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Title: Anarchism and Archism Author: Dora Marsden Date: 1914 Language: en Topics: archism, clerico-libertarian, egoism, The Egoist Source: Retrieved on 09/26/2021 from https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr520584/ Notes: Originally published in The Egoist Volume I Number 5 (March 2, 1914) under the “Views and Comments” section. Title is unofficial and derived from the text.
“Only let us make the draft of the people’s pious resolutions, then let
who will make their laws.” The time has come to rehabilitate the pious
resolution which—people being what they now are—is at present held in
wholly unmerited contempt. Resolutions are arrogantly despised because,
forsooth, they are all “talk.” As though “talk” could be despised by any
save those who act in confident self-assurance: as the “people” never
act in fact. People who cannot hit out straight off their own instincts,
so to speak, fight their first rounds in talk, just as a person unable
to use a sword might use a club. A club, though not a sword, has its
uses and any whose only weapon it is might as well see to it that it is
not worm-eaten. To return then to the combat by talk: the fight waged in
a campaign of “resolutions.” Let it be granted that “resolutions” might
have a value. Provided they are apposite to facts as they actually
exist, they can crystallise for consideration an actual existing
relationship: and by so doing neutralise the verbiage of orators who
rely for their rhythm and sonorousness as well as their innocuous
effects upon enlargements concerning any or all of the things which
aren’t. Granted therefore, for instance, a campaign of talking: a
preliminary skirmish with apposite “resolutions,” one might safely risk
giving a guarantee that in a measurable distance of time, the fight
would be progressing on more drastic terms.
---
The South African deportees have arrived, and by Sunday, we are told,
the “talk” will be in full swing in Hyde Park and elsewhere. There will
doubtless be the pious resolution, which unfortunately Mr. Arthur
Henderson and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald have made no request to us to draft
out. It is a pity: we could have drawn it up in an exceedingly pleasant
tone: which is no small consideration considering the amount of scolding
which is now going on. Everybody is scolding. The journalistic
atmosphere indeed is that of the household where the mother of a
densely-populated family is engaged in the weekly wash: and the
perfectly apposite resolution anent the South African labour incidents
would have cleared the atmosphere and toned the temper. Of course it may
yet be forthcoming. Intelligence is Puck-like and appears from
unexpected quarters: who is to say beforehand that the resolution will
not run as it should: something like this: That this meeting of British
helots drawn together to express their opinion on the unexpected turn
which industrial affairs have taken in South Africa, desire to put on
record
African Administration in general and of General Smuts and General Botha
in particular;
but good sportsmen, who scorn to add cunning to force in suppressing a
feeble enemy; that they not merely know what kind of weapons to use, but
are sufficiently conscious of their skill in using them not to be afraid
to exhibit them to the enemy and thereby challenge these latter to use
them as ably;
there is no need to add to their shame in being governed, the offensive
shame of being governed by fools; that in General Smuts, who affirms
frankly to an astonished world that the means which keeps men free is
the necessary force to defend whatever state or condition it pleases any
whatsoever to give the name of “freedom,” they are acquainted with a man
of intelligence: and a man of courage and honest expression withal; and
that the British working-classes though dispossessed of all property,
and softened and weakened by being long fostered in the belief that
though they have no might they still have “rights,” though softened and
weakened, as aforesaid, have still managed to retain by aid of their
weekly attendance at football matches sufficient of the sportsman spirit
of Drake, Raleigh and Robert Blake to recognise it when they see it,
even in the person of a Dutchman.
of Illuminated Addresses, the same to be forwarded to General Smuts and
General Botha in due course.“As for our exiled confrères—the deported
nine,” we shall probably wake up on Monday morning to find the report of
Mr. Arthur Henderson’s resolution running, “as for our exiled confrères,
we offer them our sympathy in their discomfiture (temporary, let us
hope) and in the rude and sudden separation from their families and
country. All that can be done by British workmen to soften the harshness
of their situation we feel should be done. In the meantime, this meeting
offers its congratulations to them inasmuch as they have been treated by
men of valour and comprehension as opponents worthy of drastic measures;
it recognises that there must have been that in their previous history
which has made it evident they are not to be cowed as a scolding
housewife cows shivering scullery-maid: by vilification and shouting:
which method is the one mainly in use among ourselves;
confrères will not by foolish disclaimers as to preparedness for armed
rebellion and the like continue to give into the possession of the enemy
the tale of those “sins of omission” for which they as “leaders” must
consider themselves responsible, but that by their self-respect and the
swift making of such arrangements as are responsible for its protection
they will prove to an interested world that the compliment which their
superiors have paid them has not been wholly misdirected.” With
something like the foregoing as text, printed and handed round on small
bills, Mr. Macdonald, Mr. Henderson and the entire official Labour Party
might be allowed to slobber for hours without any pernicious effects:
indeed Hyde Park during the week-end might be the scene for a very
Profitable and Pleasant Sunday Afternoon: the form of diversion which
the stars of the Labour Party most dearly love. If they included in the
proceedings the singing of Ebenezer Elliot’s fine and stirring hymn
“When wilt Thou save the people?” and closed with the Deity’s reply
“When they appreciate Mr. Smuts,” no more admirable gathering could be
desired.
It is a wise editor who knows the name of his paper’s creed. It appears
that we are to be counted among the not-so-wise. At all events, one who
is perhaps the best-known living exponent of Anarchism and hitherto an
unwearying friend of The Egoist has informed us that we are not
Anarchist. We are rather “Egoist and Archist,” that “combination which
has already figured largely in the world’s history.” The first thing to
be said anent that is, that if it is so we must manage to put up with
it. If to be an Archist is to be what we are, then we prefer Archism to
Anarchism which presumably would necessitate our being something
different. There is nothing in a name once one has grasped the nature of
the thing it stands for. It is only when there is doubt as to the latter
that it becomes possible for names to play conjuring tricks. It is
therefore more because the mist of vagueness hangs over the connotation
both of Archism and Anarchism than because we are greatly concerned as
to which label we are known by that we find it worth while to
discriminate in the matter.
---
The issue of course turns upon the point as to whether in Anarchism,
which is a negative term, one’s attention fixes upon the absence of a
State establishment, that is the absence of one particular view of order
supported by armed force with acquiescence as to its continued supremacy
held by allowing to it a favoured position as to defence, in the
community among whom it is established; or the absence of every kind of
order supported by armed force provided and maintained with the consent
of the community; but the presence of that kind of order which obtains
when each member of a community agrees to want only the kind of order
which will not interfere with the kind of order likely to be wanted by
individuals who compose the rest of the community. (We do our very
utmost to state the second position as accurately as possible, but that
it is difficult to do so, those who profess it know well from their
apparently interminable debates on this very subject of definition among
themselves.) The first is what we should call Anarchism and represents
one half of that Egoistic-Anarchism which The Egoist maintains against
all-comers. The second, which is that of our correspondent, as far as we
can define it has in our opinion no claims at all that are not embedded
in a hundred confusions to the label of Anarchism. We should call it
rather a sort of Clerico-libertarian-archism, and this without any
desire maliciously to “call names.” It represents a more subtle, more
tyrannical power of repression than any the world as yet has known: its
only distinction being that the Policeman, Judge, and Executioner are
ever on the spot, a Trinity of Repression that is a Spy to boot, i.e.
Conscience, the “Sense of Duty.” Conscience, more powerful than armies,
“doth make cowards of us all.” Conscience takes the Ego in charge and
but rarely fails to throttle the life out of him. Therefore as compared
with the power of egoistic repression the Ego comes up against in an
ordinary “State,” that which it meets in the shape of Conscience is
infinitely more oppressive and searching. The Archism which is expressed
in the Armies, Courts, Gowns and Wigs, Jailors, Hangsmen and what not,
is but light and superficial as compared with that of our
Clerico-libertarian friends.
---
If therefore to be Anarchistic is to hope for and strive after the
abolition of “The State” as by the force of governors and submissiveness
of governed together compounded, a term with (one may hope) only a
temporary significance, then we are it. If on the other hand it is to
stand for “liberty,” “respect for the liberty of others” and vague ideas
of this nature, we incline to think the term would be most appropriately
treated if it were abandoned to become the plaything of cranks and
discussionists. For it will be found that such persons mean, as far as
their elementary muddle-headedness permits them to mean anything, to
substitute for the obvious repressive agency represented by Arms and the
State, the subtler and far more perniciously repressive agency of
Conscience with its windy words and ideas. The sum total of the matter
amounts to this: We are all Archist: we believe in Rule. The question
which divides us is: “Whose Rule shall say it is?” The reply is a matter
of frankness or discretion. Whichever we select by name, in actual fact
it remains our own rule: our own view of which “order” should prevail
modified by a knowledge of our own fears and weaknesses. If we say “Let
the State, i.e. the persons who are dominant at the present time, rule,”
it is because alongside the State’s onslaughts by all its weapons of
force, it provides some degree of safety under cover of which the
timorous find shelter: and in their own little run, rule themselves. For
which consideration they are prepared to “respect” the purely arbitrary
conventions of statutory law, “crimes” and “criminals”—terms without
meaning outside, the circle of the respectful ones timidities.
---
If in addition to fearing physical violence and consequently to
accepting the State, men are submitted to the brow-beating of education,
and are more than ordinarily timid, it is in response to a personal
desire of their own souls that they put themselves mentally under the
control of a system of words, the reaction of the weight of which system
is felt in consciousness as Conscience. It is the pull of a set of
“allowed” claims which are called duties, the disallowing of which
claims are Sin. But the “Archism” is there all the same. The readiness
to accept the weight of “Sin” and “Duty” is merely the outcome of an
unreadiness—a dislike for self-responsibility. And the
clerico-libertarians, let them call themselves by what name they will,
possess in reality this kind of temper. They will not openly confess an
approval of the will to satisfy the wants of the “selfish” self. They
will allow the self to “rule” but it must first change itself. It must
nominally be a regenerate, dedicated-to-a-system sort of self. Like
Eucken’s man which is to be more than a man: the libertarian’s self must
be a self with the universe tacked on: and the “claims” of the universe
must be attended to first. Now when we say that we believe the
satisfaction of individual wants is the only “authority” we “respect” we
mean the wants of the ordinary person: of any unregenerate Tom, Dick, or
Sue. Not what after much argument someone persuades them they want:
which finally they will agree they do but will still look as though they
don’t, but vulgar simple satisfaction according to taste—a tub for
Diogenes: a continent for Napoleon: control of a Trust for a
Rockefeller: all that I desire for me: if we can get them. Our wants are
entirely matters of taste: and our tastes are bounded by our
comprehension and awareness. We may be fools and gross beasts but
nothing is gained by putting us to intellectual strain: making us
attitudinising hypocrites. Our illness is that we are dull-witted and
stupid without the power which feels things. Then give the penetrative
power its chance to grow: wriggle and strain itself into comprehension:
when it can, it will: and when it can is soon enough. The exact tale of
the wriggling and straining when it has found a voice is what one means
by being “true” and “honest.”
---
So “Egoist and Archist” let it be. There is—or we imagine it so—a
sarcastic ring in our correspondent’s comment, “a combination which has
already figured largely in the world’s history.” The sarcasm is
unfortunately wasted. If the combination has figured largely, it is
apparent at least that it is one which will “work”: and that
is—according to the pragmatists—mainly what matters. The appeal which
would have us’ turn a cold eye on the evidence as to what things succeed
in this world wears thin at length. The time has arrived (it is we who
say it) when worldly evidence as to what motives do actually work the
springs of men’s actions should be impartially examined. The evidence in
a “cultured” community would no doubt be distasteful, but it is almost
sure to be useful. The evidence might be treated, should we say,
distantly but honestly as an analyst might treat sewage. In the process
one might arrive at the reason why the libertarian, humanitarian
idealist cure-alls won’t go down: the reason why they won’t and
knowledge of what will. It will become clear that by their present hopes
those that have nothing are deceiving themselves: and that those who
know how things are got are quite willing they should remain deceived.
Byron knew so much more of the nature of “temper” than the author of
“Das Kapital”! It is not on account of the machine-system, nor the
“surplus-value” it supposedly creates, that things are as they are, but
because some men are reluctant or unable to pull. They have in fact a
hundred reasons for not pulling: it is illegal, or immoral, forbidden by
conscience, God and the Church: it is theft and Heaven knows what else:
therefore because they can’t or won’t, “Stop the pulling.” That is the
socialist, communist and (in the main) the Anarchist solution of
“Poverty.” The bundle must be respected: not grabbed at without warrant,
because, say the theorists, by right it is the “property of All.”
Whereupon the few “respectless” ones divide up the lot between
themselves. The sooner the poor become “Archists” therefore the better.