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Title: Objections to Communism
Author: Laurance Labadie
Date: early to mid 1930s
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-communism, communism, Marxism, Pëtr Kropotkin
Source: Retrieved 06/18/2022 from https://c4ss.org/content/56877

Laurance Labadie

Objections to Communism

It places the inefficient on par with the efficient, the lazy with the

industrious, and the thrifty with the extravagant.

Therefore it places a premium on idleness and lacks spur to industry

and thrift.

It makes the celebate contribute for the support of the children of

his procreative brother.

It divides responsibility and dampens individual initiative.

It disregards the fact that self interest is the paramount urge in

life.

It has failed in practice numerous times.

It necessitates majority rule if not dictatorship.

It fails to give play to difference of opinion.

The ultimate effect of raising the wellbeing of the inferior at the

cost of the superior is a gradual deterioration of the race.

To have superior abilities will not result in any advantage but the

disadvantage of waste of body and brain with remuneration.

Communism is therefore based on sacrifice.

What is the sympathetic attitude of the less able when they accept

life by doles from the able?

Where is the feeling of generosity upon which communism rests, in

those who continually let his fellow rob themselves for their support?

So while communism is based on sacrifice of self how does this

sacrifice apply to those recipients of alms?

It is fail to assume that communism appeals to the inefficient, lazy,

and wasteful, and to those exploited under the present system of

industry and also to the man whose heart runs away with his head; but

generally speaking, communism may be called a “slave” morality.

Communism disregards the natural relation between effort and benefit

and the natural relation between parents and the welfare of their

progeny—the two great laws in the absense of either of which organic

evolution would have been impossible [1].

It is against all the observed tendencies of men about us.

While men are sociable, generous, and kind, they prefer to be so from

purely voluntary motives not enforced to be so from a sense of duty.

What kind of sleight of hand administration will change the generally

observed self interest of men to one of altruism and fellow-feeling?

If communism denies each man an equal opportunity to use natural

resources for his benefit, it is necessarily authoritarian.

Communism is a retrogression because to the general tendency of

progress toward individual freedom it is a step backward toward a

condition of status with the community as a master.

Communism necessitates a bureaucracy tending toward centralization.

Efficiency and lack of extravagance must be prevented by authority.

A zealous man cannot see the inadequacies and impossibilities of a

system to which he is an adherent.

The question is how far can a man be prevented from using his

faculties for his own advantage and be compelled to use them for the

advantage of others [2]?

The social question may be attacked in two ways: By considering the

individual to have positive duties to society and compelling him to

perform these duties; and by considering the individual to be not

obliged to society except he refrain from invasive acts.

The last attitude grants the maximum amount of freedom to each

individual compatible with like freedom to all others, each individual

may cooperate with any he sees fit but will not be compelled to

cooperate, all his acts are to be performed at his own cost and his

mistakes and the results are not to be shared by society at large.

Most communist-anarchists are those who desire security and still not

lose their freedom and not understanding economies and economic

processes and realizing that liberty solves the economic problem for

everyone capable of supporting himself, subscribe to an authoritarian

scheme without realizing it. Communism appeals to simple minds.

Most communist-anarchists are followers of Kropotkine, who showed that

mutual aid was a factor in evolution and who tried, like Marx, to

conceive a society in which mutual aid was the sole factor in its

maintenance, but whereas Marx saw that authority was necessary

Kropotkine thought that men could iron out their differences by

voluntarily agreeing to maintain a standard of “from each according to

his ability to each according to his needs.” Kropotkine’s kindness and

humanity ran away with his head [3]. Kropotkine, not being an economist

and not understanding that liberty does solve the economic problem

necessarily resorted to his evolutionary finding for conceiving a

society where all, even the unfit, would be taken care of, but instead

of leaving this as a voluntary deed of men he esteemed it to be a duty.

[1] The em dash is written as “,- -” in the original document.

[2] The original end punctuation is a period. A question mark seems to

make more sense.

[3] “Kropotkine”—Labadie’s unique take on Kropotkin (Кропо́ткин)—is

mistakenly spelled as non-possessive.