
in a nutshell the whole of his philosophy. His one conviction is that
men must be free; that they must own themselves.
Anarchists do not propose to invade the individual rights of others, but
they propose to resist, and do resist, to the best of their ability all
invasion by others. To order your own life, as a responsible individual,
without invading the lives of others, is freedom; to invade and attempt
to rule the lives of others is to constitute yourself an enslaver; to
submit to invasion and rule imposed on you against your own will and
judgment is to write yourself down a slave.
Essentially, therefore, Anarchism stands for the free, unrestricted
development of each individual; for the giving to each equal opportunity
of controlling and developing his own particular life. It insists on
equal opportunity of development for all, regardless of colour, race, or
class; on equal rights to whatever shall be found necessary to the
proper maintenance and development of individual life; on a “square
deal” for every human being, in the most literal sense of the term.
Moreover, it matters not to the Anarchist whether the rule imposed on
him is benevolent or malicious. In either case it is an equal trespass
on his right to govern his own life. In either case the imposed rule
tends to weaken him, and he recognises that to be weak is to court
oppression.
It was inevitable that all exercisers, or would-be exercisers, of power
should condemn in the most unqualified terms a philosophy so fatal to
their pretensions. As they consider that they themselves keep the entire
social machinery in motion, it was entirely natural that they should
think and say: “Why! ‘No rule’ will produce general disorder” — and that
they should at once twist the meaning of this most exact word, giving it
the sense of universal chaos. The masses are governed far more by
ingenious misrepresentation than by club or bullet.
Anarchism used to be called Individualism, and under that title it was
considered more than respectable, being, in fact regarded as the special
creed of culture. But the term was weak, because it did not define.
People called themselves Individualists just as they called themselves
Liberals, without understanding what “individualism” really implied, or
the freedom inherent in the word “liberalism.” So, from the exact Greek
language the precise and unmistakeable word “Anarchy” was coined, as
expressing beyond question the basic conviction that all rule of man by
man is slavery.
The pages of the world’s foremost teachers — its scientists, its
philosophers, its poets and dramatists — swarm with passages emphasising
the vital importance of liberty; the necessity of providing a favourable
environment for each and every individual; the imperative demand for
equality of opportunity for individual development, but in too many
cases these writers fail to sum up the case and apply their principles
to present conditions as Anarchists unhesitatingly sum them up and apply
them.
The entire Anarchist movement is based on an unshakeable conviction that
the time has come for men — not merely in the mass, but individually —
to assert themselves and insist on the right to manage their own affairs
without external interference; to insist on equal opportunities for
self-development; to insist on a “square deal,” unhampered by the
intervention of self-asserted superiors.
“The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” We propose
henceforth to make our own institutions and to be their masters. We have
come to manhood As our brains now command Nature, it is high time that
we should command ourselves. Naturally man is incomparably the most
powerful of animals, able to bring into existence for himself all that
is needed for a rich and ample life. But under the artificial conditions
imposed on them by rulers, who portion out among themselves the means of
life, millions of the powerful species known as “Man” are reduced to
conditions of abject helplessness of which a starving timber-wolf would
be ashamed. It is unspeakably disgusting to us, this helplessness of
countless millions of our fellow creatures; we trace it directly to
stupid, unnatural laws, by which the few plunder and rule over the many,
and we propose to do our part in restoring to the race its natural
strength, by abolishing the conditions that render it at present so
pitiably weak.
For the last century, or more, we have been experimenting with the rule
of democracy — the bludgeoning by governors whom majorities, drunk with
power, impose on vanquished minorities. This last is probably the worst
of all, for we stand to-day steeped to the lips in a universal
corruption that is rotting every nation to the core. Is it not a fact
that, whether it be a French Deputy or an English Member of Parliament,
a Republican, a Democratic, or a Socialist candidate for office, each
and every one of them sings exactly the same siren song: “Clothe me with
power, and I will use it for your good?” It has been the song of every
tyrant and despoiler since history began
Why should you part with power, making yourselves impotent that a
favoured few may be omnipotent? By so doing you destroy the splendid
equality of Nature, which sends us all into the world equally naked,
equipped with what would be, under natural conditions, practically equal
possibilities of self-development? It is you yourselves, governed by the
misrepresentations of superstition, and not daring to lift your heads
and look life in the face, who substitute for that magnificent justice
the hideously unjust inequalities with which society is sick well-nigh
to death. Does not the experience of your daily life teach you that
when, in any community, any one man is loaded with power it is always at
the expense of many others, who are thereby rendered helpless? Do you
not know that to be helpless means to be fleeced and flayed without
mercy; to be hunted from land to land; to scour the farthermost corners
of the earth in a heart-breaking search for the opportunity to make a
living? We describe in a few word the life of the proletariat, the
working man of to-day — that enormous class that has given away its
natural powers and is paying such an awful penalty for this, the sin of
sins, that Nature punishes most unmercifully.
We have no other conception than that, so long as men remain powerless,
they will be robbed remorselessly, and that no pity will be shown; for
the simple reason that the robber, the strong man, in his heart of
hearts despises his victim for his weakness. We recognise that the sole
remedy is for the weak to win back their natural position of power by
abolishing the conditions of helplessness to which they have been
reduced by artificial laws and unjust privileges.
The helplessness of the masses is not a subject for pity or
milk-and-water charity, but for the strongest indignation that men
should be so false to their destiny and such unspeakable traitors to
their great mother, Nature, who, with endless pains and through the
evolution of countless ages, has raised them to a height at which they
have infinite possibilities at command, which, in their cowardice, they
spurn.
Let us not flatter ourselves that we can shirk this imperative call to
self-assertion by appointing deputies to perform the task that properly
belongs to us alone. Already it is clear to all who look facts in the
face that the entire representative system, to which the workers so
fatuously looked for deliverance, has resulted in a concentration of
political power such as is almost without parallel in history.
Our representative system is farce incarnate. We take a number of men
who have been making their living by some one pursuit — in most cases
that of the law — and know nothing outside that pursuit, and we require
them to legislate on the ten thousand and one problems to which a highly
diversified and intricate industrial development has given rise. The net
result is work for lawyers and places for office-holders, together with
special privileges for shrewd financiers, who know well how to get
clauses inserted in measures that seem innocence itself but are always
fatal to the people’s rights.
Anarchism concentrates its attention on the individual, considering that
only when absolute justice is done to him or her will it be possible to
have a healthy and happy society. For society is merely the ordinary
citizen multiplied indefinitely, and as long as the individuals of which
it is composed are treated unjustly, it is impossible for the body at
large to be healthy and happy. Anarchism, therefore, cannot tolerate the
sacrifice of the individual to the supposed interests of the majority,
or to any of those high-sounding catchwords (patriotism, the public
welfare, and so forth) for the sake of which the individual — and always
the weakest individual, the poor, helpless working man and woman — is
murdered and mutilated to-day, as he has been for untold ages past.
Anarchism demands imperatively that full and complete justice shall be
done to each and every individual; that there shall be accorded to all
full and equal opportunities for the development, conduct, and enjoyment
of their lives; and it declares, as an incontestable truth, that the
first step toward this inevitable goal is the absolute overthrow of all
those artificial and life-destroying privileges by which a favoured few
are to-day permitted to gather into their hands unbounded wealth and
power at the price of the impoverishment and slaughter of the masses.
Let no one delude you with the fable that we Anarchists are opposed to
co-operation, that we wish to reduce mankind to conditions of primitive
isolation. On the contrary, we see with perfect clearness that the
favoured few, who have at their command the means of so doing,
co-operate constantly on a larger and larger scale, as the improved
methods of communication enable them more and more to make the world the
scene of their operations. We understand that it is only necessary to
shake off the shackles of poverty and helplessness in order to enable
mankind, as a whole, to rise to a vast, true voluntary co-operation, in
which the entire earth and its fruits will be used in the fullest,
wisest, and most economical way for the satisfaction of the wants of the
men, women, and children barn into it.
We are of the firmest opinion that the only goal worthy of consideration
by clear-sighted and earnest men and women is the winning of such
individual freedom as will render possible such a co-operation as we
have just described.
We hold that the bold, straight, and direct way will be found infinitely
the shortest, easiest, and most successful. We are convinced that if any
other course is pursued, and it is sought by a series of make-shift
compromises to pave the way for changes to be wrought out in a vague and
distant future, it will be discovered finally that the time so spent has
been wasted. Only by a direct attack on monopoly and special privilege;
only by a courageous and unswerving insistence on the rights of the
individual, whoever he may be; on his individual right to equality of
opportunity, to an absolutely square deal, to a full and equal seat at
the table of life, can this great social problem, with which the whole
world now groans in agony, be solved.
In a word, the freedom of the individual, won by the abolition of
special privileges and the securing to all of equal opportunities, is
the gateway through which we must pass to the higher civilisation that
is already calling loudly to us.
It is urged that we Anarchists have no plans; that we do not set out in
detail how the society of the future is to be run. This is true. We are
not inclined to waste our breath in guesses about things we cannot know.
We are not in the business of putting humanity in irons. We are trying
to get humanity to shake off its irons. We have no co-operative
commonwealth, cut and dried, to impose on the generations yet unborn. We
are living men and women, concerned with the living present, and we
recognise that the future will be as the men and women of the future
make it, which in its turn will depend on themselves and the conditions
in which they find themselves. If we bequeath to them freedom they will
be able to conduct their lives freely, as the changed and improved
conditions, brought about by the growth of human intelligence and the
added mastery of Nature that will spring from such intelligence, may
dictate.
To overthrow human slavery, which is always the enslavement of
individuals, is Anarchism’s one and only task. It is not interested in
making men better under slavery, because it considers that impossible —
a statement before which the ordinary reader probably will stand aghast.
It seems, therefore, necessary to remind him once again that Anarchists
are realists who try to see Life as it is, here on this earth, the only
place where we can study it, indeed the only place whereon, so far as
hitherto discovered, human life exists. Our view is that of the
biologist. We take Man as we find him, individually and as a member of a
species. We see him subject to certain natural laws, obedience to which
brings healthy growth while disobedience entails decay and untimely
death. This to us is fundamental, and much of Anarchism’s finest
literature is devoted to it.
Now, from the biological standpoint, Freedom is the all-essential thing.
Without it individual health and growth are impossible, and wherever the
development of the Individual is thwarted the progress of all Humanity
receives a check. We cannot measure the innumerable checks, or show by
exact figures the injury inflicted on our own liberties when the
pendulum swings back to slavery elsewhere. Nevertheless, beyond all
question the injury is there. It must be. Biologically we are all parts
of one organic whole — the human species — and, from the purely
scientific standpoint, an injury to one is the concern of all. You
cannot have slavery at one end of the chain and freedom at the other. In
our view, therefore, Special Privilege in every shape and form, must go.
It is a denial of the organic unity of mankind; of that oneness of the
human family which is, to us, a scientific truth. We refuse to ignore or
flout it, as the Churches have ignored and flouted human brotherhood, by
professing which they gained the support of the disinherited and climbed
to power. Internationalism is, to us, a biological fact a natural law
which cannot be violated with impunity or explained away. The most
criminal violators of that natural law are modern Governments, which
devote all the force at their command to the maintenance of Special
Privilege, and, in their lust for supremacy, keep nations perpetually at
war. Back of all this brutal murdering is the thought: “Our governing
machine will become more powerful. Eventually we shall emerge from the
struggle as rulers of the earth.”
This earth is not to be ruled by the few. It is or the free and equal
enjoyment of every member of the human race. It is not to be held in fee
by old and decaying aristocracies, or bought up as a private preserve by
the newly rich — that hard-faced and harder-conscienced mob which hangs
like a vulture over every battlefield and gorges on the slain. It is to
be used, freely and equally, by all the living. For, just as the human
species is one organic whole, so the earth, this solid globe beneath our
feet, is one economic organism, one single store-house of natural
wealth, one single workroom in which all men and women have an equal
right to labour.
In these few words I have endeavoured to display the standpoint from
which Anarchism views the Land Question, and to explain why, of
necessity, it cannot view it otherwise. To every Anarchist the right to
free and equal use of natural opportunities is an individual right,
conferred by Nature and imposed by Life. It is a fundamental law of
human existence; and because our present so-called Civilisation
obstinately refuses to recognise that law it is bleeding to-day at every
pore and the death-rattle is already in its throat. A house so bitterly
divided against itself is bound to fall. A society of wolves, each
tearing at the other’s throat, is not a society to be preserved but one
to be extirpated as speedily and painlessly as mercy and intelligence
can do it.
It is a question of intelligence, and to Anarchists the methods
generally proposed for restoring the land to the use of the living do
not appear intelligent. Clearly Nationalisation will not do; for
Nationalisation ignores the organic unity of the human species, and
merely substitutes for monopoly by the individual monopoly by that
artificial creation, the State, as representing that equally artificial
creation, the Nation. Such a philosophy lands us at once in absurdities
so obvious that their bare statement suffices to explode them. For
example, the district of Tampico, in Mexico, embraces one of the richest
oil fields yet discovered. Is it maintained that the few Mexicans are
entitled to monopolise that great gift of Nature solely because it lies
within the territory at present marked on the maps as Mexico?
Even Capitalism knows better than that. If Mexico shut down her oil
wells she would be warned promptly that the world had need of them, and
the warning would be enforced. In theory, as in practice, Capitalism is
international, for it recognises that what is needed by the world at
large must pass into the channels of international trade and be
distributed for the satisfaction of racial needs. That, however, does
not prevent individual capitalists from locking up their own private
properties, nor does it prevent capitalist rings from decreeing that an
entire industry shall be brought to a standstill in order that their
personal profits may be enhanced. Similarly, Capitalism would not permit
England to starve the world by shutting down her coal mines, but it does
permit a few monopolists of coal lands to hamper production by levying
tribute on English miners who want to work. Nothing more unsatisfactory,
more unjust, or more illogical can be imagined. What good interest is
served by allowing the Duke of Northumberland, for example, to exact
£80,000 a year for allowing Labour to dig out what he is still permitted
to call his coal? Biologically the man is a parasite of the most deadly
type. Economically he is a huge leak through which social and individual
effort goes to waste.
To all Anarchists, therefore, the abolition of Land Monopoly is
fundamental. Land Monopoly is the denial of Life’s basic law, whether
regarded from the standpoint of the individual or of the species; and by
no human ingenuity can we successfully evade that law. So long as
certain individuals are allowed to corner land on or by which others
have to live, those others are at their mercy. They are helpless and,
therefore, helplessly enslaved. They are robbed, and cannot escape the
robbery. They are ruled, and cannot get away from the rule. They must
work on the terms offered them, or starve. From this fate no
organisation, however complete, no skill or learning, however profound,
no private virtue or public philanthropy, can rescue them. Here, if
anywhere, action is needed. A huge boulder blocks the path, and until
that boulder is removed progress remains unthinkable.
In some way or another the Individual must assert and maintain his free
and equal right to life, which means his free and equal right to the use
of that without which life is impossible, our common Mother, Earth. And
it is to the incalculable advantage of society, the whole, to secure to
each of its units that inalienable right; to release the vast
accumulations of constructive energy now lying idle and enslaved; to say
to every willing worker — “Wherever there is an unused opportunity which
you can turn to account you are free to use it. We do not bound you. We
do not limit you. This earth is yours individually as it is ours
racially, and the essential meaning of our conquest of the seas, of air
and space, is that you are free to come and go whither you will upon
this planet, which is at once our individual and racial home.”
The Land Question, viewed biologically, reveals wide horizons and opens
doors already half ajar. Placed on the basis of equal human rights, it
is nobly destructive, for it spells death to wrongs now hurling
civilisation to its ruin. Were free and equal use of natural
opportunities accepted as a fundamental law — just as most of us accept,
in theory, the Golden Rule — there would be no more territory-grabbing
wars. Racial conflicts, now looming up so threateningly, would die of
themselves. Free exchange, so essential to international prosperity,
would follow automatically, and with it we should shake off those
monstrous bureaucracies now crushing us. We should be plagued neither
with the multi-millionaire whose evil fortune is always founded on
Monopoly, nor with that degeneracy-breeding army of paupers whom
Monopoly, first rendering them helpless, drags down to pauperdom. Hate,
to-day righteous in its indignation, would be lifted from the heart of
Labour, because Labour, no longer tied to the chariot wheels of
Plutocracy, would claim and get its own. We Anarchists indorse and make
our own Tolstoy’s great statement that “the rich will do everything for
the poor except the one thing needful — get off their backs.” We
understand thoroughly that when the hive no longer harbours parasites,
the honey, increased enormously in quantity, will go where it belongs.
These doors already are standing more than half ajar. War! Science has
revolutionised it, as it previously revolutionised industry, and War
henceforth means racial suicide. Frontiers and national divisions, those
hothouses of ignorant fanaticism and of that narrow patriotism which is
always the first resort of scoundrels! Science, annihilating distance,
has made, potentially at least, the human family one. What sense is
there in fencing off countries by protective tariffs when the very
purpose of the railway and the steamship, the cable and the wireless
station, is to break through those fences? If rule by the sword is to
endure, and if the masses are still to be governed with a rod of iron,
we should stop educating them for the first result of education is that
the pupil becomes eager to manage his own life. If our rulers want the
workers to remain content with poverty, they should call a halt to
invention, for no intelligent human being is satisfied to starve because
production has outstripped consumption.
All intelligent and courageous action along one line of the great
struggle for human rights helps thought and action along other lines,
and the contest that is certain to come over the land question cannot
but clear the field in other directions. It will be seen, for example,
that freedom of production will not suffice without freedom of
distribution — which is only the final process of production — and the
road will be made plain for a consideration of the money and other
monopolies that reign supreme in that great department of human
activity, thanks to the special privileges that Government confers upon
them.
It will be seen also that it is ridiculous for us to talk about free and
equal citizens when one child is permitted to be born into the world
heir to millions and entitled by law to levy tribute for the rest of his
life on thousands who will never have a chance. It is inevitable,
therefore, that the unnatural law of inheritance — whereby the dead bind
the living — must wither before the light of criticism, and this even
the late President Roosevelt understood and urged repeatedly.
With the increasing appreciation of the value of the individual life
will come an increasingly drastic criticism of all those schools of
thought that bid the oppressed be contented with their lot, and find it
in their hearts to visit the workers of the slums, or the prisoners in
the modern hells we call “penitentiaries,” and exhort them to thank God
for his mercies. The religion of submission will receive its death-blow.
It is a craven, skulking thing, utterly incompatible with the dignity of
man or with the energy and courage which Nature demands of those who
desire to rise.
What, then, is our actual position? We stand for the realities of life,
as opposed to the fine phrases on which the people starve; for the
omnipotent laws of life, as opposed to the views we have inherited from
a barbaric past, dominated by the fantastic theories of priests and
kings, under which the few have reigned supreme and the masses have been
mud, trampled remorselessly under foot. From those dark ages we are only
just beginning to emerge — but we are emerging.
The task is gigantic, but it is inevitable. If mankind is ever to be
master of itself, scientific thought — which deals with realities and
bases its conclusions on ascertained facts — must take the place of
guess and superstition. To bring the conduct of human life into accord
with the ascertained facts of life is, at bottom, the great struggle
that is going on in society, and in this great struggle we Anarchists —
we say it confidently — stand in the very front rank.
Since the first publication of this pamphlet Civilisation has made a
violent effort to shed the antiquated skin that fitted well enough
perhaps its earlier and smaller growth. The dam that held for centuries
has given way, and we have had The War — probably the greatest social
dislocation yet recorded and the herald of profoundly revolutionary
readjustments yet to come. For the moment it has thrown us back into
barbarism. For the moment it has afflicted us with Militarism and
scourged us with all the tyrannies that military philosophy and tactics
approve of and enforce. Necessarily Militarism believes in itself and in
that physical violence which is its speciality. Necessarily it
sympathises with all those barbarisms of which it is the still-surviving
representative, and distrusts those larger views that come with riper
growth. How could it be otherwise? By the essence of its being
Militarism does not argue; it commands. Its business is not to yield but
to conquer, and to keep, at any cost, its conquests. Always, by the
fundamental tenets of its creed it will invade; drive the weaker to the
wall, enforce submission. He who talks to it of human rights, on the
full recognition of which social peace depends, speaks a language it
does not and cannot understand. To Militarism he is a dreamer, and, in
the words of the great German soldier, Von Moltke, it does not even
regard his dream as beautiful.
At present we are being swept by a very tidal-wave of War. Every
Government is a vast military machine, armed with all the resources of
modern science. Every Government is invading ruthlessly the liberties of
its own “subjects” and stripping them of elemental rights. Resolved on
keeping, at any cost, its existing conquests, every Government treats as
an outcast and criminal him who questions its autocracy. Obsessed
perpetually by fear, which is the real root of military philosophy,
every Government is guarding itself against popular attack; and with
Governments, as with all living creatures, there is nothing so
unscrupulous as fear. When Government punishes the man who dares to
express honestly his honest thought, does it pause to consider that it
is killing that spirit of enquiry which is the life of progress, and
crushing out of existence the courageous few who are the backbone of the
nation? Not at all. Like an arrant coward, it thinks only of its own
safety. When, by an elaborate system of registration, passports,
inspection of private correspondence, and incessant police espionage, it
checks all the comings and goings of individual life, does it give a
thought to personal liberty or suffer a single pang at the reflection
that it is sinking its country to the level of France under Louis XIV or
Russia under the Romanoffs — with consequences historically notorious?
Not a bit of it. The machine thinks only of itself; of how it may I
increase and fortify its power.
Just as the Court sets the fashions that rule “Society,” so the
influence of the governmental machine permeates all our economic life.
The political helplessness of the individual citizen finds its exact
counterpart in the economic helplessness of the masses, reduced to
helplessness by the privileges Government confers upon the ruling class,
and exploited by that ruling class in exact proportion to their
helplessness. Throughout the economic domain “Woe to the Conquered” is
the order of the day; and to this barbaric military maxim, which poisons
our entire industrial system and brutalises our whole philosophy of
life, we owe it that Plutocracy is gathering into its clutches all the
resources of this planet and imposing on the workers everywhere what I
myself believe to be the heaviest yoke they have, as yet, been forced to
bear. It is many years since De Tocqueville, in his great work
“Democracy,” described the then budding plutocracy as “the worst rulers
this world has ever had,” to which he added, “but their reign will be
short.” Probably no truer words were ever written.
Anarchists believe all this is doomed; but they believe also that its
dying struggles, even now visible, will be very hard. They regard
Militarism as a straitjacket in which modern Industrialism, now
struggling violently for expansion, cannot fetch its breath. And
everything that smacks of Governmentalism smacks also of Militarism,
they being Siamese twins, vultures out of the same egg. The type now
advancing to the centre of the stage, and destined to occupy it
exclusively, is, as they see it, the industrial type; a type that will
give all men equal opportunities, as of human right, and not tolerate
the invasion of that right, a type, therefore, that will enable men to
regulate their own affairs by mutual agreement and free them from their
present slavery to the militant employing class; a type that will
release incalculably enormous reservoirs of energy now lying stagnant
Sand, by eliminating as painlessly as possible the drones, secure the
honey to the working bees. That such is the natural trend of the
evolution now in process they do not doubt; but its pace will be
determined by the vigour with which we shake off the servile spirit now
paralysing us, and by the intelligence with which we get down to the
facts that really count. At bottom it is a question of freedom or
slavery; of self-mastery or being mastered.
Science, as we see it, is revolutionising our industrial system and will
not rest until she has made it the obedient servant of the human race.
As part of that great task she has now taken Militarism in hand, and
there, within a few short years, her work already nears completion.
Already the deathknell of the standing army and the battle fleet is
ringing, for War can no longer be regarded as the toy of monarchs but as
the national and racial suicide it has become. We are very confident
that the race will not submit to this, and we understand that in ridding
the world of this barbarous anachronism Science is clearing the road for
a co-operation that, purged of the militaristic poison of compulsion,
will be nobly free. Our faith is in Science, in knowledge, in the
infinite possibilities of the human brain, in that indomitable vital
force we have hitherto abused so greatly because only now are we
beginning to glimpse the splendour of the uses to which it may be
brought.
How, then, could we, seeing this so clearly, falter in our allegiance to
Freedom, or fail to understand that’ this once conquered, all other
things will come? For, how can Science discover except through free
experiment? How can the mind of Man expand when it is laced in the
straitjacket of authority and is forbidden independence? This question
answers itself, and the verdict passed by history leaves no room for
doubt. Only with the winning from Militarism and Ecclesiasticism of some
measure of freedom did Science come to life; and if the world were to
pass again into a similar thraldom, that life would fall once more into
a stupor from which it could be shaken only by some social upheaval far
greater and more bloody than the French Revolution ever began to be. It
is not the champions of Freedom who are responsible for violent
Revolutions, but those who, in their ignorant insanity, believe they can
serve Humanity by putting it in irons and further happiness by fettering
Mankind. We may be passing even now into such a thraldom, for Democracy,
trained from time immemorial to servility, has not yet learned the worth
of Freedom and Plutocracy would only too gladly render all thought and
knowledge subservient to its own profit-making schemes.
In these pages I have not tried to express my own opinions but to record
what I have learned from a long study of a literature that, in quantity,
is not inconsiderable, and, in quality, is of the highest rank. I have
endeavoured to show how simple are the economics of Anarchism, which
demand equality of opportunity for all; and I remind the reader that
simplicity is always the mark of strength. I have sought to convey
something, at least, of the spirit of Anarchism, which, keenly alive to
the native worth and dignity of Man, abhors slavery in all its forms and
regards the welfare of the Individual — physical, mental, and spiritual
— as above all price. Eltzbacher, in his noted study of the seven great
Anarchist writers he selects as typical — Tolstoy, Bakunin, Kropotkin
Proudhon, Stirner, Godwin, and Tucker — calls special attention to the
fact that, although on innumerable points they differ widely, as against
the crippling authoritarianism of all governing machines they stand a
solid phalanx. The whole body of Herbert Spencer’s teaching, once so
influential in this country, moves firmly toward that goal. His test of
Civilisation was the extent to which voluntary co-operation has occupied
the position previously monopolised by the compelling State, which he
regarded as essentially a military institution. Habitually we circulate,
as one of our most convincing documents, his treatise on “Man versus the
State,” and in his “Data of Ethics” he has given us a picture of the
future which is Anarchism of the purest type.
Perhaps I may be allowed, in concluding this branch of my subject, to
make a reflection of my own, viz., that the mother-principle of
Anarchism — fidelity to one’s own individual judgment — is also the
backbone of the Christian creed. In its doctrine of the Holy Ghost, the
spiritual comforter, the inner guide, the Church originally taught that,
above all else, to one’s own individual conscience one must be true, and
that by that compass one must steer his course. Indeed, the Church went
much farther, for it denounced, as the crime beyond all pardon, falsity
to one’s own conviction, which it described as the sin against the Holy
Ghost. The lines in which Shakespeare has immortalised the selfsame
opinion I need hardly quote.
Before passing to a consideration of Socialism, let me refer, by way of
prelude, to the Irish question. This seems to me desirable for two
reasons. First, because in it we have a vivid illustration of the
eternal conflict between Compulsion and Voluntaryism, Authoritarianism
and Freedom, Imperialism and Anarchism. Secondly, because, in my
opinion, the merits or demerits of Anarchism and Socialism respectively
must be judged, not by comparative analyses of Marx or Proudhon, Bebel
or Bakunin, but by their capacity or incapacity when confronted by the
struggles now rending society. Books, however able, represent only their
writers’ views, whereas the struggles are Life itself. For example, to
me it is of no importance whether what I write agrees with the teaching
of some well-known Anarchist, but it is of the very greatest importance
that I should be, as nearly as I can be, true to Life.
On the Irish question I confine myself to one established fact. We know
that the Sinn Fein delegates signed the so-called “Treaty” under a
threat of war. Mr. Barton, one of the five, reported to the Dail Eirann,
December 20, 1921 as follows: — “Mr. Lloyd George claimed that we were
plenipotentiaries, and must either accept or reject. The signature of
every member of the delegation, he said, was necessary, or war would
follow immediately. He gave us until ten o’clock to make up our minds.
It was then half-past eight. “Mr. Barton added that he and Mr. Gavan
Duffy were for refusal, war or no war; but that, inasmuch as an answer
which was not unanimous would have involved the country in war, they did
not feel justified in standing out against the majority. “For myself,”
he said, “I preferred war; but for the nation, without consultation, I
dared not accept that responsibility.”
I am not criticising Mr. Barton or Mr. Lloyd George. I am simply
pointing out that here again, as always, the governing organisation,
brought to a final showdown, said: “We compel you to remain a part of
our machine, whether you like it or not. We force you to remain in this
partnership, however hateful it may be to you. We own you, and the proof
of our ownership is that we refuse to allow you to become your own
masters and set up in business for yourselves.” It is an explicit
declaration by the stronger that they consider the weaker their
property, to be disposed of according to their will. In the opinion of
every Anarchist it is an affirmation that human slavery is an
institution to be defended by terrorism and maintained, if necessary, by
the extirpation of the slave. I put the case as bluntly as I can, and
say plainly that no honest mind can question the conclusion drawn. The
slavery may be excused, as it is habitually, on the ground of necessity.
It cannot be denied.
The stand taken by Mr. Lloyd George, as representing the British Empire,
is the one all Governments take. No Government tolerates disruption of
its machine, and secession means disruption. Great Britain fought
against the secession of what is now the United States, and granted
independence only when defeated on the field of battle. The United
States Government in its turn fought the seceding Southern States. The
ecclesiastical Government of Rome fought the seceding Protestants just
as the British Empire to-day puts down by force of arms would-be
secessionists in India or Egypt. This is in the nature of things and,
therefore, beyond the reach of argument. Every organism struggles with
all the vitality at its command against extinction; and every
Government, whatever it may call itself, is an organism composed of
human beings. It exists, and can exist, only by compelling other human
beings to remain a part of it; by exacting service from them, that is to
say, by making them its serfs and slaves. The organism’s real basis is
human slavery, and it cannot be anything else.
This prelude will, I hope, enable the reader to examine more
clear-sightedly the position of Socialism, which also declares that its
mission is to free mankind. The first difficulty, however, lies in the
fact that while the word “Anarchy,” signifying “without rule,” is
exceedingly precise, the word “Socialism” is not. Socialism merely means
association, and a Socialist is one who believes in associated life and
effort. Immediately a thousand questions of the greatest difficulty
arise. Obviously there are different ways in which people can associate;
some of them delightful, venue quite the reverse. It is delightful to
associate yourself, freely and voluntarily, with those to whom you feel
attracted by similarity of tastes and pursuits. It is torture to be
herded compulsorily among those with whom you have nothing in common.
Association with free and equal partners, working for a common end in
which all are alike interested, is among the things that make life worth
living. On the other hand, the association of men who are compelled by
the whip of authority to live together in a prison is about as near hell
as it is possible to get.
To be associated in governmentally conducted industries, whether it be
as soldier or sailor, as railroad, telegraph, or postal employee, is to
become a mere cog in a vast political machine, and this also seems to us
undesirable. Under such conditions there would be less freedom than
there is even now under the régime of private monopoly; the workers
would abdicate all control of their own lives and become a flock of
party sheep, rounded up at the will of their political bosses taking
what those bosses chose to give them, and, in the end being thankful to
be allowed to hold a job on any terms.
Let no one delude himself with the fallacy that governmental
institutions under Socialist administration would be shorn of their
present objectionable features. They would be precisely what they are
to-day. If the workers were to come into possession of the means of
production to-morrow, their administration under the most perfect form
of universal suffrage — which the United States, for example, has been
vainly trying to doctor into decent shape for generations past — would
simply result in the creation of a special class of political managers,
professing to act for the welfare of the majority. Were they as honest
as the day — which it is folly to expect — they could only carry out the
dictates of the majority, and those who did not agree slavishly with
those dictates would find themselves outcasts. In reality, we should
have put a special class of men in absolute control of the most powerful
official machine that the world has ever seen, and should have installed
a new form of wage-slavery, with the State as master. And the workingman
who was ill-used by the State would find it a master a thousand times
more difficult to overthrow than the most powerful of private employers.
The institutions, economic and political, of any set of people do not
depend on written documents — witness the purely Anarchistic Declaration
of Independence of the United States, which is the deadest of all dead
letters — but upon the individual characters of the individuals who
compose that set of people. They are human creations, and the Humanity
that made them can unmake them. If the people are infused with the
genuine revolutionary spirit, they will win freedom and so mould and
simplify their institutions that tyranny will be impossible.
Contrariwise, so long as they think they can enjoy all the inestimable
blessings of freedom while remaining timid sheep, avoiding all personal
danger and trusting to a few politicians to pull the chestnuts out of
the fire for them, they will be doomed to perpetual disappointment.
Shakespeare says: “Alas, poor Caesar! Caesar would not be a wolf if
Romans were not sheep.” The sheep beget the wolves that prey on them.
Our quarrel with the Socialists, therefore, is largely over the spirit
of the movement; for the spirit shapes the movement and directs its
course. The Socialists declare loudly that the entire capitalistic
system is slavery of the most unendurable type, and that landowning,
production, and distribution for private profit must be abolished. They
preach a class war as the only method by which this can be accomplished,
and they proclaim, as fervently as ever did a Mohammedan calling for a
holy crusade against the accursed infidel, that he who is not with them
is against them. For this truly gigantic undertaking they have adopted a
philosophy and pursue means that seem to us childishly inadequate.
To us it is inconceivable that institutions so deeply rooted in the
savagery and superstitions of the past can be overthrown except by
people who have become saturated to the very marrow of their bones with
loathing for such superstition and such savagery. To us the first
indispensable step is the creation of profoundly rebellious spirits who
will make no truce, no compromise. We recognise that it is worse than
useless to waste our breath on effects; that the causes are what we must
go for, and that every form of monopoly, every phase of slavery and
oppression, has its root in the ambition of the few to rule and fleece,
and the sheepish willingness of the many to be ruled and fleeced.
What is the course that the Socialists are pursuing in the l political
campaigns to which their entire movement has dwindled? In private they
will tell you that they are rebels against the existing unnatural
disorder as truly as are we Anarchists, but in the actual conduct of
their movement they are autocrats, bent on the suppression of all
individuality, whipping, drilling, and disciplining their recruits into
absolute conformity with the ironclad requirements of the party. They
declare themselves occupied with a campaign of education. They are not.
In such a contest as this, wherein the lines are drawn so sharply; where
on the one side are ranged the natural laws of life, and on the other an
insanely artificial system that ignores all the fundamental laws of
life, there can be no such thing as compromise; and he who for the sake
of getting votes attempts to make black appear white is not an educator
but a confidence man. We are aware that there are many confidence men
who grow into the belief that theirs is a highly honourable profession,
but they are confidence men all the same.
The truth is that the Socialists have become the helpless victims of
their own political tactics. We speak correctly of political
“campaigns,” for politics is warfare. Its object is to get power, by
gathering to its side the majority, and reduce the minority to
submission. In politics, as in every other branch of war, the entire
armoury of spies, treachery, stratagem and deceit of every kind is
utilised to gain the one important end — victory in the fight. And it is
precisely because our modern democracy is engaged, year in and year out,
in this most unscrupulous warfare that the basic and all-essential
virtues of truth, honesty, and the spirit of fair play have almost
disappeared.
We realise further that if politics could, by any miracle, be purified,
it would mean, if possible, a still more detestable consummation, for
there would not remain a single individual right that was not helplessly
at the mercy of the triumphant majority. It is imperative, and
especially for the weaker — those who are now poor and uneducated — that
the “inalienable” rights of man be recognised; and that, while he is now
“supposed” to be guaranteed absolute right of free speech and
assemblage, and the right to think on religious matters as he pleases,
in the future he shall be really guaranteed full opportunities of
supporting and developing his life — a right that cannot be taken away
from him by a dominant party that may have chanced to secure, for the
time being, the majority of votes.
This is the rock on which Socialism everlastingly goes to pieces. It
mocks at the basic laws of life. It denies, both openly and tacitly,
that there are such things as individual rights; and while it asserts
that assuredly, as civilised beings the majorities of the future will
grant the minority far greater freedom and opportunity than it has at
present, it has to admit that all this will be a “grant,” a “concession”
from those in power. There probably never has been a despot that waded
through slaughter to a throne who has not made similar promises.
The way in which a man looks at a subject determines his treatment of
it. If he thinks, with the Socialists, that the collectivity is
everything and the individual an insignificant cipher, he will fall in
willingly with all those movements that profess to be working for the
good of the majority, and sacrifice the individual remorselessly for
this supposed good. For example: Although he may admit, in theory, as
the Socialists generally do, that men should be permitted to govern
their own lives, his belief in legislating for the majority, and the
scant value he puts on the individual life, will lead him to support
such movements as Prohibition, which, in the name of the good of the
majority, takes away from the individual, absolutely and in a most
important matter — as in the question of what he shall and shall not
drink — the command of his own life.
Such a man will readily be brought to think, by the arguments of those
who are seeking their own advantage, that for the good of the majority
it is necessary that all should be taxed to support a large standing
army and navy, which will defend the fatherland; and it will not be
difficult to take him a step farther and convert him into a warm
advocate of military conscription. He will be easily persuaded that our
barbaric treatment of criminals is necessary and highly desirable, by
reason of the deterrent influence it exercises, for the protection and
welfare of the majority. He will persuade himself that religion is a
necessity, for the good of the masses, and should be accorded all the
special privileges it now enjoys. Shortly you will find him with the
crowd that clamours for the closing of all places of amusement on Sunday
— for the good of the community. In economic matters you will find him
endorsing a protective tariff policy, which, in the name of the good of
the majority, takes from the individual his natural right of spending
his earnings where he can do the best with them, taxes the great masses
for the enrichment of the privileged few, and necessarily has resulted
in the accumulation of those gigantic fortunes against which the whole
world is in revolt to-day.
Apparently Socialists cannot conceive of a society run on other than the
most strictly centralised principles. This seems to us a profound error.
The most important and powerful factor in production and every form of
activity is the human factor. This factor, longing in constant rebellion
against all efforts to reduce it to the level of a mere cog in a
machine, economic or political. 13eing by far the strongest element it
inevitably will win its way, sooner or later, no matter how adverse the
conditions for the moment may seem to be.
It may have appeared within recent times as if the tide were setting in
permanently toward centralisation, but, in reality, the forces of
decentralisation, that make for the man becoming — as he should be — the
master instead of the slave of the machine, are sweeping irresistibly
forward. The excessive and unnatural centralisation, due entirely to the
artificial laws of special privilege, which has resulted, for example,
in the modern Trust has had the effect of releasing a vast army of
skilled and highly ingenious mechanics whose wits have been
industriously at work devising simpler and simpler machinery which it
wild be possible for the individual to own and operate.
Locomotion is the industry of all others that seemed, by its very
nature, doomed to centralisation, yet even in this department the tide
of decentralisation has set in with extraordinary rapidity. With the
advent of the bicycle came the first break the individual machine
becoming at once a formidable competitor of the street car companies.
The tendency received a further and enormous impetus with the
introduction of the motor, which throws every highway open to the
individual owner of the machine and does away with the immense advantage
previously enjoyed by those who had acquired the monopoly of the
comparatively few routes along which it is possible to lay down rails
and operate trains. It is obvious that the motor, both as a passenger
and freight carrier, is as yet only in its infancy; and when the flying
machine comes, as eventually it will come, into general use the
individualisation of locomotion will be complete.
In short, the philosophy that bases its conclusions on the conditions
that happen to prevail at any given moment in the machine industry is
necessarily building on quicksand, since the machine itself is
undergoing a veritable revolution along the individualistic lines we
have indicated.
This delusion respecting machinery has led the Socialists into
ridiculous assumptions on the subject of centralisation in general,
committing them for a couple of generations past to the pipe-dream that
under the régime of Capitalism the middle class is doomed, by the
natural development of the economic system, to speedy extinction. The
fallacy of this position has been shown over and over again by
irrefutable statistics taken from governmental income tax and similar
returns; but it is Unnecessary even to quote figures in this matter. Any
one who will take the trouble to put on his observation cap can see
clearly for himself that in such countries as Mexico and Russia, where
the capitalistic system was in its infancy, the middle class has been
small in numbers and insignificant in power. On the other hand, in
proportion as the capitalistic system develops the numbers and influence
of the middle class increase, until in America — the country in which
Capitalism has attained its greatest growth — it is well nigh
omnipotent.
The same tendency — the rebellion of the individual against the
centralising influences that seek to convert him into a mere cog in a
machine — is equally apparent in the political field. Necessarily, as
education progresses, the individual voter becomes more and more
desirous of relying on his own judgment; he is less willing to vote the
old ticket because his father and grandfather did so; he takes other
papers and attends other meetings than those in which only one creed is
preached; he becomes more independent.
On a still larger scale the same tendency for individual expression is
manifest in the affairs of nations, the frantic struggles of the weaker
nationalities to break away from the crushing, intolerable centralised
domination of great and despotic empires being one of the most
pronounced developments of modern times. With all these efforts we
Anarchists sympathise profoundly, and to them we lend all the aid in our
power, recognising the claims of individual life that is struggling
desperately for expression. But, whatever they may say here and there
and from time to time for the purpose of catching votes, the Socialists
do not truly and whole-heartedly sympathise with such efforts, and they
cannot, because they are wedded to the doctrine of centralisation of
power and the suppression of the individual for the supposed good of the
larger collective body.
Such a pamphlet as this is no place for scholastic disquisitions, but
those who have studied the works of such profound writers as Herbert
Spencer, Buckle, Sir Henry Maine, and others too numerous to mention are
well aware that the history taught the Socialists through Marx and
Engels is partisan history, and that the real movement of humanity has
been to get away from the military régime of authority to the domain of
individual freedom. It is this movement with which we have allied
ourselves, convinced that there is nothing too fine for man, and that it
is only under conditions of freedom that man has the opportunity of
being fine. The tendency must be toward a finer, which means a freer,
more self-governing life.
What men desire to do they strive to do, and it is foolish to look for
revolutionary action if revolutionary conceptions and aspirations remain
unborn. Always the idea must lead the way, and if the idea be muddled
and indecisive the action it begets will lose itself in a wilderness of
uncertainties and end by arriving nowhere. For example, what made the
late War possible? Obviously the infamous but clear and clearly-grasped
idea, into which the masses had been miseducated, that their lives
belonged to their rulers and must be sacrificed unquestioningly when
those rulers so ordered it. This is the State fallacy, and none could be
more fatal, for, having hypnotised his subjects into this delusion, any
ruler has it in his power to start and carry on a war. He organises an
invasion, the invaded resist, and Hell once more breaks loose.
My own hatred of State Socialism, in all its forms, springs from my
conviction that it fosters in the Individual this terrible psychology of
invasion; that it denies the existence of Rights which should be secure
from assault; that it teaches the Individual that in himself he is of no
account and that only as a member of the State has he any valid title to
existence. That, as it seems to me, reduces him to helplessness, and it
is the helplessness of the exploited that makes exploitation possible.
From that flow, with inexorable logic, all wars, all tyrannies, all
those despotic regulations and restrictions which to-day are robbing
Life of all its elasticity, its virility, its proper sweetness. State
Socialism is a military creed, forged centuries ago by conquerors who
put the world in chains. It is as old as the hills, and, like the hills,
is destined to crumble into dust. Throughout the crisis of the past
eight years its failure as even a palliative policy has been colossal.
It seems to me imperative that we should be clear upon this fundamental
fact, and understand that our suffering and danger do not come from Free
Industrialism but from an Industrialism that is not free because it is
enslaved by Monopoly and caught fast in the clutches of that invasive
military machine — the State. Monopoly is the enemy, the most dangerous
enemy the world has known; and never was it so dangerous as now, when
the State has made itself well-nigh omnipotent, Monopoly is
State-created, State-upheld, and could not exist were it not for the
organised violence with which everywhere the State supports it. At the
behest of State-protected Monopoly the ordinary man can be deprived at
any moment of the opportunity of earning a livelihood, and thrown into
the gutter. At the command of the State, acting always in the interests
of Monopoly, he can be converted at any moment into food for powder.
Show me, if you can, a tyranny more terrible than that!
I call myself an Anarchist because, as it appears to me, Anarchism is
the only philosophy that grips firmly and voices unambiguously this
central, vital truth. It is either a fallacy or a truth and Anarchism is
either right or wrong. If Anarchism is right, it cannot compromise in
any shape or form with the existing State régime without convicting
itself thereby of dishonesty and infidelity to Truth. Tyranny is not a
thing to be shored up or made endurable, but a disease to be recognised
frankly as unendurable and purged out of the social system. Personally I
am a foe to all schemes for bolstering up the present reign of violence,
and I cannot regard the compulsions of Trade Unionism, Syndicalism, and
similar States-within-States, as bridges from the old order to the new,
and wombs in which the society of the future is being moulded. Such
analogies seem to me ridiculous and fatally misleading. Freedom is not
an embryo. Freedom is not a puling, helpless infant struggling into
birth. Freedom is the greatest force at our command; the one
incomparable constructor capable of beating swords into ploughshares and
converting this war-stricken desert of a world into a decent
dwelling-place.
As I go to and fro in this huge metropolis of London there is dinned
continually into my ears a never-ending discussion of wages, hours of
work, the greed of employers, the tyranny of Unions, all the anxieties
and miseries natural to a society that has outgrown its past but not
thought out its future. That in itself is something. It is something
that the sufferer recognises that his health is not what it used to be,
but I see little sign of his understanding that life as he has known it
hitherto is now becoming impossible. Hardly ever is it suggested that
the garment, to-day a hundred times too small, is no longer wearable.
Almost always it is taken for granted that, somehow, we shall be able to
go on indefinitely multiplying our capacity for production while still
leaving to the masses only such opportunities of consuming as just
enable them to live; that, somehow, the hordes of unemployed we are thus
begetting will be taken care of by the police or fade away quietly and
die; that a good God has so arranged it that when there is too much the
ordinary man must starve, and that always he should go down on his knees
and thank the Monopolist for granting him the privilege to toil and
live. That is the existing system as it has worked itself out; and in
that system the people, their leaders, and their rulers still believe.
They think that they can patch it up, and we Anarchists regard it as
beyond all patching.
Consider the case of England — a country which most deliberately has
evicted ninety-nine hundredths of her population from their native soil,
herded them into cities, forced them into factories, and compelled them
to stake their very lives on the capacity of a master class to furnish
them with work in supplying the wants of other peoples. What tenure of
existence could be more precarious, and what mode of transacting Life’s
great business more sordid or more senseless? The man works, when he
gets the chance, not to minister to his own proper needs but to satisfy
the whims of nations and races whose very names are to him unknown. He
takes what comes, and if he gets a steady job in some Birmingham
foundry, casting brazen images for voodoo worshippers in South Africa,
thinks himself thrice blessed. An astounding system, but more astounding
still the fact that it has lasted even one short century. To-day it is
breaking down, beyond redemption.
The markets are failing, as, sooner or later and War or no War, they
were bound to fail. By no possibility can the English master class
prevent that of other countries from starting its own factories,
exploiting its own territory, and barring out by protective tariffs the
unwelcome competitor who still wishes to share, and at one time
monopolised, the spoil. That is the evolution now in process, and all
the Labour organisations ever formed and all the Labour leaders ever
born are powerless to stop it. Before me lies the report of the debate
in the House of Commons on the lock-out of the engineers, and Mr. Gould,
who presented the employers’ case made the following declaration: — “The
engineering and shipbuilding industries are to-day faced with a
practically total cessation of work within the next six or nine months
in any event. In the engineering trade there is not the slightest
prospect of getting orders; the shipbuilding industry is paralysed, and
yet there is a dispute manifesting total ignorance of economic
conditions and of the position in which employers are placed.” It will
be retorted that Mr. Gould is a biassed witness, and it may be granted;
nevertheless he voiced unquestionably a general truth. Shorn of markets,
England’s entire industrial machine is slowing down, steadily and
surely. In the Amalgamated Engineers’ Union alone 90,000 members were
out of work before the lock-out.
Anarchism rests on the conviction that human beings, if granted full and
equal opportunity to satisfy their wants, could and would do it far more
satisfactorily than can or will a master class. It is inconceivable to
us that they could make such a failure of it as the master class has
done. We do not believe that the peoples, having once become
self-owning, would exhaust all the resources of science in murdering one
another. That particular insanity springs, as we see it, from the fact
that the master class in each and every manufacturing country finds
itself compelled to capture foreign markets in order to keep its own
population in some sort of work. The wars so engendered the masses
necessarily support, because, under the reign of Monopoly, jobs they
must have at any price.
We do not believe for one moment that without the Capitalist or
Monopolist we could not live. On the contrary, we are extremely positive
that the Capitalist, the Landlord, the man who has cornered the means of
life, is the one who has made it impossible for us to support ourselves.
He holds the key which we must have. He lies growling in the manger from
which we have to feed. In the desert created by himself he bars us from
the springs at which, on his own terms, we are compelled to drink. It
should not be a desert. Let us have but liberty to irrigate it and it
will be transformed into a boundless oasis of inexhaustible fertility.
We are for abolishing Capitalism by giving all men free and equal access
to capital in its strictest and most proper sense, viz., the chief
thing, the means of producing wealth — that is, the well-being of
themselves and the community. For my part, I look at the world thus. The
few, the comparatively very few, by facing facts and courageously
pursuing knowledge, have put within our reach the possibility of lifting
the race, once and for all, above all fear of want. The work of their
brains — these few who “scorned delights and lived laborious days” — has
put into our hands a capacity to produce which is practically
illimitable, and a power to distribute which laughs at physical
obstacles and could, by the exercise of ordinary humanity and common
sense, knit the entire world into one harmonious commonwealth and free
it for ever from the mean and sordid struggle that keeps it in the
sewer. These few, knowing no God but Truth and no religion but loyalty
to Truth, have made Nature, which was for ages untellable Man’s ruthless
master, to-day his docile slave. In all history there is nothing to
compare with the Industrial Revolution wrought by Science, but the
harvest of that mighty sowing we have not as yet even begun to reap.
What blocks the way? Simply, on the one hand, the servile stupidity of
the masses, who still deem it their duty to live as their
poverty-stricken forefathers lived, and, on the other hand, the crass
immobility of the ruling class, which still believes itself entitled to
rule as did the Caesars, to live at the expense of others, to fence in
for its own private enjoyment what should be, and what ultimately must
be, for the use of all. I am for the overthrow of Monopoly, of all
Monopolies; I am for tearing down the bars, all bars; and this I
conceive to be the great task to which the Anarchist movement has set
its hand and on which it should never allow itself to turn its back.
This is the dream; but it is not a dream. The abolition of human slavery
is essentially the most practical of things. The adjustment of
individual and social life to conditions that have been completely
revolutionised by the advance of human knowledge is an adjustment that
must be made. When the inevitability of that adjustment is understood,
it will, in my humble judgment, be made, and not till then. In the hope
of hastening, however infinitesimally, the thought that this great step
must now be taken I wrote this pamphlet originally, and have revised it
slightly. For the elaboration of details I have had no space; but, as it
appears to me, when Humanity feels the necessity of learning it will
learn, and when the spirit of Liberty burns fiercely Slavery will perish
in its flame.