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Title: The Illusion of Anarchism Author: Dora Marsden Date: 1914 Language: en Topics: egoism, illusion, The Egoist Source: Retrieved on 01/14/2021 from https://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/essays/TheIllusionOfAnarchism.pdf Notes: Originally published in The Egoist Volume I Number 18 (October 15th, 1914)
ANARCHISTS are an interesting body of people whom governments take too
seriously and who, unfortunately, do not take themselves seriously
enough. Governments fear them as hostile, bent on mischief: whereas they
are harmless, after the disconcerting harmless manner of infants. For
the People indeed: for Humanity, they conceive themselves filled with an
ardent passion: but towards the ways of humans — when they, as men,
emerge from out the blurred composite mass of “Humanity” — they are
averse in the thorough-going implacable way possible only to people who
frame their dislikes on principle. Doubtless, if one were to search the
world over for the bitterest-sounding opponents of the theory that we
are all “born in sin” with our natural bent inherently set towards
“evil”, one would fix upon the anarchists: but this is their
idiosyncrasy: a foil to contrast with their main tenets. Their
opposition penetrates no deeper than a dislike for the phrase, because
perhaps more commonplace persons than themselves have espoused it. In
substance it forms the body of anarchism, and anarchists are not
separated in anyway from kinship with the devout. They belong to the
Christians’ Church and should be recognised as Christianity’s picked
children. Only quality distinguishes them from the orthodox: a
distinction in which the advantage is theirs. As priests administering
the sacraments they would not be ill-placed.
At the birth of every unit of life, there is ushered into existence — an
Archist. An Archist is one who seeks to establish, maintain, and protect
by the strongest weapons at his disposal, the law of his own interests;
while the purpose of every church — institutions all teaching anarchism
as the correct spirit in conduct — is to make men willing to assert,
that though they are born and inclined archists, they OUGHT to be
anarchists. This is the true meaning of the spirit of renunciation — the
rock on which the Church is built. The “OUGHT” represents the
installation of Conscience, that inner spiritual police set in authority
by the will and the skill of the preacher. Its business is to bind the
Archistic desires which would maintain and press further their own
purposes in favour of the purposes of whomsoever the preacher pleases:
God: or Right: or the People: or the Anointed: or those set in Office.
Whether the preacher or the individual’s desires will prevail will pivot
about the strength of the man’s individual vitality. If the man is
alive, his own interests are alive, and their importance stands to him
with an intense assertiveness which corresponds with the level of his
own vitality, of which the strength of his own interests alone can
provide a sure index. Being alive, the first living instinct is to
intensify the consciousness of life, and pressing an interest is just
this process of intensifying consciousness. All growing life-forms are
aggressive: “aggressive” is what growing means. Each fights for its own
place, and to enlarge it, and enlarging it is growth. And because
life-forms are gregarious there are myriads of claims to lay exclusive
hold upon any place. The claimants are myriad: bird, beast, plant,
insect, vermin — each will assert its own sole claim on any place as
long as it is permitted: as witness the pugnacity of gnat, weed, and
flea: the scant ceremony of the housewife’s broom, the axe which makes a
clearing, the scythe, the fisherman's net, the slaughter-house bludgeon:
all assertions of aggressive interests promptly countered by more
powerful interests! The world falls to him who can take it, if
instinctive action can tell us anything.
It is into this colossal encounter of interests, i.e., of lives, that
the anarchist breaks in with his “Thus far and no farther. Lower
interests may be vetoed without question, or with a regretful sigh, but
MAN must be immune. MAN as MAN must be protected: his Manhood is his
shield: to immunity his Manhood creates and confers his Right. The lower
creation stands and falls by its might or lack of it: but Manhood
confers a protection of its own.” Who guarantees the protection? “The
conscience of him who can infringe it. If that fails, then the outraged
consciences of other men, jealous for the dignity of ‘Man’. Such an one
as does not hold in awe the Rights of Man, who does not bow down to the
worth of Man as Man, and not merely as a living being, and hold it
Sacred and Holy, he shall be held to be not of the community of Man but
a monster preying upon the human fold, fit only to be flung out, and to
foregather with his familiars — wolves and strange monsters.” That is
the creed of an Anarchist, whose other name is “Humanitarian”. His creed
explains why he loves humanity but disapproves of men whose ways please
him not. For men do not act after the anarchistic fashion one towards
another. They are friendly and affectionate animals in the main: but
interests are as imperative with them as with the tiger and the ape, and
they press them forward, deterred only by the calculation of the
hostility they may arouse by disturbing the interests which they cross,
as cross they must, since by extending the tentacles of interest is
their way of growth. That this is so would be plainer to see if men had
single interests (as some men have, and then it is all plain enough).
But men have many, and what might be expected to be a straight course is
a zigzaged line. And interests lead not only by way of oppositions: by
wrestling for possessions: in love, for instance, they lead to a seeming
commingling of interest. It is only seeming: the love interest is as
archistic as any other. Into this stimulating clash of powers the
anarchist introduces his “law” of “the inviolability of individual
liberty”. “It is feasible to push,” he would say, “the line of
satisfaction of men’s wants — since being born into life and sin they
will not wholly renounce them — but only to the lengths where it can be
squared with the wants of everyone else. Such wants will work out
perhaps, and probably merely to the satisfaction of certain elementary
needs: of earth-room, of sustenance and clothing: a title to which are
the indefeasible Rights of Man. Only when these have been assumed to all
may the interests of any be pushed further. To wealth, according to his
necessities, each has a right; in return each must serve as he can”. It
must be acknowledged that it is a creed which lends itself exceeding
well to eloquence carrying the correct noble ring with it; it makes
converts increasingly; and when it wears thin in one garb it readily
rehabilitates itself in changed raiment; as Christianity, as
Humanitarianism, anarchism successfully and continually seduces Public
Opinion.
Why it should have no difficulty in drawing Public Opinion to its side
the nature of Public Opinion makes evident. Public Opinion intrinsically
is — bellowing. It is the Guardian of the Status quo: its purpose is to
frighten off any invader who would disturb established interests: it is
always, in its first stage, on the side of good faith, the maintenance
of contracts, and fixed arrangements: it is like a watch-dog barking at
all new-comers, be these friendly or hostile. Its bark is worse than its
bite, however, and flouted or ignored, it will always arrive at a
temporary halt. The halt is to gain time to see what measure of strength
the disturbing force has. Public Opinion, it is to be noted, is the
affair of non-combatants, and is supposed, therefore, to be also
Disinterested Opinion. Which does not in any way follow. Public Opinion
is in fact the calculation of the self-interest of non-combatants. Its
primary and involuntary bellowing function is its first instinct with
intent to warn off disturbers: but if the aggressor perseveres unmoved
and proves to be more powerful than the member of the settled order whom
he is attacking, Public Opinion, i.e., the interests of the
non-fighters, gets ready to come to terms. It gets ready to live at ease
with a force which apparently has come to stay. It has poised the merits
of the two claimants: and peace — the maintenance of the Status quo —
first weighted the side of the defenders: but the aggressor having won
success, success becomes his defence, and proves an adequate makeweight.
Which is why success succeeds. It is easy to defend the defensive side:
to hold him “in the right” at the outset: the defensive is the
defendable: it would have been difficult to do otherwise: since to
defend the aggressor is an anomaly in terms: the aggressor can only be
“justified”: and only success can justify him. But let the aggressor
fail, and for Public Opinion he at once appears diabolical. For
instance, if Germany is successful now, the German Emperor will command
the admiration of the world, and will get it. Should Germany lose there
will be none so poor as to pay him reverence. His reputation, as far as
Public Opinion goes now, lies in the womb of time: a matter of
accidental forces more or less. The heinous offence for which the world
will hold him a demoniacal monster is — a miscalculated judgment; that
which will make him the Hero of his Age — its Master — will be just — a
verified judgment. Which explains why a good fight will justify any
cause; a good fight being one which is aggressive and WINS. Thus forces,
on any pretext whatsoever, having been mustered for a test, the question
of public repute will pivot about a nice estimation of the strength of
those forces. Execration is not meted out to the despoilers of art
treasures as such — only if the despoiler likewise shows signs of being
the vanquished. Louvain will be a trifle, regrettable but necessary, if
the German hosts are victorious. So contrariwise: any schoolboy may
lightly hold the reputation of Napoleon as to “Right” at his caprice —
because of Waterloo. It is Waterloo which separates Napoleon from
Alexander and Julius Caesar: not the bloodstained plains of Europe; as
it is Naseby and Marston Moor which pales the memory of Wexford and
Drogheda, and makes Cromwell a Kingly Hero instead of a villainous knave
and murderous assassin. On like counts, too, was George Washington a
Hero and “right”, while President Kruger was a scheming seditionist, and
“wrong”.
Public Opinion, therefore, is nothing more than a loose form of alliance
founded among non-principals, based on a momentarily felt community of
interests on the defensive. The initial shock of invasion having been
parried, the passage of time, and especially the course of events, will
begin to make clear to what extent this first apparent community of
interest with the defensive was due to mere alarm, and how far it
represented something more permanent. Moreover, in the account of the
development of Public Opinion it is to be recognised that the very dash
and daring and picturesqueness of the aggressive may actually give birth
to an interest in which the non-combatants will find themselves involved
by sheer fascination: to such an extent even it may be that to be
permitted to share in the general risk of the fight will appear a high
privilege. A great aggressor will find he can always count on this. The
conquerors have been the well-beloved. Napoleon had the adoration of the
men whose lives he was “wasting”. They would have called it a glorious
opportunity enabling them to spend themselves lavishly with a
correspondingly lavish return in pleasure. It is indeed a most ludicrous
error to assume that interests are all “material”. There are interests
that are of pleasure, interests of spiritual expansion, interests of
heightened status, quite as compelling as those of material profit; it
is indeed doubtful, even among the meaner sort, whether the “material”
interests have as strong a pull as the others. Moreover, kinds of
interests are very unstable, and will develop from one form to another
with extreme rapidity under the influence of threat or challenge. So, at
the appearance of a great personality who can give body to more spacious
interests, even the most intimate interests — those of nationality and
kinship — will suffer a seachange: —
“If my children want, let them beg for bread,
My Emperor, my Emperor is taken.”
There is bespoken the influence of one Emperor: a second has welded
spirited, jealous and antagonistic States — even indeed the younger
generations of the subdued provinces into a homogeneous unit under the
influence of a fantastically adventurous yet living dream. By interests
of a different sort England soothed Scotland into unanimity as she is
engaged in soothing the Dutch in South Africa. Other interests — those
of status and prestige — are the forces which have won for England at
this present moment the loose alliance which is implied in a friendly
American Opinion. That Americans share a common language and in a
measure all the prestige of the English tradition, literary and
military, implicates the status of Americans with the maintenance of
British Status: they would have hated England readily enough had she
given indication just now that she was on the point of lowering it.
At the present time, it is true, England is blushing with the
embarrassment of the unfamiliar, by allowing a parrot-like press and
pulpit to persuade the world that she is now a disinterested fighter in
a great and holy Cause. She appears to be beginning to feel herself
infected with the preacher’s own liquid emotions as she listens how she
is going forth — not for her own sake but — TO RIGHT THE WRONG, to
avenge the weak, to champion civilisation, to suppress the Vandal and
the Hun, a Bayard, a Galahad, the Armed Messenger of Peace, waging a
spiritual warfare. There is one consolation indeed — the “Tommies” are
too far off, and too busy to hear any of it. And there is this excuse
for the preachers: that they have looked round carefully and have not
yet set eyes on any of those likely and tempting bits of territory which
hitherto have always been hanging as bait when England has gone to war:
it hasn't occurred to them that this war, far from requiring excuse in
poetic babble, was necessary to save England's soul from the devastating
unconfidence bred in these years of peace. To please their souls let
them call it a spiritual war: at any rate it answers a spiritual need,
and in the nick of time: Englishman’s need, not Belgium’s, or culture’s,
or civilisation’s, democracy’s, and the rest. Twenty years hence the
conflict probably would have been too late; as it now seems likely to
prove twenty years too soon for Germany. The cause of the war is German
disparagement of English spirit: both as to its fire and its
intelligence. The Germans believed that, average for average, they were
better quality: that English prestige was an anachronism, an heritage
already sunk to a relic bequeathed from a spiritual past, from whose
strength modern England has fallen off: that the nation was devitalised,
and as interests can only be held in proportion to the vitality of those
who forward them, they could be torn away if seriously challenged by
their naturally ordained successors. And they had plenty of evidence to
support them. The spiritual fire glows out not merely in one direction:
it is all-pervading: and German philosophy, German Science, German
inventiveness, energy, daring, and pushfulness provided evidence which
all the world might see and compare. By that comparison, Germans had
convinced themselves, and were convincing the world — and us. They were
undermining English confidence, not by their boasts but by their deeds:
and naturally, if they excelled in the arts of peace why not in the art
of war, where prestige registers an accurate level? They were wearing
down our spiritual resilience: the subtle thing of the spirit which,
once lost, is never recaptured. A people which feels this subtle thing
departing from it will strike instantly for its preservation, or know
itself lost before a blow has been struck. It has seemed a puzzle, and
to none more than to England herself, why she has suddenly found herself
in such abnormally good odour. It is an unusual situation for her— in
these latter days. The explanation is the promptness — haste almost —
with which she entered into the war. It was because she seized the first
suggestion of an opportunity to vindicate herself, that she instantly
stood up — vindicated, rehabilitated with the respect that had in latter
days been given her with a questioning grudge. Had she hesitated it
would have been the sufficing sign of weakness, of the insensitive lack
of pride which the world was more than half expecting, and was more than
a little shocked not to find. The “friendliness” of which she has been
the recipient since is the outcome. The explanation applies as much to
feeling within the limits of the Empire and to malcontents at home, as
in the world outside. And the result immediately to follow, one can
safely trust, will be equally in her favour: that is, the brilliant
vindication of British spirit on the seas and the battlefields will
speedily have a counterpart in British laboratories: in renewed and
confident strength of spirit in English philosophy, literature and art
(where it is needed, God wot!). Confidence, which dare look at plain
fact without latent undermining fear, confidence and deeply stirred
emotions are the materials which inspire a new spirit in the Arts. After
the war, because of the war — the Renascence!
So, to return to our anarchists, embargoists, humanitarians, culturists,
christians, and any other brand of verbalists: the world is to the
Archists: it is a bundle of interests, and falls to those who can push
their own furthest. The sweep of each interest is the vital index of him
who presses it. And interests have this in common: the richness of the
fruit they bear grows as they push outwards: the passions they excite
are then stronger; the images called up — the throb, the colour,
vividness — intenser. For this, a man has the evidence of his fellows to
add to the weight of his own: men will even desert their own greyer
interests: greyer because less matured: when lured by the fascinating
vividness of another’s interests far-thrown: the great lord can always
count on having doorkeepers in abundance. To keep the door has become
their primary interest: because so, they live in the vicinity of a
bright-glowing strength. Neglect to analyse the meaning of friendly
Public Opinion has misled anarchists as to its real nature and as to
what attitudes towards their fellows, men can be persuaded to adopt.
Combination of interests against a powerful aggressive interest, which
is the first stage of Public Opinion, is a momentary affair, intended to
parry the attack of a force which is feared because its strength is
unknown. The reverse side to this temporary hostility of Public Opinion
towards the aggressor is the favourable acceptance of the doctrine of
non-pushfulness: of anarchism proper. But the friendliness is as
short-lived as the hostility: since fear of the unknown is not a
permanent feature of the public temper: rather is an accommodating
adjustment: to strong forces emerging out of the unknown, its permanent
characteristic. Friendliness to, and admiration for, strong interests is
the permanent attitude of this world’s children: only varied by some
direct antagonism born of an opposition to one's own particular personal
and private interest. Hence the reason why anarchism — embargoism in all
its many forms — never penetrates more than skin deep. It is always
encouraged by great promise of adherents: always it finds itself
abandoned by men in earnest with their powers about them: always the
world is for the Archists, who disperse and establish “States” according
as their powers enable them.
So, opposition to the “State” because it is the “State” is futile: a
negative, unending fruitless labour. “What I want is my state: if I am
not able to establish that, it is not my concern whose State is
established: my business was and still remains the establishing of my
own. The world should be moulded to my desire if I could so mould it:
failing in that, I am not to imagine that there is to be no world at
all: others more powerful than I will see to that. If I do make such an
error it will fall to me to correct it and pay for it”. Thus the
Archist. When the curtain rings down on one State automatically it rises
upon another. “The State is fallen, long live the State” — the
furthest-going revolutionary anarchist cannot get away from that. On the
morrow of his successful revolution he would need to set about finding
means to protect his “anarchistic” notions: and would find himself
protecting his own interests with all the powers he could command, like
a vulgar Archist: formulating his Laws and maintaining his State, until
some franker Archist arrived to displace and supersede him.
The process seems so obvious, and the sequence is so unfailing, that one
wonders how the humanitarian fallacies gain the hearing they do, though
the wonder diminishes when one reflects how the major proportion of the
human species holds it a just grievance that we walk upon our feet and
not upon our heads, and that the tendency of falling objects is down and
not up. According, one might argue, it is because it is the human way
for men to push their interests outwards that humanitarians step forward
and modestly suggest that they should direct them backwards. Object that
outwards is the human way and the retort is that inwards is the divine
one — and better, higher. And there may be something too in a customary
confusing of an attitude which refuses to hold laws and interests sacred
(i.e., whole, unquestioned, untouched), and that which refuses to
respect the existence of forces, of which Laws are merely the outward
visible index. It is a very general error, but the anarchist is
especially the victim of it; the greater intelligence of the Archist
will understand that though laws considered as sacred are foolishness,
respect to any and every law is due for just the amount of retaliatory
force there may be involved in it if it be flouted. Respect for
“sanctity” and respect for “power” stand at opposite poles: the
respecter of the one is the verbalist, of the other — the Archist: the
egoist.
And there are the illusions about the ways of love: where one seems to
desire not one’s own interests but another’s. Again it is mere seeming:
the lover is a tyrant kept within bounds by the salutary fear that the
substance of his desire will slip from his grasp: whereas his paramount
interest is to retain his hold on it. The “exploitation” is nevertheless
as sure and as certain as that of the sorriest old rascal who ever
coined wealth out of misery. Mother-love, sex-love, with friendship
even, it is one and the same.
But whatever may be the illusions which lead him on, the anarchist’s
hopes are vain. Water will take to running uphill before men take
seriously towards anarchism and humanitarianism. The forces of their
being are set the other way. The will to create, to construct, to set
the pattern of their will on the world of events will never be
restrained by any spiritual embargo, save with those whose will would
count for little anyway. There is some substance, indeed, in the old
market-place cry about levelling “down” instead of “up”. The
embargoists, the anarchists, and all the saviours, are bent on
levelling-down: they are worrying about the few desiring too much:
whereas none can desire enough. The “problems” of the world — which are
no problems — will be solved by the “down-and-outs” themselves: by a
self-assertion which will scatter their present all too apparent
anarchism. When it becomes clear to them that it is only seemly to want
the earth, they will feel the stirrings of a power sufficient at least
for the acquisition of a few acres.