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Title: Anarchy Author: John Arthur Andrews Date: 1894 Language: en Topics: anarchy, civilization, money, property, unemployment Source: Retrieved on 4th March 2019 from http://www.takver.com/history/raa/raa20.htm Notes: Letter to Daily Telegraph, probably mid-1894.
You do me the honor of, without particular occasion, quoting a passage
from one of my writings in the course of your leading sub-sermon on the
‘Mission of Anarchy’ and at the same time complain that the sentence is
not sufficiently lucid. If you want to know the views which I am doing
my best to propagate among the Australian people I can tell you in very
few words.
I never authorised anyone to tell me what I am to do or not to do, and I
object to any such dictation, whether proceeding from the landlord, the
employer, the merchant, or the Government, and I do not intend to
respect their dictates any longer than I can help. Might is right, and
those who treat each other as comrades spend their might in only two
ways, viz, overcoming natural difficulties and overcoming those who want
to rule over them, while the latter spend theirs in a third way, also,
namely in trying to rob and rule each other; they must therefore go
under, other things being equal, and I have enough confidence in
humanity to believe that it is only the pressure of social conditions
dependent on the temporary ignorance and consequent acquiescence of
mankind, that causes people to engage in mutual hostility as at present.
Fix social forms and you fix all possible abuses of them, the effects
being cumulative, leave the individual free, and the forms adjust
themselves to shut out abuse. No amount of ‘permission’ from a source to
which obedience is recognised can constitute freedom; the only
permission the free man can submit to is that of his own strength. There
can be no social union of antagonistic interests, while such exist the
only issue is “To the victor the spoils.’ Law, property, religion,
government, must be destroyed in people’s minds and in the concrete.
There must be no other consideration whatever to regulate matters of
possession, use, conduct, etc than the natural common sense and goodwill
of those whose natures and circumstances make their interests strictly
harmonious, and the natural commonsense and might of those whose natures
and circumstances place their interests in antagonism. Authority and
traditional law are superfluous between those whose interests are
naturally and circumstantially united, and as between those who are
otherwise situated they mean simply that one or the other party is to
give way by rule of thumb.
The way in which I imagine that Anarchy will come about is this — you
profit-mongers and speculators will not employ the people or permit the
lands to be used except on condition that you can see a money profit
coming in. Let the products of the people be divided thus — x =
consumption of the producers, y = consumption of the classes who live by
ownership etc, and z = the reserve or accumulated profit of these
classes. So long as there are outside markets and differential exchange
values, a country may keep on transforming these into the monetary
equivalents, a, net wages, b, personal expenses of capitalists etc, c,
fortune.
But as the progress of civilisation continues and the world becomes
essentially one country, z is no longer convertible into c but
accumulates in the form of unsold goods and conveniences. Then workers
are thrown out of employment still further reducing the purchasing and
profit-yeilding capacity of the population, and causing in turn a
further depression. Liquidations allow of a partial accomodation to
circumstances by the appreciation of the circulating medium;
‘reconstructions’ delay it by enforced parity; but later in the former
case, sooner in the latter — the tickets of leave to consume are
completely withdrawn from the masses, by the excess of prices paid by
them for their past products over the wages received for fresh
production. Then no more employment is given because there are no more
metal or paper tickets of leave to consume afloat to be attracted to the
middlemen and the system is limited by ticket; no more money, no more
operations. Then your newspaper plant becomes of no more service except
for direct and uncommercial purposes, like that great hotel at Marulan
which is tenanted by the fowls of the air and the tramps of the earth;
nobody can get any money out of anyone for permission to make use of it,
consequently it ceases to be treated as property, and needs instead of
vested tommyrot regulate its destiny, only more so in your case because
the same conditions are everywhere.
Then you come along, and reckon that it isn’t a question of making
money, but of living so you join in with some of my comrades whom you
meet on the swag track, and gather in some stray cattle, regardless of
the fact that in the dead past they were sacred to the pecuniary profit
of say Winger Abbot, and in all honest labor and good fellowship,
without any commercialism, start trying to build up conveniences and
organise co-operative woks for direct advantage of the task to be
accomplished till the bush smiles with true civilisation; while I on my
part, having done so long ago at the cost perhaps of some individuals
who were foolish enough to enlist in the hopeless task of perpetuating
the effete by force, and as I now want to disseminate my knowledge as to
how people may proceed in the path of material advancement, come to
Sydney and find your office empty, and accordingly use a case or two of
type and your galley press.
After we get settled and recover from the effects of the disturbance new
combinations spring up to suit, not commercial exigencies, but the
convenience of those who associate towards a common purpose, and the old
mechanical appliances are modified and new ones developed accordingly.