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Title: The Law of Numbers Author: Ricardo Mella Date: 2015 Language: en Topics: Elections, voting, anti-voting, authority Notes: Translated by Paul Sharkey
Ricardo Mella Cea (1861–1925), one of the first writers, intellectuals
and anarchist activists of the late 19^(th) and early 20^(th) centuries
in Spain, was considered to be one of the deepest, most penetrating and
most lucid of the Spanish anarchist thinkers. In this work he addresses
the question of voting and the nature of parliamentary democracy.
Spencer has it that the great political superstition of the divine right
of kings has been replaced by the great political superstition of the
divine right of parliaments. He goes on to say, “The anointing oil seems
to have switched undetected from one head to many, consecrating them and
their rights.”
Let us take a look at the great superstition which drew such eloquent
words from the premier positive philosopher.
Whether we are talking about monarchies or republics, the origin of
parliament is the will of the majority, in theory at any rate. At the
same time, the supremacy of the greater number rests upon its
incontrovertible right to govern everyone, directly or indirectly. The
claim is — and the querying of it is scarcely tolerated — that the
majority is more far-sighted on every issue than the minority and that,
since all men have much in common, it is only reasonable and necessary
that the majority should determine how and in what manner general
purposes are to be served.
From which flows a series of strictly precise consequences.
The majority among the inhabitants of a country is entitled to regulate
the political, religious, economic, artistic and scientific life of
society as a whole. Enjoys an all-encompassing right to decide upon all
matters and deal with them as its knowledge and understanding suggest.
Is entitled to affirm and deny whatsoever it pleases at any point,
tearing down one day’s handiwork the very next day. In politics, to lay
down the law and rules from which no one is exempt. In economics, it
determines and fashions changes, governs production and consumption and
enables or rules out cheap living, depending upon how it feels at the
time. In religion, it overrules every conscience and imposes dogma on
everyone on pain of severe punishment and by means of burdensome
taxation. In the arts and sciences, it exercises a monopoly on education
and affords the official truth privileged status.
It determines and sets the rules of hygiene and moral behaviour to be
observed, which social roles behove the group and which the individual,
the conditions in which work is to be done, wealth acquired, assets
seized, things altered and persons related to. Finally, to cap it all,
it rewards and punishes and acts as accuser, lawyer and judge, an
almighty god whose reach extends everywhere, who arranges everything and
above all stands guard over everything, watchful and jealous.
There is no exaggeration in these deductions once it has been accepted
that the law of numbers is the supreme law.
But, since majorities cannot accomplish so many things unaided, since
they cannot possibly handle such a variety of issues on a daily basis,
of necessity law and parliamentary delegation pop up to complement it.
And indeed, on the basis of majority, delegates or representatives are
also chosen who, constituted as a body, assume all of the powers of
those whom they represent, or rather of the entire nation, and this is
how the omnipotent powers and divine right of parliaments come into
being.
And lo and behold, inside these chambers or gatherings of the elect, the
radical law of numbers is applied and, on a basis of majority, laws are
decreed for the purpose of sage governance of public and private
interests, such is the omniscience of the law-makers. Thus do a handful
of averagely educated citizens, most often commoners, attain to the
grace of supreme wisdom. Hygiene, medicine, jurisprudence, sociology,
mathematics, they know it all because the holy spirit of majorities
hovers constantly over their heads. That, in all its starkness, is the
theory.
Querying of it is regarded as rash, denial of it madness.
Insult is the argument of the idiot.
But wisdom is the encapsulation of truth. “The sovereign people” – says
the positivist – “appoints its representatives and creates the
government. The government, in turn, conjures up rights and confers
these separately upon each member of the sovereign people, from which it
itself emanates. What a wonderful feat of political mumbo-jumbo!”
But the mumbo-jumbo does not stop there. It reaches into the very
deepest recesses of political systems because, once the law of
majorities has been affirmed, it turns, as we shall very soon see, into
a tremendous fiction that allows a few to ensconce themselves in the
cradle of power and dictate and impose their mighty will upon an entire
people.
So, before we critique the law, let us try to delve deeper into this
political mystery and expose to the reader’s gaze the reality that it
encapsulates.
Are constitutional countries really governed by majority decisions? Does
the will of the majority prevail in everything or in anything? Let us
see. The government of a nation – Spain, say – convenes general
elections every so often. The parties gird their loins for the coming
contest and the day of contention finally arrives. In every district at
least two candidates will offer themselves. This is most commonly the
case. Even so, in some of them even more stand and there will be plenty
where there will be but one candidate.
Let us stick to the generality and assume the most perfect impartiality
in election contests (which would be a real turn-up for the books).
Let’s do a few sums. Without quoting examples and amassing figures that
anyone could find for himself without much effort, allow us to state
that, broadly speaking, some 30% to 50% of electors (!) abstain from
casting their votes! Regrettably, we do not have the figures for Spain.
But in France and during an extraordinarily turbulent time, which is to
say in 1886, seven out of ten million voters voted, or, to put that
another way, nearly a third of voter numbers abstained; and the author
from whom we have borrowed these figures notes that the numbers
abstaining were reaching alarming proportions. So if, in abnormal
circumstances and in a land where political strife is livelier than in
Spain, some 38% of voters abstained, we can scarcely be accused of
exaggerating if we credit our own country with 40% abstention, which is
to say, the median of the two figures quoted above. And how does the
remaining 60% break down? Ordinarily, the defeated candidate is within
range of the winning candidate who is virtually always the official
candidate. In very rare cases, the winner takes twice the vote of the
loser. So it will not be going out on a limb if we credit the defeated
candidate with 20% of the voters. To recap: 40 out of every 100 voters
abstains, 20 vote for the losing candidate, making 60% and the remaining
40% make up the majority which the successful candidate will be
representing in parliament. That, though, is a rather rosy view of
things as they affect those elected. But even if this were not the case,
even if the defeated candidate took only 10% of the votes, even if we
were to stack up all the favourable evidence so as to calculate in a way
flattering to the winner, he would still turn out to be representative
of a minority. Note, by the way, that in everything said there has been
no mention made of women who account for roughly half the nation and
have, as man does, rights and interests in need of defending. And we
might even add that also left out of the reckoning are under-age
children who, as Tarde has pointed out, enjoy full civil rights through
a proxy (father or tutor) and who, similarly, should also have the right
to vote in elections. In which case the upshot would be that, with three
fourths of the population (France 1885 and 1886) not entitled to vote,
no candidate could speak for a majority of the individuals in his
constituency.
However, let us pass over these calculations and, adopting another tack,
see how representative the elected candidate actually is. No matter how
impartial a government may be, no matter how much it seeks to act within
the law and supposing that it has the most ardent desire for justice, it
cannot help tilting the electoral scales through its influence, even
involuntarily. We have out-and-out lobbying, brazen violence and immoral
trickery. It is only natural that such influence will exist, impersonal
and thoughtless influence if you like, but all the more effective and
efficacious for that. Public servants will vote, without anyone’s
ordering them to, they will vote willy-nilly for the official candidate.
The friends and debtors of that candidate will likewise be caught up in
bringing influence to bear on those with whom they have any sort of a
social relationship, albeit a moral influence expressed through their
spoken words and advice. The court, church, military authorities and so
on, albeit remaining entirely passive, will be seen as recommendations
on the basis of which many cast their vote for the government or the
political boss, without a thought for their own ideas. The fact is that
the debtors, friends and relatives of the opposition candidate will do
the same: but their influence and power will not match the power and
influence of government personnel.
Is there anything to be queried in what we have said? Then let’s not get
into accounts; arithmetic will more than suffice. The elected individual
will actually represent a slender minority that embraces without a
quibble whatever representative is nominated by the party or actual
government authorities.
And what are we to say where there are more than two candidates? Can the
person elected ever represent the majority of electors? It will always
be the case that the votes of the defeated plus the abstainers will add
up to a figure higher than that scored by the winning candidate.
We will be told that in many instances there is no election contest
because there is only one candidate. Fine. When there is only one
candidate standing in a district or locality that is due either to
indifference on the part of the voting public or to the certainty that
nothing can be done in defiance of the government’s influence. In which
case, abstention is almost universal. Everybody knows it and admits it
is so, although LEGALLY there is still the appearance of a large
turn-out. One way or another, the person elected represents, at best,
the government and its official bosses and thus is not really
representative of any voter.
In most rural areas, that being where single candidates are more often
to be found, polling stations do not even open up. The most influential
individuals, or the members of the town council, who are nearly always
the same people, get together some day and it is they that freely decide
upon the area’s parliamentary representative. All votes save one (the
one master-vote, as it is called) go to the previously selected
candidate. A record is made and duly stamped and the election is done.
Sometimes the local boss is sent blank minutes. We have witnessed this
in Galicia, in Castile and in Andalusia and will not go far wrong if we
assert that, in one shape or another, it goes on all over Spain.
The representatives chosen by this curious method are, in most cases,
unfamiliar with their districts, nor do their districts know them and
so, between one and the other there can be no empathy with needs nor, on
the part of those elected, any desire to look out for interests of which
they are ignorant. The voter remains indifferent in the face of all this
as if knowing in advance that he need pin no hopes on the legislator and
that the whole thing is a three card trick.
So how representative could a body thus composed claim to be?
Representative of a microscopic minority, at most.
Let us imagine, however, that our analysis is mistaken and agree that
every one of the nation’s representatives enjoys that status thanks to
the freely manifested will of a majority. Even then each representative
is going to find himself frequently torn between the wider interests
which the law commands him to look out for and the private interests
that his voters insist he serve. It may be argued that, collectively,
the deputies produce a harmonious outcome that satisfies both the
nation’s common interest and the sectional interests in each locality.
But even granting such a metaphysical reconciliation of interests, do
representatives always see eye to eye on what is good for the nation? To
put that another way, do they ever? And if they do, do they really cater
for the interests and requirements of those whom they represent?
Take, say, boosting wheat importation duty. The deputies from Castile
will be all for an increase. But the deputies from Galicia, Valencia,
Aragon, etc., will argue for wheat’s being able to enter Spain freely.
If it comes to textiles, Catalonia will take an opposite stance to much
of the rest of the country. In the case of wine, Andalusia and Castile
for instance will not see eye to eye with Galicia and Asturias. What
will happen? The deputies, primarily mindful of the government’s
instructions, rather than the nation’s will, which in any case cannot be
framed as a single expression, will resort to wheeling and dealing and
accommodations out of which will emerge some contradictory or insipid
law, a law that will satisfy no public or private interest, a law that
will leave everybody unhappy and trigger storms of protest; a law, in
short, that will suit no interests but the government’s interests, a
hotchpotch stupidly contrived for the law-maker’s own benefit.
Collectively, parliaments represent their respective countries. A motley
crew of men stakes a claim to be representative of an entire nation. Its
mission is to work in conformity with the general interest rather than
those of each group of voters. So the theory goes, at any rate. But how
are these representatives supposed to know the broader interests and
needs when they cannot even register the most short-term needs and
interests of the groups that elected them? In practice, things operate
differently. The country’s representatives out of sheer convenience seek
to accommodate themselves to the supposed needs of the comarca to which
they belong; but as it turns out, even though Castilian deputies vote
for what Castile wants, say, they will always be outvoted by the
remainder of their parliamentary colleagues and so the Castilians are
going to have to put up with whatever the other comarcas thrust upon
them. And this will be the general rule, unless, just once in history,
it so happens that sixteen or twenty million men agree upon the adoption
of some law, some regulation. Hence there is no law that genuinely
caters for the general interest and needs, but there is a certain
metaphysical, vague and indeterminate entity, a shadow; but it is a
shadow without substance which is what the government law-making fiction
adds up to.
That aside, we can readily understand that, because of this very
procedure, no law can accomplish the broad purposes attributed to it.
Since the members of parliament were chosen at the ballot box, even if
every single one of them had a genuine majority of the votes, lots of
groups of citizens are still bereft of representation and thus withhold
their consent from the laws framed. And since these laws never command
the unanimous support of the legislature, the upshot is that every law
has to be denied the consent of those voters defeated at the polls, the
consent of those represented by deputies who take issue with the
majority and, lastly, the consent of the voters who abstained; which, to
cut a long story short, means that it is denied the support of the vast
majority of the country.
We will still have to deal with the arguments of the federalists. They
will tell us that everything we have said is strictly speaking true, but
that it happens because of the centralising arrangement by which our
political organisation is informed. Let us understand one another. What
we have said regarding national parliaments would be equally true of
comarcal parliaments or of municipalities. Federation replicates the
problem rather than solving it. What applies today to a large nation
would be applicable tomorrow to a series of federally constituted
mini-nations. Autonomy simply poses the question in a smaller setting.
Besides, even within a federation, a number of issues remain the
preserve of the central authority; so that there would be instances in
which our critique would be perfectly applicable to national assemblies
and others in which it might equally apply to cantonal chambers and
municipalities.
Because the problem does not derive from the more or less centralistic
mind-set of a body but from the law-making and numerical tyranny which
is equally embracing of federalism as a principle of political action as
it is of singularity.
In fact, therefore, whatever the political arrangement turns out to be,
the outcome is always that a minority governs it.
Even discounting the gross immorality of the voting body, the excesses
of the political boss system (caciquismo) and the very powerful
governmental influence, which are not, despite what has been said, an
affliction confined solely to Spain but which permeate all
constitutional nations from top to bottom, the law of majorities is a
redoubtable figment that allows brazenly organised stock-jobbing by
those who have made politics a lucrative trade and, under its aegis,
boost their wealth by means baser than those employed in the Sierra
Morena or in the hills around Toledo by the classical bandit from the
classic land of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza.
And arguing that widening of the suffrage and victory for democracy will
make the law of numbers come true will not do, because, apart from the
example we are set by republican countries, we need to remember the
revolutionary period in Spain, with its deputies imposed from below at
the end of a rope, if not at the point of a gun; we need to remember
that, though government clientelism may be a thing of the past, local
and party and committee clientelism are still with us; we need to
remember that throughout that period all who became irksome on account
of their impatience, or because they were Internationalists or because
of a thousand other petty considerations, were harried, thrashed, jailed
and deported and that such persecution was designed simply to ensure a
semblance of majority, which prop was needed in order to cling to power
(1873). And in the final analysis, in the face of insistence that the
most perfect democratic equity would bring our critique tumbling down,
let us ask further: And how are we to ensure equality of conditions and
thus the voting freedom of the peasant who relies upon the wage paid him
by the master, the loan made to him by the money-lender and the henchman
that threatens him? How can we be sure that the priest will not cramp
his personal liberty by means of anathemas and excommunication? And that
the slave in his workshop can vote in defiance of his master and that
the manufacturer cannot garner a few hundred votes simply by making
threats, veiled or otherwise, to deny his slaves the following day’s
bread? How can we ensure that the vast majority of society which lives
in humiliating dependency upon the moneyed minority can vote freely?
The worker and the peasant are well aware that they do not have free
disposal of their own vote and that it belongs to the boss, even though
the latter may not ask for it. In thousands of cases, all it takes is
fear of losing one’s wage for the worker and peasant willingly to
abdicate all their individual rights. The public servant and the staff
of private firms think the same and effortlessly volunteer in advance
for slavery and the surrender of their wills. The industrialist and
small trader cannot forget their commitments to the big capitalist who
holds invoices and order forms which are very often paid late and
poorly. And so the freedom of which they once dreamt slips from their
fingers. And no monarchy and no republic can prevent that.
It is pointless, utterly pointless, to take this matter to its logical
extreme. Part and parcel of the law of majorities is the despotic rule
of the lesser number, those who enjoy the privileges of a lordship which
is awarded not on the basis of some willing deference to talent or
virtue but is founded upon all manner of trickery and iniquity.
Superstition will carry enough weight to ensure that merely to question
the virtue and wisdom of majorities and the value of their
decision-making is still viewed as lunacy; but experience and
consideration show the law of majorities to be false and that,
inescapably, it turns into the unrestrained despotism of the few.
through the exercise of freedom. The law-making function is negative and
centralistic; free consent boosts autonomy and vitality. The affliction
lies in law per se and no amount of tinkering can alter it.
If scrutiny of the facts can show the falseness of the law of numbers,
all reasoned criticism of the principles upon which it is based would
seem to be redundant. But given the grip of the preoccupation that will
make lots of disbelievers impatient despite our deductive reasoning, the
task we are about to embark upon will not be considered pointless.
The unwholesomeness of the very principle could be ascribed to awkward
reality and, despite every experience to the contrary, it might be
asserted that there is a feasibility to being governed by majority
decision-making. In which case it falls to us to demonstrate the
falseness of that so-called ‘law’ in every regard, even at the risk of
repeating ourselves.
Persuaded of the radical antagonism between the freedom of the
individual and the overpowering preponderance of the mass, we repudiate
all established authority, whether derived from force or from strength
of numbers. If the individual and the group are to coexist without
destroying each other, every form of imposition upon one by the other
has to be eradicated. As for those of us who base our ideals upon
unbounded freedom of the individual, AUTO-ARCHY is the mandatory mode of
social co-existence. The good of one is every bit as respectable as the
good of all and so freedom can be rendered effective only if these
interests match. Which is why we are libertarians and why we are
socialists; because, as we see it, the root of any clash between
individuals or between collectives or between both is the form assumed
by what the individual claims as his own, from which our deduction is
that social harmony has to be brought about by means of common ownership
of wealth and complete freedom of action for individuals and groups
alike.
And since freedom thus construed rules out any notion of subordination
to majorities, we shall prove that the law of numbers is inherently
false and that society can order its affairs without resorting to voting
procedures.
It may be argued by supporters of that supposed law that majorities, or
rather, supposed majorities, are not limited in their rights and
practice certainly confirms that claim.
However, laws are hardly ever observed; most people skirt around them;
the more outspoken repudiate them. What is behind this? The actual
impossibility of devising a single law or battery of laws that can
encompass an immeasurable range of interests, usages and circumstances.
Every individual and every collective tends to be different and comes
into being in a different manner, whereas law tries to treat them as
uniform and force them to operate and behave in the same manner. Shared
interests cannot be danced to a single tune because the community is
never so narrow as not to have room for fragmentation and replication,
divergence and opposition. For there to be effective matching of
interests, fellowship has to voluntarily and spontaneously well up from
below, between one individual and another and one group and another so
that the more or less effective outcome is that it reaches out to
include every member of society. Whereupon, through serial organisation
of the component parts, every part can retain its special flavour and
personality, meaning all its freedom. There being no real call for it
any more, rebellion will cease, especially since that organisation would
not by its very nature be unsusceptible to change, but rather be the
deliberate outcome of the will of its component parts as manifested in
each time and place.
But such an arrangement is the very opposite of the rule of majorities
and, being the product of unrestricted personality and founded upon
precisely that, it represents wholesale repudiation of the law-making
rights attributed to such majorities.
Let us therefore analyse what it is that is being rejected and then
demonstrate the righteousness of the rejection.
Let us narrow the focus down to some single country.
For instance, it is a matter to interest to all of us who live in Spain
that we maintain trading relations with other countries. What are we to
do? Shall we come down on the side of free trade? Shall we vote for
protectionism? The issue is of the greatest importance and should
require well nigh unanimous agreement. Nevertheless, opinion will be
greatly divided; some will want cheap food and clothing without a care
for domestic output’s grinding to a halt; others will want to encourage
that production, not caring a whit for how dear bread, meat, wine,
clothing, etc., get. Are the former to have the right to foist
unemployment and misery upon us? Or the latter to force us to work like
mules and then also finish up jobless and hungry once the implications
of this arrangement have played themselves out?
According to supporters of the law of numbers, the real solution lies in
the hands of a few thousand imbeciles who, because they are the greater
number, enjoy the supreme right of governing us. Actually, the majority
is called upon to say what will be the straightest road to general
wretchedness; rightly or wrongly, the majority will agree that the
country should perish either from a glut of imported goods or from a
dearth of home-grown goods; the majority will have the barbarous right
to sentence us to death by starvation; the majority will be endowed with
enough power to do what it pleases without a second thought or
compunction.
Let us take another example.
It is in the interests of all Spaniards to live in peace with other
peoples. But in, say, China, some Spaniards are RIGHTLY OR WRONGLY
murdered. Passions become enflamed and, as ever, the patriots, even
though they themselves may sit quietly at home, will cry out for
vengeance. We level-headed folk or the minority (which amounts to the
same thing) – remember that we are taking it for granted that the system
is rule by majority – may reckon that the deaths of a few Spaniards at
the hands of a few Chinese is not grounds enough for thoughtlessly
plunging into a war of extermination two peoples who are, at worst,
indifferent towards each other. And yet common sense will not prevail;
it will be the blind will of some automatic majority that has the right
to command us to kill and to perish.
What are we to say about how the country is organised? We should live
well and the life of society hinges upon the political formulae
espoused. Shall we plump for a republic? Or embrace the monarchy? Opt
for centralisation? Or shall we be federalists? The majority, the
all-powerful majority will decide. I, wanting no king, will have to grin
and bear him. If it plumps for a president, I’ll have to put up with
him, no matter how much I detest him. Whilst I am equally repelled by
singularity and federation, I must patiently carry the very heavy cross
of their complicated mechanics. And the religious question? It works out
the same whether I believe or do not believe, I’ll be paying for a faith
and a clergy and living and dying in the name of God due to the
imposition of the majority’s wisdom.
Why go on piling up more examples?
Since the majority is equipped to pronounce upon everything, it is going
to have to impose its will upon all the sciences. But its ignorance is
as huge as its prerogatives are boundless. In spite of everything, it
will be able to enforce the greatest hygienic nonsense as binding upon
public health. It will be able to regulate farm work by ordering seeds
to be planted and harvested whenever the notion takes it. It will be
able to bring its laws into the workshop, factory and home and, in the
hour of death and in our death throes, its regulations will be the boon
companion of our decomposition, ploughing on until our bodies lie six
feet under.
We will be told that its rights are not limitless. Even so, is there any
denying that the majority overrides us from birth to death? Is there any
denying that hygiene, work and our entire life-time are subject to its
regulation? And ultimately, if there is a limit to its rights, who sets
the boundary? Philosophers, metaphysicians and theologians of the law of
numbers will devise prodigious circumventions of the truth, but who is
going to set that boundary but the majority itself? Voluntarily limiting
and setting a boundary to its own rights! Now there’s a wonderful feat
of conjuring if ever there was one!
No doubt about it. The law of majorities is not the law of reason, not
even the law of the likelihood of reason. Society marches to a different
drummer, actually to the drum-beat of minorities, or, better yet, driven
on by the rebel openly swimming against the tide. Every step forward we
have taken has been taken by virtue of repeated individual defiance of
what humanity has affirmed was right. True, humanity later embraced that
individual’s case and crowned his efforts; but the drive has never come
from majorities.
Flying in the face of general opinion, a new world was discovered and
the earth carries on spinning and spinning in infinite space. Flying in
the face of the majority opinion, the locomotive hurtles along the rails
and messages fly from one place to another at a speed to make the head
spin. Despite the views of our elders, we can sail without sails and
oars and against the wind and tide. And ultimately, despite what most
folk may think the winds will be ploughed and the depths of the ocean
plumbed, just as, not so long from now, a better world foretold by a
handful of dreamers, of which we have the honour of being one, will be
built upon the ruins of today’s world.
Haven’t the absolute kings been toppled despite the opinion of
majorities? Haven’t the constitutional monarchs been deposed? Have we
not done away with slavery? Did we not do the same with serfdom? Shall
we not very shortly be doing the same with the proletariat, the latest
form of dependent relations between men? Do we not find the same aspects
and modalities in religious trends, so much so that these days the world
belongs to the negation of dogma, to free-thought and to atheism,
despite the religious authorities still clinging on?
The whole of history – absolutely all of it – is a rebuttal of the law
of numbers, of the barbaric (yes, barbaric) law of numbers. Every step
we have taken was in open defiance of everybody else. In the sciences
and in the arts, as well as in politics and economics, as well as in the
practicalities of life, everything has been done in spite of the wishes
and decisions of majorities.
Shall we carry on singing the praises of numbers, of their ultimate
wisdom and ultimate out-reasoning of the rest? Or is querying of the
rights of the majority, be they limited or boundless, to be looked upon
as little short of rash?
Let us move on now to a different sort of consideration.
Let us say that, tomorrow twenty, forty or a hundred individuals launch
a society to sponsor secular education. Each of them brings to its his
moral might, his standing in society and his money in order to help
bring about the aims we all strive after. Will that majority be able to
so arrange it that, the day after that, all of the funds and all of the
efforts of the group should be poured into religious education? If not,
then the law of numbers amounts to nothing, for it is limited. If our
hypothesis holds water, then the law of majorities is the law of might
and the law of thievery dressed up as the principle of justice.
Common sense dictates that, in any event, if the members of a society
fall out over their aims, that society should be wound up. Thereby
leaving everyone free to enter into association with those who share his
purposes and thus have his aspirations met.
The same would apply if, even though the partners are agreed upon their
ends, they differ over means. Some might want the education system to
cater for folk who can meet certain specifications. Others might want it
dispensed to everybody, without any differentiation. Would it be
reasonable for the restricted approach to carry the day just because the
majority backs it? If that were the case, it would be tantamount to
building altars to privilege and its champions, placing ignorance and
selfishness on a higher plane than reason and disinterest. And then, as
ever, the law of numbers would amount to the rule of might and thuggery.
The disintegration of society reflects such differences of outlook, now
and in the past. Each faction would be free to do as it thought best and
trial and error would demonstrate to everyone which was the best way to
achieve the purpose.
As to any quibbles that might be raised about the instability of
associations, we can answer in advance that nothing lasting or practical
is to be expected of subordinating the thinking and performance of some
partners to those of others and, experience being the great touchstone
in every clash of views, multiplicity of practices is always going to be
preferable to restriction of already conventional practices. Then again,
it is our understanding that every grouping should be specific and clear
as to its purposes before it is launched and before the means to be
employed are determined, care being taken at all times to ensure
complete independence of the person. If this happens, there will be
nothing or next to nothing left to be resolved later; and trivial
matters towards which the members are generally indifferent because the
doing of them is not worth falling out over, will be sorted out by
common arrangement and without any pointless wrangling. Broadly
speaking, in regimented societies subject to the law of numbers, it is
not the majorities that decide on such petty matters, but the will of
the most active members, be they few or many in number. In such private
groups, where the law lacks the transcendence of a general principle,
which is to say of a proper law, the same thing occurs, however, as in
political society. A tiny band of individuals arranges everything, sorts
everything out and carries everything out.
Anyone who has been a member of a recreational, cooperative or political
society, etc., will have seen or is going to see violent struggles erupt
within it over real trivialities. Despite the alleged law, under the
ultra-wise tutelage of the majority one knows not a moment’s peace. Over
the most trivial nonsense, hackles rise, tempers fray and there is this
constant competition to get one’s way, rightly or wrongly and most often
wrongly. This is an exact proof of arbitrariness, in that it provokes
but brooks no rebellion and also because, in spite of it, social affairs
proceed in an utterly shambolic way when the very opposite is the aim.
Is there nothing that speaks to us of the inefficacy of this supposed
law? Nothing in its negative outcomes? Nothing in its thousand-fold
mayhem?
How are we to account for the general public’s persistent assertion of
and support for the law of numbers despite all of the data and all of
the evidence that make a nonsense of it?
How are we to account for every human error? On the one hand, in terms
of the concern of the beneficiaries to school us in this obsession. On
the other, in terms of the very same concern bequeathed and passed on
from one to another over the centuries.
In the last analysis, the most honest people agree that the case against
rule by majority is a reasonable one, but they cannot fathom how things
might be done differently in society. They concede that the habit of
relying on baby-walkers is dire, yet they cannot conceive of being able
to walk unaided.
No sooner has a law been promulgated by some alleged or real majority
than masses of malcontents call for it to be revised and amended, a call
that goes out to the very folk who framed it, passed it and promulgated
it. Whether reform comes or not, the fact is that the majority, or its
representatives, have made a faux pas and make faux pas day in and day
out. Yet they are the ones to whom the call goes out for a mistake
(which they do not acknowledge is a mistake) to be set right.
Such are the natural fruits of the great political superstition of
parliaments, a spin-off from the superstition surrounding majorities.
Earth remains fixed at the centre of their universe, despite all the
demonstrations and experimental proofs to the contrary.
Do you understand now, reader, how the preoccupation comes about and
develops? Do you now have the measure of the full extent of the
affliction? Have you plumbed the depths of this fetishism of numbers
which is at the root of all our misfortunes? Are you aware of the slow
impact of the water drip-dripping into our brains from the moment of
birth up until we die and how it perpetuates superstition and inflates
it until we are smothered?
Unless you are impervious to logical argument, you will also understand
why we are sold as axiomatic the principle of strife between human
beings, which pits some humans against other humans like wild animals at
a circus; you will appreciate why we are schooled in the belief that the
world cannot make progress other than across a carpet of rubble and
corpses and you will also understand that, in order to justify the
pre-eminence of the few, science is tainted, education corrupted and
usages warped. Everybody has to be made to see the inevitability of the
affliction and the eternal necessity of war, as long as it is not the
lower-downs declaring it upon the higher-ups.
Teachings like these poison many a mind driven to despair and pessimism
as a way of crushing its opposition or securing its indifference.
Strife between men is not some inescapable law of nature, nor is it an
inescapable law of nature that all progress be bought at the price of
wars of extermination because, if the rule of force, the concrete
expression of the supposed supremacy of majorities, was to be done away
with, every step forward would have to be made peaceably through the
swift or slow embracing of improvement by the generality of men. The
sway of force is transitory because it derives from the war-like
organisation of society which proclaims the righteousness of might,
attributing everything wrested from Nature to cunning. Were society
organised with an eye to peace and justice, were it organised with an
eye to cooperation, rather than with an eye to strife, given that in the
rest of Nature mutual aid between creatures is as significant as or more
significant than the precept of the struggle for survival, might, bereft
of any vehicle to speak for it, would be nullified, leaving the way wide
open to reason and to courses set in accordance with experience or the
interplay of the various applications of human activity.
But what we are really dealing with in any discussion of the law of
numbers is a political mysticism that we need to banish, the political
mysticism of social righteousness, in the name of which a thousand
parties and schools of thought have been set up with the vain purpose of
regenerating the world from positions of high authority and using the
very same methods that are, in theory, rejected. Actually what is at
issue is whether the collective can lay down rules for its component
members, because, if it can, there is no way for that right to be
exercised other than by means of the law of numbers; whereas, in the
absence of such power, majority rule is without foundation.
What is society? Not so much an aggregate or a sum, but also not a
definite, hard-and-fast, finished product and an aggregation of persons,
a congregation if you will. Is it something different from those
persons, something more powerful than them and with greater powers?
Might society perhaps be a higher elite with a personality of its own,
set apart from the component members? Strictly speaking, society is an
abstract construct of our minds, devised as a rough expression for an
amalgam that is more ideal than actual.
Now since we have no grasp of everything and of nothing beyond the
abstractions which day to day observation of the limited and concrete
suggest to us, so we have only a crude notion of society as a whole, a
notion deriving from an inevitable cast of mind.
So, if society is possessed of no actual personhood, where does the
so-called right of making the rules for society spring from? Of what
does that right itself consist? Nothing: nothing but metaphysics and
political theology. It is religious superstition applied and encouraged
in the realm of ordinary life.
So, just as thousands of selfless beings who lived for the future have
been sacrificed in the name of religious superstition, and just as the
truth has been condemned, excommunicated and outlawed at all times, so,
in the name of the political superstition of social law-making, the
human personality has been sacrificed, the rights of the person
trespassed against and ridden over rough-shod, and the truth boldly
asserted by the man of science or somebody selflessly trying to put paid
to the misfortunes of his fellow man, or , finally, someone trying to
asset his own rights against the brute force of numbers, been drowned in
blood.
Under cover of society’s rights, for the sake of ‘public safety’ as the
mystical revolutionaries have it, all manner of torment and vexation is
visited upon the individual. Under cover of society’s rights, and as
always for the sake of ‘public safety’, anything that causes disruption
is sacrificed, and on a daily basis the very same body of society
elevated to the status of a higher, all-powerful being, suffers
mutilation. If it takes the decapitation of twenty thousand or a hundred
thousand human beings to ensure such-and-such (always fictitious)
benefits for the remainder, a hundred thousand or twenty thousand heads
will roll beneath the executioner’s axe. If rights and freedoms require
to be curtailed, everything will be trimmed in such a way as to ensure
that society is revenged in full. If it means that two or more peoples,
each with no grievances against the other, must be dispatched to
slaughter on the battlefield, dispatched to the slaughter they will be,
without a qualm of conscience on the part of the wise law-makers who,
invoking society’s rights, tend and watch over the welfare of humanity.
Society’s rights are the idea of God made political flesh. Such is the
scale of the imposition upon humanity (which has been put through a
Calvary of ghastly suffering) in the name of that idea that these days
the imposition is made in the name of the other notion by the
idiosyncratic revolutionaries of politics, forcing us to proceed under
the buffeting of continual moral and material torment.
Instead of the alleged rights of society, we need to hoist very high the
banner of the free individual. Rather than the despotism of the group,
we need to assert independence and respect for human personality.
My rights, my freedom, my health, my welfare are every bit as valuable
as the rights, welfare, freedom and health of others. I will not
countenance nor consent to imposition from any quarter. Numbers hold no
charm for me. Everyone is at liberty to proceed however he pleases. If
we men require help, let us afford such help and if the need is on our
part we should freely seek it through combining and cooperating on
common purposes. But we shall do so and we want to do so, as ourselves,
of our own volition, rather than as a result of imposition by anyone.
Together with the law of majorities, society’s rights amount to
never-ending wardship for peoples, sacrificing the individual and
obliterating thought, plus death for those most closely concerned. In
defiance of that noxious teaching, revolutionary socialism proclaims the
complete freedom of the person and freedom of action for all human
beings in a world of equality, solidarity and justice.
the driving, cohesive principle. Reason and free agreement rather than
law and suffrage
With the practice and theory of the law of numbers exposed as false,
there is no way of telling which of the various social factions
competing to run public affairs has right on its side. And since we also
assert the rights of the person over the supposed rights of majorities,
it now falls to us to explore the principle as it relates to our
negation and weigh it up in practice.
In contrast to the rights of society, expressing the despotism of
cliques, and in contrast to the authoritarian, governmental principle,
upon which law-making is built, we affirm the principle of free contract
as the means and instrument of inter-personal relations.
The notion of contract is immediately implicit in the notion of freedom
of action. Every individual, master of his own fate, should and
assuredly will, at the prompting of needs of which he is sensible, enter
into reciprocal relations with his peers in profession, taste and
inclinations. Even today it is necessity that brings some persons into
contact with others and which prompt groups to reach some accommodation
with one another regarding shared purposes. For all its complicated
machinery, government merely upsets the harmony of social relationships.
In respect of work, production and consumption, contract is the
principle underpinning every agency; the mutual compatibility of the
parts is the sole guarantor of regular existence; freedom is the sole
means of ironing out all differences. Likewise, when it comes to moral
relations, it is customs that are the regulator of the evolution in
human existence.
With every obstacle removed, all government or legislative restriction
upon individual and collective evolution banished, evolving customs and
evolution in the wherewithal of social coexistence, as well as in the
lives of individuals and things, in short, progress, in its broadest
sense, can make its way without let or hindrance.
We contend that that which is resolved by violence and broken down by
violence can be resolved and broken down peacefully. Any cohesion or
disintegration that is the inescapable outcome of overriding needs
should be brought about, not by strife and force, but through the
entirely unfettered, spontaneous and emphatic manifestation of the
factors that those needs suggest. We proclaim the theory of freedom in
all its purity. We want individuals and groups to stand on an equal
footing and to be free to reach agreement, seek one another out, come
together or stand apart. We want human association to be the result of
individual initiative and spontaneity rather than imposed by some
political, economic or religious agency. A federation of free producers
will be the inevitable outcome of autonomy of the individual. Such an
arrangement, a stranger to all legislative uniformity, will of necessity
display the features of the widest variety of forms, means and ends. In
keeping with life’s heterogeneity, and with the fullest expansion of
industry and science, the multiplicity of groupings, purposes and
methods will chime harmoniously with the immeasurable variety of needs.
Groups will be free to wind themselves up and amend themselves as often
their members feel necessary. They will be able to disband and re-form
and fragment or amalgamate as often as is necessary. Should one grouping
not agree with the rest, it would be at liberty to plough its own furrow
and no one would be able to stop it. If an individual falls out with his
associates, he would be free to seek out others with whom he sees eye to
eye. Only on those conditions could the life of society be pursued
harmoniously and peacefully; only at this price will order emerge as the
short-term and necessary outcome of the widest possible freedom of the
individual.
We might hear the argument raised against us that what we are advocating
is a reversion to primitive conditions, to savagery. To which our answer
will be that our brilliant civilisation has much to envy in the
primitive condition spoken of so unjustly with such scorn and so
dismissively.
Aside from the fact that the arrangement we advocate is a good fit for
the infinite variety of life today; and aside from the fact that our
obvious advances preclude any reversion to savagery, and given that, no
matter what the social arrangement in which we live may be, the gains of
progress and science will survive, we have plenty of grounds for arguing
that the true principle underlying the life of society, albeit
overshadowed or eclipsed in our day by the unrelenting warfare in which
we are caught up, retains a latent presence.
“In small, undeveloped societies” – says Spencer – “where complete peace
has prevailed over a period of centuries, there is nothing akin to what
we term government; they have no coercive organisation, only at best an
honorific suzerainty. In such exceptional communities, which are not
aggressive and which are, for special reasons, free of all aggression,
the departures from the basic virtues of truthfulness, honesty, fairness
and generosity are so rare that all that is needed to contain them is
that public opinion should be expressed from time to time at gatherings
of elders convened at irregular intervals.”
Hartshone tells us: “The Vehda Bushmen, who have no social organisation,
regard it as unthinkable that anybody should be able to lay hands on
that which does not belong to him, injure his comrade or utter a lie.”
“The Bechuanas” – see Burchell’s Trips into the Southern African
Interior – “abide by time-honoured custom.”
Among the Korarma Hottentots, “provided that the old ways do not forbid
this, anyone can assume that he is entitled to that which he himself
sees as just.” (Thomson, Journeys Through Southern Africa).
The Araucanians “are guided solely by primitive customs or unspoken
convention.” (Thomson, Geographical Dictionary and Historias de America,
by Alcedo).
Bajah Brooke says of the Dyaks that “apparently custom has quite simply
acquired the status of law and breaches of it are punishable by fines.”
(Ten Years in Sarawak).
Among the North American Indians, such as the Snake Indians, who have no
government, horse ownership is respected. Among the Chippewa who have no
proper government, game trapped in privately-owned snares is regarded as
private property. (Schoolcraft, Expedition to the Sources of the
Mississippi). We could quote a lot of similar facts about the customs of
the Aths, the Comanche, the Eskimos and the Indians of Brazil. “Among
the various uncivilised peoples” – Spencer goes on to say – “the custom
has grown up of respecting rights over the fruit that grows in the
tilled field, but not over the soil itself.”
Are the organised thievery and lawful thievery of the civilised peoples
really an improvement upon all this? Is it not the truth that our
blatant immorality, our countless depravities, our crimes without
number, and the ghastly decline in our mores place us a thousand rungs
below these savage peoples, these contemptible barbarians? And let us
not get into the basic virtues of truthfulness, honesty, fairness and
generosity. There are lot of things about the unfortunate Vehdas,
Araucanians, Hottentots, Bechuanas, and all the forlornly brutish
primitive peoples for us to envy.
Notwithstanding the facts cited and a lot more besides that we could
add, such is the grip of the government fetishism, se deep-seated the
legislative superstition, so deeply embedded the belief in blessed
omniscient majorities, that there will still be those who emphatically
assert the ridiculousness of an alleged lurch backwards, a nonsensical
reversion to what they contend is the most repugnant barbarism and to
the human race’s original animal condition.
Even the example of what goes on at present will not persuade them.
Countless matters are regulated in accordance with custom rather than
legislation and, many a time, in defiance of the laws. Business makes
loans without any requirement of law and a lot of its expansion occurs
outside the law. The most complicated business dealings are pursued by
means of arrangements and abide by time-honoured custom. The codes [of
law] are late-comers to the scene and a real inconvenience. They cannot
even punish bad faith since fraudulent bankruptcies circumvent all the
rules.
In public and private dealings, in matters of industry and labour, in
the entirety of social life, customs overrule laws. As far as folk are
concerned many a law is deadweight. Laws are really an intrusion into
the lives of peoples; they are the jaws of a trap that only lawyers and
litigants fully understand. With their tremendous variety from one
nation to the next, from comarca to comarca and from people to people,
customs are, by contrast, the regulators of our every move and the very
stuff of our lives. Which is why men need to live out their lives to the
accompaniment of continuous rebellions and ruses of every sort.
Furthermore, in order to wriggle out of the effects of the law, in order
to operate in a manner consistent with one’s own wishes, one is obliged
to become dishonourable, unjust and selfish and place one’s personal
interest above any other consideration, the upshot being that the law
conjured up by the majority is the cause of all our afflictions and the
utter negation of personal integrity and human freedom and all for the
benefit of a huge number of nincompoops or a minority of rogues.
So, if the straightforward, practical life of some peoples could be
wedded to the reality of a civilised existence in defiance of the law,
that just goes to show that rule by majority is not only phoney but also
unnecessary and harmful. So what are we to say to the disbelievers, the
fanatical supporters of numbers, the worshippers of this modern fetish?
Atrophied brains are incapable of comprehending the genuinely positive
aspects of life in society and only manage to glimpse its artificial
side. Preoccupation with politics blinds them and every effort made to
restore their sight proves pointless. We even question whether they are
susceptible to taking their place in a new world and capable of adapting
to new ways of life.
error
And then somebody will say to us: show us how social groups will be able
to sort themselves out without recourse to suffrage because, between
primitive societies and today’s society, there is of course, a huge
difference, with the latter’s sphere of action being rather infinite as
compared with the rest. In the former, means and ends are concrete and
determined whereas in the latter they vary widely and are indeterminate.
Let us assume that you set up production, exchange and consumption
associations, that everyone is free to make whatever arrangements he
deems best, that everybody enjoys the same rights and the same means of
survival. How, in terms of practicalities, would you proceed?
Well, in precisely the same way as trade and industry proceed today.
Take a trading company: the partnership agreement is drawn up and the
partners never have any call to resort to voting. Each of them has a
well-defined part to play. The administrator administers in accordance
with the rules of accountancy. The manager in accordance with the
technical instructions issued to him. It never occurs to them to put the
normal operation of the business to a vote. If ever the partners try to
take on new work or widen the scope of their business, this is always
done with agreement across the board. If such agreement is not there,
the company will carry on, restricting itself to that which had
previously been agreed. This is the day-to-day practice. But if, by
chance, and this would be a real exception, some of the partners insist
upon exploring fresh avenues, then the company is immediately wound up.
We are discounting the very rare cases in which the difference of
opinion erupts into a noisy dispute because, the privileges of ownership
not being at issue, such clashes of interests cannot come about and any
other personal difference can always be sorted out through amicable
mediators in a company in which there are no privileged rulers nor
judges.
Is the example we quote authentic or not? Is it or is it not capable of
serving as a model?
Plainly it is authentic and yes, it can set the pattern. So let us apply
this approach to future production associations, whilst resolving, in
the implementation of it, various practical examples put to us on
occasion by workers with whom we have ties of friendship and
comradeship. Take, say, a mechanics’ association set up to cater for the
requirements of such-and-such a branch of production. On joining, they
will naturally prescribe the working conditions, establish how their
day-to-day affairs should be handled and pay especial attention to the
reciprocal dealings incumbent upon every single one of them. Unless they
can see eye to eye, the association will not be formed. Just like today,
each group will be made up of personnel who see eye to eye with one
another. It may then be the case that, instead of one society, there are
twenty of them, in which we do not see a problem, especially when,
thanks to the law of necessity, those sundry associations will tend to
coagulate and fuse into just one. Trial and error will teach everyone
the common path, if there actually is only the one.
Let us look at a few specific instances. Take a foundry that is, as we
would define it, properly organised. We do not think that there is
anyone who will not think that that much is possible. Along came the
summer, we were told by one old friend, and conditions within the
workshop made work onerous. There was a zinc roof, inadequate
ventilation and, as a result, the heat grew unbearable. What would we
do? Work only during the early morning hours? Many a one would prefer
anything rather than an early morning start. Should some work the
mornings and others the evenings? The nature of the work would likely
require that they all work the same hours. They would have to come to
some arrangement, or defer to some sort of direction.
The answer, then, is simple. The first thing to be done would be to
alter the conditions within the workshop, ventilating it, preventing the
entry of the sun’s rays and, in short, sorting everything out so that
the work might be carried out under good conditions. Everyone, surely,
would be in agreement with that arrangement. That done, the matter is no
longer serious. If the nature of the task allows, the immediate solution
is for everybody to agree to work during the early hours of the morning
and in the later evening. Because, assuming that they all have a
personal interest in supporting the association in carrying out its
tasks, and there is no denying that they do, there can be no question
but that they would all defer to and all accept some small sacrifice.
In the end, the issue is of so little account that one way or another
the requisite agreement would have to be reached. In this instance
putting matters to a vote would resolve nothing. What they are compelled
to do today by their boss, would they not have to do in their very own
interests? It should be borne in mind that the appetite for work and
sacrifice is never greater than when one’s own interests are at stake.
Let us take the case of a hat-makers’ association. Imagine a factory,
Take a factory for example, a workshop given over to the manufacture of
hats and founded, run and managed along the same lines as that foundry.
Let us imagine that the partners have urgent need of a machine to
simplify their operations and invite the mechanics to come up with the
new apparatus they want. Let us imagine that they are offered a range of
machines from which they must select one and give it preference over the
rest. It is, we have been told, inevitable that they will have to defer
to the wishes of the majority! Not at all.
The solution, as every one of the partners would immediately appreciate,
would be to deploy all of the machine options presented and try them
out. Why would majority rule come into it when it comes to the act of
choosing? Experience, trial and error will indicate which option is to
be preferred. And if it should still be the case that two or more of the
machines are ranked more or less equally, there is still the solution of
trying them out over a longer period of time until it becomes plain
which one offers the most advantages or if they would both serve equally
well. This is what the practice is these days, so why would it not
continue in the future?
In short, there is no question but that in the future operational
problems will arise that trial and error will not be able to resolve.
And then what do we do? Well, quite simply, break up the teams so that
each can operate by its own special method; and, were the matter such
that there would be no merit in subdivision or if it was necessary for
all the personnel to stay together as a body, they would of course all
arrange to be guided either by the views of the most intelligent among
them or by that of the most practical of their number and – should that
fail – ultimately, by the opinion of the majority, because in that
assuredly exceptional circumstance, the issue would not rank as a
generally mandatory principle or law to be carried out and would carry
none of the compulsion we find at present. Besides, it would be merely a
transitional arrangement with no implications for the rest of the body
of society as long as it did not go beyond private operations or the
bailiwick of the specific collective implementing it on a regular basis.
Now let us apply the same analysis to more transcendental examples.
How are farmers going to come to agreement over the cultivation of the
soil? Who is going to concentrate on the running of trains, organising
communications and transport services? How is work to be shared out and
who will appoint the technical and administrative staff? And how are
matters of education, assistance and security to be handled?
These are questions we can wriggle out of answering because in actual
fact we cannot be asked to determine in advance every jot and tittle of
what social living will be like in the future.
Is there any real problem with answering them, though, when we have
already laid down the general principle upon which the body of society
must, as a matter of logic, be founded?
For one thing, let us point out that, just as matters medical,
mechanical, architectural and many another are not subject to majority
rule, so matters agricultural, economical and , basically, any others
relating to man’s existence should not be subject to such rule either;
instead, such matters, just like the ones we first mentioned, should be
entrusted to persons well versed in the area, to expert personnel, with
the general stipulation that these be subject to criticism and analysis
from those required to act upon their advice or prescriptions.
Just as we take the doctor’s opinion at face value, albeit reserving our
right to repudiate it and follow the opinion of someone we deem more
competent, so in other matters too we can embrace the views of the
experts, whilst, however, reserving our right to drop them in favour of
others who might strike us as nearer the mark.
In matters agricultural, for instance, it is for the expert, the
agronomist to decide what sort of cultivation is appropriate for each
tract, how it should best be worked, which fertilisers are to be
preferred. It follows that those to whom it falls to serve in that
expert capacity must join the farming associations. Where else would
they go?
Doubt may be cast upon the readiness of the peasants to accept their
contribution, and our answer to that is that that would certainly be a
matter of regret, but that it would have to be left to time to eradicate
the concerns engendered by society’s present status, concerns utterly
extraneous to the society we have in mind.
Be that as it may, the task of those with expertise in farming would be
to win acceptance from those currently bereft of all expertise; we
already know the huge potential of the expert if he persists in using
solicitude and experience to win people over. Also, even should the
peasants make their own way without any outside advice, if an
agronomist’s advice can be so described, it would certainly not enter
their heads to put matters relating to farming and cultivation of the
soil to a majority vote. Even by current standards, they have enough
expertise to usefully direct their efforts in what is their constant
undertaking.
When it comes to the operation of the railways and
communications-transport services, it seems to us that since each
producer cannot have a train at his beck and call, such services are
going to have to be managed by the groups charged with them and tailored
to general requirements. As ever, given their expertise in the area and
in the information thrown up by statistics, technical staff will see to
it that things are handled in such a way as to meet those general
requirements. We will be told that there is a preference in that which
confers upon that majority certain rights above and beyond the rest of
society; but this is a preference which does not apply willy-nilly to
every whim of that majority, but is a reasonable preference to which
none may take exception in this day and age.
We still reckon that man is in actual fact never entirely free, but, as
Pi y Margall has put it, is en route to becoming so. We seek complete
freedom of action, and when we say complete, we mean without limits
other than natural limits and none of the fictitious limits that man
sets for himself at present.
That man cannot fly is a natural fact, in that he is not suitably
equipped to do so, so it would be laughable to lobby for him to have the
freedom to soar through the clouds. There would be a case if the time
should come when he had the means to fly and if there was some
artificial obstacle preventing him from doing so. Similarly, man does
not yet possess the means to be able to travel as and how he pleases, so
it is ridiculous raising questions about his greater or lesser freedom
for he simply cannot do it. Had man such means, there would be no
contest, because then, in this as in everything else, each man would be
free to do as he pleased, with prejudice to none and without having to
defer to any
body, whether he belonged to the majority or not. Matters relating to
education, insurance and assistance would have to be resolved the same
way. Each collective would resort to one or more approaches and trial
and error would see to the elimination of the ineffective and harmful
ones. If the teaching body was not of one mind in an area, say, each
person or group would strive to apply his/their particular methods,
bringing forth good instead of bad. If any difference of opinion had to
be resolved by the majority which, being omniscient is all-competent,
then it would be worth dispensing with teachers because their expertise
would count for nothing alongside the blind will of a handful of men. If
the residents of some city could not see eye to eye over assistance and
insurance against unforeseen accidents, whether deriving from nature or
from man, there would likewise be no reason to resort to majority rule
which would produce results here as bad as it does in the field of
politics. Every partner would always be free, either on his own or in
concert with others, to do as he saw fit. Once again, trial and error
would at all times show up the effectiveness of one arrangement and the
ineffectuality of a rival one.
And what of the distribution and recompense of labour? we will be asked.
How will a trading or industrial concern such as the one cited at the
start of this analysis go about the allocation of work? How will that
work be rewarded? Why, in accordance with a contract. No more, no less.
So much for life in the future. Each producer association will have all
these things set out in a contract in advance. Communist, collectivist
or mutualist arrangements can be properly put into practical effect.
Won’t the partners be entitled to do just that? Will they not have a
completely free hand to proceed as they see fit? Application of rule by
majority here would have damaging implications. In a hat-making factory
there would be no argument over who does the metalwork and who does the
ironing. Well the same would apply to other trades as well, because in
practice, working life is not some metaphysical pursuit beyond mere
mortals but something real in which everyone has a say. There will be
different rates of pay since account may be taken in one context of
individual effort, whereas in a different context that will not be the
case. Where personal effort is taken into account, it would take only a
straightforward pact, a contract, to iron out any issues. In short, all
our business would be sorted out by means of simple agreements and it
will not take much before we are applying to work that which is applied
in mathematics proper. Go visit the workshops and the workers will tell
you whether such agreements are feasible or not.
The same will apply where no account is taken of individual effort but
where attention is paid to needs (communism). The basis of the
recompense of labour or the distribution of goods will still be the
compact and the mutual arrangement reached in advance.
Which still leaves the thorny issue of technical and administrative
staff. No trading or industrial company has ever been known to appoint
its cashier by majority vote, any more than its book-keeper or their
assistants. The law of numbers is a law that does not apply outside of
political societies or societies which are not political but which are
out to ape them. Within each collective, every person has been allocated
a function on the basis of his aptitudes and abilities. And, should
there be more persons suited to a particular function than are required
in any collective, some are going to have to make do with performing
some other role or quit the collective. The needs of production would
then, as ever, govern how work is distributed. On pain of suicide, men
would agree to carry out those duties most critically important for
general existence.
All of the issues that might stack up around the future evaporate like
smoke in face of the chaos at present … The thousands of workers
perishing in poverty are not idle because of some laughable preference
for this function over some other function. Were they able to answer the
call of their needs, they would gladly turn their hand to any trade in
return for a livelihood.
We see no need for further examples. Lots of associations today live
without governors and without voting. What holds true with regard to a
given number of individuals holds true also for an even bigger number
within a unit. What holds true for this latter example is equally true
if a further unit is added on. And regardless of the numbers of persons
involved. Such is mathematics.
The existence of just one group of people, surviving without votes and
government arrangements, is proof that society as a whole can survive
without governors and without voting, proof that our argument is no
utopia, no impossible dream, since it all boils down to a general
application of the practicalities of a specific experience.
of intelligence as a creative, organising influence
And still, in a last ditch effort, there will be someone who will pipe
up and ask: Won’t each and every one of those administrators be a boss?
Won’t each and every one of those technical directors be a new master?
Won’t each and every one of those associations not constitute a fresh
authority vying with other authorities? You’re tearing down one set of
authorities and conjuring up a fresh set!
An administrator or a director-facilitator count for no more and no less
than workers in our egalitarian organisation. Stripped of the privilege
of ownership, rather than operating as chiefs, they engage in the work
of cooperation, for it is the privilege of ownership that conjures up
and encourages the tyranny of chieftainship, the despotism of the
master. Do away with property and all authoritarian supremacy is
rendered impossible. Do away with government and likewise all of the
privilege of appropriation evaporates.
This applies equally to producer associations.
Bereft of exclusive ownership of things and of the authority and force
required in order to impose their will, life would of necessity boil
down to cooperating with other associations in the orderly and smooth
pursuit of the purposes shared by them all. Just as every person needs
the labours of the rest in order to survive, so each group also needs
the labours of other groups before it can operate smoothly. No
association is going to be able to survive on its own output alone; it
will, rather, have need of a host of things which he other associations
must supply. Ready agreement will be the only way in which the
reciprocal relations and exchanges without which life is not a
possibility, now or ever, can be established.
So let us cast aside a world of artificial authorities conjured up and
sustained by force and upon the ruins of that world build a world of
freedom with all its natural implications, including .. why not admit
it? … the freely accepted influence and authority of wisdom and virtue,
in that we are not out to destroy the imperishable in Nature, but only
that which has been conjured up by man and which binds him hand and foot
to the phoney belief that, in the absence of supremacy of force or
numbers, social life was not possible. We are out to destroy, not that
which is implicit in people’s living in communion with one another, but
the extent to which people, in their early beginnings and as part of
their animal nature, waged continual and unrelenting war in order to
embed the privileges of wealth and the overwhelming force of all the
powers-that-be, be they religious, political, military or legal. We are
not laying the foundations of a new world of new powers-that-be, because
we afford the scientist no formal and unchallengeable authority; because
we are not founding some brains trust, let alone a company of saints to
govern us. We do embrace, whenever we feel it is right, the views of
those best equipped by education or experience, just as we hope that,
likewise, our own views will be accepted and we are out to bring
knowledge of science to all men, excluding none, so as to render any
vestige of personal servitude that much more impossible. In short, we
strive for the complete emancipation of body and mind, or, as a believer
might put it, for the root-and-branch emancipation of matter and spirit.
But just as we cannot escape the physical laws by which we are bound,
indeed, real human progress means self-emancipation from all law, even
the laws of Nature, so neither can we crudely dismiss the counsel of
science and sage. Even when we make a real effort to emancipate
ourselves through our knowledge of the former and any sway exercised by
the latter. Our ultra-materialist outlook prompts us to think of man as
being bound by physical laws, but we always strive against the harm they
do to him, by breaking free of the very same bonds and trying always to
redeem ourselves by means of rebellion and wisdom from the brutality of
any force affecting him. So how likely are we to accept the authority of
any man as infallible and unchallengeable? His advice is, as far as we
are concerned, mere loose change, just as it is today for educated folk,
folk who have abandoned all belief in infallibility of any sort.
“When it comes to shoes” – Bakunin said, and let us close with his
quotation from him – “I turn to the authority of the shoemaker; in
everything having to do with buildings, canals or railways, I seek out
that of the architect or engineer. For every specialist science I look
to such-and-such a man of learning. But I do not consent to the
shoe-maker, the architect or the learned man forcing their authority
upon me. I accept them freely and with as much respect as they deserve
in terms of their intellect and their character, their knowledge, but at
all times I reserve my incontrovertible right to criticise and censure.
I consult not one but several authorities on a given issue; I compare
their opinions and in the end I choose the ones that strike me as being
most right. For that very reason and even in relation to special matters
I recognise no infallible authority: no respect that I may have for the
authority and honesty of this person or that can induce me to place
absolute faith in him. Such faith would be fatal to my reason, my
liberty and indeed to the course of my thinking; I would immediately be
turned into a dull-witted slave, a mere instrument of the will and
interests of others.
If I defer to the authority of another in respect of a given matter and
somehow, insofar as it strikes me that I need to, abide by his
guidelines and indeed direction, this is because such authority is not
foisted upon me by anybody, God or man. Otherwise I would shun it,
aghast, and to the devil with their advice, direction and services,
certain that I should have to pay the price for any such glimmers of
truth, wrapped in a host of falsehoods as they might offer me, in terms
of the loss of my liberty and self-respect.
If I defer to the authority of another in respect of a given matter and
somehow, insofar as it strikes me that I need to, abide by his
guidelines and indeed direction, this is because such authority is not
foisted upon me by anybody, God or man. Otherwise I would shun it,
aghast, and to the devil with their advice, direction and services,
certain that I should have to pay the price for any such glimmers of
truth, wrapped in a host of falsehoods as they might offer me, in terms
of the loss of my liberty and self-respect.
I defer to outside authority in certain matters because they are not
imposed upon me by anything other than my own reason and because I am
conscious that I cannot possibly have a grasp upon much of human
knowledge in its every detail and in its full extent. Even the greatest
individual intelligence cannot compete with collective reason when it
comes to intelligence. This being why, in science as in industry alike,
the division and amalgamation of efforts are a necessity. Give and take,
that is what human life is all about. Everyone leading and being led in
turn. This being why there is no fixed and constant authority, but
rather a continual exchange of authority and mutual subordination which
is temporary and above all, voluntary.
On the very same grounds I am prevented from acknowledging any fixed,
constant and universal authority, because there is no one in the world
capable of embracing all the wealth of detail in every science and in
every realm of the life of society, without which the application of
science to life is impossible. And should someone, riding roughshod over
this, seek to impose his authority upon his fellow men, such a creature
would have to be banished from society because his authority would
inevitably reduce his fellows to slavishness and imbecility. Not that I
think that society should mistreat men of talent, as actually occurs at
present; but I do not believe, either, that it should take its
indulgence of them to such lengths, let alone grant them exclusive
privileges or rights whatever these may be, and on three grounds: first,
because a charlatan might often be mistaken for a genius; second,
because, under such a system of privilege, a real sage might be turned
into a charlatan; and third, because it would be tantamount to society’s
appointing itself a master.
But whilst we reject the absolute, universal and infallible authority of
men of science, we willingly defer to the venerable, though relative,
temporary and limited authority of the representatives of the special
sciences, for we could do no better than refer to each in turn, placing
much store by the precious reports they supply to us, provided that they
willingly receive our on every occasion and in relation to every matter
in which our competency may exceed their own. Broadly speaking, there is
nothing better than the sight of men endowed with great knowledge, great
experience, great intellects and above all, big hearts, wielding
legitimate, natural influence over us to which we freely surrender and
which is never imposed in the name of any authority, be it divine or
human. We accept all natural authorities and all influences de facto,
but none de jure; any formally imposed de jure authority or influence
turns directly into oppression and falsehood , delivering us up
inevitably, as I believe I have shown, to slavery and nonsense.
In short, we reject all legislation, all authority and all influence
that is privileged, formal and legal, even should it derive from the
ballot box, persuaded that it will never profit anyone other than a
ruling, exploitative minority to the detriment of the interests of the
vast majority subject to it.
This being the sense in which we really are anarchists.”