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Title: Anarchism
Author: Voltairine de Cleyre
Date: October 13, 1901
Language: en
Topics: anarchism, anarchism without adjectives, individualist, communism
Source: Retrieved on 11/29/17 from https://www.anarchisms.info/2016/08/29/voltairine-de-cleyre-anarchism-1901/

Voltairine de Cleyre

Anarchism

There are two spirits abroad in the world,—the spirit of Caution, the

spirit of Dare, the spirit of Quiescence, the spirit of Unrest; the

spirit of Immobility, the spirit of Change; the spirit of

Hold-fast-to-that-which-you-have, the spirit of

Let-go-and-fly-to-that-which-you-have-not; the spirit of the slow and

steady builder, careful of its labors, loath to part with any of its

achievements, wishful to keep, and unable to discriminate between what

is worth keeping and what is better cast aside, and the spirit of the

inspirational destroyer, fertile in creative fancies, volatile, careless

in its luxuriance of effort, inclined to cast away the good together

with the bad.

Society is a quivering balance, eternally struck afresh, between these

two. Those who look upon Man, as most Anarchists do, as a link in the

chain of evolution, see in these two social tendencies the sum of the

tendencies of individual men, which in common with the tendencies of all

organic life are the result of the action and counteraction of

inheritance and adaptation. Inheritance, continually tending to repeat

what has been, long, long after it is outgrown; adaptation continually

tending to break down forms. The same tendencies under other names are

observed in the inorganic world as well, and anyone who is possessed by

the modern scientific mania for Monism can easily follow out the line to

the vanishing point of human knowledge.

There has been, in fact, a strong inclination to do this among a portion

of the more educated Anarchists, who having been working men first and

Anarchists by reason of their instinctive hatred to the boss, later

became students and, swept away by their undigested science, immediately

conceived that it was necessary to fit their Anarchism to the

revelations of the microscope, else the theory might as well be given

up. I remember with considerable amusement a heated discussion some five

or six years since, wherein doctors and embryo doctors sought for a

justification of Anarchism in the development of the amoeba, while a

fledgling engineer searched for it in mathematical quantities.

Myself at one time asserted very stoutly that no one could be an

Anarchist and believe in God at the same time. Others assert as stoutly

that one cannot accept the spiritualist philosophy and be an Anarchist.

At present I hold with C. L. James, the most learned of American

Anarchists, that one’s metaphysical system has very little to do with

the matter. The chain of reasoning which once appeared so conclusive to

me, namely, that Anarchism being a denial of authority over the

individual could not co-exist with a belief in a Supreme Ruler of the

universe, is contradicted in the case of Leo Tolstoy, who comes to the

conclusion that none has a right to rule another just because of his

belief in God, just because he believes that all are equal children of

one father, and therefore none has a right to rule the other. I speak of

him because he is a familiar and notable personage, but there have

frequently been instances where the same idea has been worked out by a

whole sect of believers, especially in the earlier (and persecuted)

stages of their development.

It no longer seems necessary to me, therefore, that one should base his

Anarchism upon any particular world conception; it is a theory of the

relations due to man and comes as an offered solution to the societary

problems arising from the existence of these two tendencies of which I

have spoken. No matter where those tendencies come from, all alike

recognize them as existent; and however interesting the speculation,

however fascinating to lose oneself back, back in the molecular

storm-whirl wherein the figure of man is seen merely as a denser,

fiercer group, a livelier storm centre, moving among others, impinging

upon others, but nowhere separate, nowhere exempt from the same

necessity that acts upon all other centers of force,—it is by no means

necessary in order to reason oneself into Anarchism.

Sufficient are a good observant eye and a reasonably reflecting brain,

for anyone, lettered or unlettered, to recognize the desirability of

Anarchistic aims. This is not to say that increased knowledge will not

confirm and expand one’s application of this fundamental concept; (the

beauty of truth is that at every new discovery of fact we find how much

wider and deeper it is than we at first thought it). But it means that

first of all Anarchism is concerned with present conditions, and with

the very plain and common people; and is by no means a complex or

difficult proposition.

Anarchism, alone, apart from any proposed economic reform, is just the

latest reply out of many the past has given, to that daring, breakaway,

volatile, changeful spirit which is never content. The society of which

we are part puts certain oppressions upon us,—oppressions which have

arisen out of the very changes accomplished by this same spirit,

combined with the hard and fast lines of old habits acquired and fixed

before the changes thought of. Machinery, which as our Socialistic

comrades continually emphasize, has wrought a revolution in Industry, is

the creation of the Dare Spirit; it has fought its way against ancient

customs, privilege, and cowardice at every step, as the history of any

invention would show if traced backward through all its transformations.

And what is the result of it? That a system of working, altogether

appropriate to hand production and capable of generating no great

oppressions while industry remained in that state, has been stretched,

strained to fit production in mass, till we are reaching the bursting

point; once more the spirit of Dare must assert itself—claim new

freedoms, since the old ones are rendered null and void by the present

methods of production.

To speak in detail: in the old days of Master and Man—not so old but

what many of the older workingmen can recall the conditions, the

workshop was a fairly easy-going place where employer and employed

worked together, knew no class feelings, chummed it out of hours, as a

rule were not obliged to rush, and when they were, relied upon the

principle of common interest and friendship (not upon a slave-owner’s

power) for overtime assistance. The proportional profit on each man’s

labor may even have been in general higher, but the total amount

possible to be undertaken by one employer was relatively so small that

no tremendous aggregations of wealth could arise. To be an employer gave

no man power over another’s incomings and outgoings, neither upon his

speech while at work, nor to force him beyond endurance when busy, nor

to subject him to fines and tributes for undesired things, such as

ice-water, dirty spittoons, cups of undrinkable tea and the like; nor to

the unmentionable indecencies of the large factory. The individuality of

the workman was a plainly quantity: his life was his own; he could not

be locked in and driven to death, like a street-car horse, for the good

of the general public and the paramount importance of Society.

With the application of steam-power and the development of Machinery,

came these large groupings of workers, this subdivision of work, which

has made of the employer a man apart, having interests hostile to those

of his employes, living in another circle altogether, knowing nothing of

them but as so many units of power, to be reckoned with as he does his

machines, for the most part despising them, at his very best regarding

them as dependents whom he is bound in some respects to care for, as a

humane man cares for an old horse he cannot use. Such is his relation to

his employes; while to the general public he becomes simply an immense

cuttle-fish with tentacles reaching everywhere,—each tiny profit-sucking

mouth producing no great effect, but in aggregate drawing up such a body

of wealth as makes any declaration of equality or freedom between him

and the worker a thing to laugh at.

The time is come therefore when the spirit of Dare calls loud through

every factory and work-shop for a change in the relations of master and

man. There must be some arrangement possible which will preserve the

benefits of the new production and at the same time restore the

individual dignity of the worker,—give back the bold independence of the

old master of his trade, together with such added freedoms as may

properly accrue to him as his special advantage from society’s material

developments.

This is the particular message of Anarchism to the worker. It is not an

economic system; it does not come to you with detailed plans of how you,

the workers, are, to conduct industry; nor systemized methods of

exchange; nor careful paper organizations of “the administration of

things.” It simply calls upon the spirit of individuality to rise up

from its abasement, and hold itself paramount in no matter what economic

reorganization shall come about. Be men first of all, not held in

slavery by the things you make; let your gospel be, “Things for men, not

men for things.”

Socialism, economically considered, is a positive proposition for such

reorganization. It is an attempt, in the main, to grasp at those great

new material gains which have been the special creation of the last

forty or fifty years. It has not so much in view the reclamation and

further assertion of the personality of the worker as it has a just

distribution of products.

Now it is perfectly apparent that Anarchy, having to do almost entirely

with the relations of men in their thoughts and feelings, and not with

the positive organization of production and distribution, an Anarchist

needs to supplement his Anarchism by some economic propositions, which

may enable him to put in practical shape to himself and others this

possibility of independent manhood. That will be his test in choosing

any such proposition,—the measure in which individuality is secured. It

is not enough for him that a comfortable ease, a pleasant and

well-ordered routine, shall be secured; free play for the spirit of

change—that is his first demand.

Every Anarchist has this in common with every other Anarchist, that the

economic system must be subservient to this end; no system recommends

itself to him by the mere beauty and smoothness of its working; jealous

of the encroachments of the machine, he looks with fierce suspicion upon

an arithmetic with men for units, a society running in slots and

grooves, with the precision so beautiful to one in whom the love of

order is first, but which only makes him sniff—”Pfaugh! it smells of

machine oil.”

There are, accordingly, several economic schools among Anarchists; there

are Anarchist Individualists, Anarchist Mutualists, Anarchist Communists

and Anarchist Socialists. In times past these several schools have

bitterly denounced each other and mutually refused to recognize each

other as Anarchists at all. The more narrowminded on both sides still do

so; true, they do not consider it is narrow-mindedness, but simply a

firm and solid grasp of the truth, which does not permit of tolerance

towards error. This has been the attitude of the bigot in all ages, and

Anarchism no more than any other new doctrine has escaped its bigots.

Each of these fanatical adherents of either collectivism or

individualism believes that no Anarchism is possible without that

particular economic system as its guarantee, and is of course thoroughly

justified from his own standpoint. With the extension of what Comrade

Brown calls the New Spirit, however, this old narrowness is yielding to

the broader, kindlier and far more reasonable idea, that all these

economic conceptions may be experimented with, and there is nothing

un-Anarchistic about any of them until the element of compulsion enters

and obliges unwilling persons to remain in a community whose economic

arrangements they do not agree to. (When I say “do not agree to” I do

not mean that they have a mere distaste for, or that they think might

well be altered for some other preferable arrangement, but with which,

nevertheless, they quite easily put up, as two persons each living in

the same house and having different tastes in decoration, will submit to

some color of window shade or bit of bric-a-brac which he does not like

so well, but which, nevertheless, he cheerfully puts up with for the

satisfaction of being with his friend. I mean serious differences which

in their opinion threaten their essential liberties. I make this

explanation about trifles; because the objections which are raised to

the doctrine that men may live in society freely, almost always

degenerate into trivialities,—such as, “what would you do if two ladies

wanted the same hat?” etc. We do not advocate the abolition of common

sense, and every person of sense is willing to surrender his preferences

at times, provided he is not compelled to at all costs.)

Therefore I say that each group of persons acting socially in freedom

may choose any of the proposed systems, and be just as thorough-going

Anarchists as those who select another. If this standpoint be accepted,

we are rid of those outrageous excommunications which belong properly to

the Church of Rome, and which serve no purpose but to bring us into

deserved contempt with outsiders.

Furthermore, having accepted it from a purely theoretical process of

reasoning, I believe one is then in an attitude of mind to perceive

certain material factors in the problem which account for these

differences in proposed systems, and which even demand such differences,

so long as production is in its present state.

I shall now dwell briefly upon these various propositions, and explain,

as I go along, what the material factors are to which I have just

alluded. Taking the last first, namely, Anarchist Socialism,—its

economic program is the same as that of political Socialism, in its

entirety; —I mean before the working of practical politics has frittered

the Socialism away into a mere list of governmental ameliorations. Such

Anarchist Socialists hold that the State, the Centralized Government,

has been and ever will be the business agent of the property-owning

class; that it is an expression of a certain material condition purely,

and with the passing of that condition the State must also pass; that

Socialism, meaning the complete taking over of all forms of property

from the hands of men as the indivisible possession of Man, brings with

it as a logical, inevitable result the dissolution of the State. They

believe that every individual having an equal claim upon the social

production, the incentive to grabbing and holding being gone, crimes

(which are in nearly all cases the instinctive answer to some antecedent

denial of that claim to one’s share) will vanish, and with them the last

excuse for the existence of the State. They do not, as a rule, look

forward to any such transformations in the material aspect of society,

as some of the rest of us do. A Londoner once said to me that he

believed London would keep on growing, the flux and reflux of nations

keep on pouring through its serpentine streets, its hundred thousand

‘buses keep on jaunting just the same, and all that tremendous traffic

which fascinates and horrifies continue rolling like a great flood up

and down, up and down, like the sea-sweep,—after the realization of

Anarchism, as it does now. That Londoner’s name was John Turner; he

said, on the same occasion, that he believed thoroughly in the economics

of Socialism. Now this branch of the Anarchist party came out of the old

Socialist party, and originally represented the revolutionary wing of

that party, as opposed to those who took up the notion of using

politics. And I believe the material reason which accounts for their

acceptance of that particular economic scheme is this (of course it

applies to all European Socialists) that the social development of

Europe is a thing of long-continued history; that almost from time

immemorial there has been a recognized class struggle; that no workman

living, nor yet his father, nor his grandfather, nor his

great-grandfather has seen the land of Europe pass in vast blocks from

an unclaimed public inheritance into the hands of an ordinary individual

like himself, without a title or any distinguishing mark above himself,

as we in America have seen. The land and the land-holder have been to

him always unapproachable quantities,—a recognized source of oppression,

class, and class-possession.

Again, the industrial development in town and city— coming as a means of

escape from feudal oppression, but again bringing with it its own

oppressions, also with a long history of warfare behind it, has served

to bind the sense of class fealty upon the common people of the

manufacturing towns; so that blind, stupid, and Churchridden as they no

doubt are, there is a vague, dull, but very certainly existing feeling

that they must look for help in association together, and regard with

suspicion or indifference any proposition which proposes to help them by

helping their employers. Moreover, Socialism has been an ever recurring

dream through the long story of revolt in Europe; Anarchists, like

others, are born into it. It is not until they pass over seas, and come

in contact with other conditions, breathe the atmosphere of other

thoughts, that they are able to see other possibilities as well.

If I may venture, at this point, a criticism of this position of the

Anarchist Socialist, I would say that the great flaw in this conception

of the State is in supposing it to be of simple origin; the State is not

merely the tool of the governing classes; it has its root far down in

the religious development of human nature; and will not fall apart

merely through the abolition of classes and property. There is other

work to be done. As to the economic program, I shall criticise that,

together with all the other propositions, when I sum up.

Anarchist Communism is a modification, rather an evolution, of Anarchist

Socialism. Most Anarchist Communists, I believe, do look forward to

great changes in the distribution of people upon the earth’s surface

through the realization of Anarchism. Most of them agree that the

opening up of the land together with the free use of tools would lead to

a breaking up of these vast communities called cities, and the formation

of smaller groups or communes which shall be held together by a free

recognition of common interests only.

While Socialism looks forward to a further extension of the modern

triumph of Commerce—which is that it has brought the products of the

entire earth to your door-step—free Communism looks upon such a fever of

exportation and importation as an unhealthy development, and expects

rather a more self-reliant development of home resources, doing away

with the mass of supervision required for the systematic conduct of such

world exchange. It appeals to the plain sense of the workers, by

proposing that they who now consider themselves helpless dependents upon

the boss’s ability to give them a job, shall constitute themselves

independent producing groups, take the materials, do the work (they do

that now), deposit the products in the warehouses, taking what they want

for themselves, and letting others take the balance. To do this no

government, no employer, no money system is necessary. There is only

necessary a decent regard for one’s own and one’s fellow-worker’s

self-hood. It is not likely, indeed it is devoutly to be hoped, that no

such large aggregations of men as now assemble daily in mills and

factories, will ever come together by mutual desire. (A factory is a

hot-bed for all that is vicious in human nature, and largely because of

its crowding only.)

The notion that men cannot work together unless they have a

driving-master to take a percentage of their product, is contrary both

to good sense and observed fact. As a rule bosses simply make confusion

worse confounded when they attempt to mix in a workman’s snarls, as

every mechanic has had practical demonstration of; and as to social

effort, why men worked in common while they were monkeys yet; if you

don’t believe it, go and watch the monkeys. They don’t surrender their

individual freedom, either.

In short, the real workmen will make their own regulations, decide when

and where and how things shall be done. It is not necessary that the

projector of an Anarchist Communist society shall say in what manner

separate industries shall be conducted, nor do they presume to. He

simply conjures the spirit of Dare and Do in the plainest workmen—says

to them: “It is you who know how to mine, how to dig, how to cut; you

will know how to organize your work without a dictator; we cannot tell

you, but we have full faith that you will find the way yourselves. You

will never be free men until you acquire that same self-faith.”

As to the problem of the exact exchange of equivalents which so frets

the reformers of other schools, to him it does not exist. So there is

enough, who cares? The sources of wealth remain indivisible forever; who

cares if one has a little more or less, so all have enough? Who cares if

something goes to waste? Let it waste. The rotted apple fertilizes the

ground as well as if it had comforted the animal economy first. And,

indeed, you who worry so much about system and order and adjustment of

production to consumption, you waste more human energy in making your

account than the precious calculation is worth. Hence money with all its

retinue of complications and trickeries is abolished.

Small, independent, self-resourceful, freely cooperating communes—this

is the economic ideal which is accepted by most of the Anarchists of the

Old World to-day.

As to the material factor which developed this ideal among Europeans, it

is the recollection and even some still remaining vestiges of the

mediaeval village commune —those oases in the great Sahara of human

degradation presented in the history of the Middle Ages, when the

Catholic Church stood triumphant upon Man in the dust. Such is the ideal

glamored with the dead gold of a sun which has set, which gleams through

the pages of Morris and Kropotkin. We in America never knew the village

commune. White Civilization struck our shores in a broad tide-sheet and

swept over the country inclusively; among us was never seen the little

commune growing up from a state of barbarism independently, out of

primary industries, and maintaining itself within itself. There was no

gradual change from the mode of life of the native people to our own;

there was a wiping out and a complete transplantation of the latest form

of European civilization. The idea of the little commune, therefore,

comes instinctively to the Anarchists of Europe,—particularly the

continental ones; with them it is merely the conscious development of a

submerged instinct. With Americans it is an importation.

I believe that most Anarchist Communists avoid the blunder of the

Socialists in regarding the State as the offspring of material

conditions purely, though they lay great stress upon its being the tool

of Property, and contend that in one form or another the State will

exist so long as there is property at all.

I pass to the extreme Individualists,—those who hold to the tradition of

political economy, and are firm in the idea that the system of employer

and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other essential

institutions of Commercialism, centering upon private property, are in

themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of

the State. Their chief economic propositions are: land to be held by

individuals or companies for such time and in such allotments as they

use only; redistribution to take place as often as the members of the

community shall agree; what constitutes use to be decided by each

community, presumably in town meeting assembled; disputed cases to be

settled by a so-called free jury to be chosen by lot out of the entire

group; members not coinciding in the decisions of the group to betake

themselves to outlying lands not occupied, without let or hindrance from

any one.

Money to represent all staple commodities, to be issued by whomsoever

pleases; naturally, it would come to individuals depositing their

securities with banks and accepting bank notes in return; such bank

notes representing the labor expended in production and being issued in

sufficient quantity, (there being no limit upon any one’s starting in

the business, whenever interest began to rise more banks would be

organized, and thus the rate per cent would be constantly checked by

competition), exchange would take place freely, commodities would

circulate, business of all kinds would be stimulated, and, the

government privilege being taken away from inventions, industries would

spring up at every turn, bosses would be hunting men rather than men

bosses, wages would rise to the full measure of the individual

production, and forever remain there. Property, real property, would at

last exist, which it does not at the present day, because no man gets

what he makes.

The charm in this program is that it proposes no sweeping changes in our

daily retinue; it does not bewilder us as more revolutionary

propositions do. Its remedies are self-acting ones; they do not depend

upon conscious efforts of individuals to establish justice and build

harmony; competition in freedom is the great automatic valve which opens

or closes as demand increase or diminish, and all that is necessary is

to let well enough alone and not attempt to assist it.

It is sure that nine Americans in ten who have never heard of any of

these programs before, will listen with far more interest and approval

to this than to the others. The material reason which explains this

attitude of mind is very evident. In this country outside of the Negro

question we have never had the historic division of classes; we are just

making that history now; we have never felt the need of the associative

spirit of workman with workman, because in our society it has been the

individual that did things; the workman of to-day was the employer

to-morrow; vast opportunities lying open to him in the undeveloped

territory, he shouldered his tools and struck out single-handed for

himself. Even now, fiercer and fiercer though the struggle is growing,

tighter and tighter though the workman is getting cornered, the line of

division between class and class is constantly being broken, and the

first motto of the American is “the Lord helps him who helps himself.”

Consequently this economic program, whose key-note is “let alone,”

appeals strongly to the traditional sympathies and life habits of a

people who have themselves seen an almost unbounded patrimony swept up,

as a gambler sweeps his stakes, by men who played with them at school or

worked with them in one shop a year or ten years before.

This particular branch of the Anarchist party does not accept the

Communist position that Government arises from Property; on the

contrary, they hold Government responsible for the denial of real

property (viz.: to the producer the exclusive possession of what he has

produced). They lay more stress upon its metaphysical origin in the

authority-creating Fear in human nature. Their attack is directed

centrally upon the idea of Authority; thus the material wrongs seem to

flow from the spiritual error (if I may venture the word without fear of

misconstruction), which is precisely the reverse of the Socialistic

view.

Truth lies not “between the two,” but in a synthesis of the two

opinions.

Anarchist Mutualism is a modification of the program of Individualism,

laying more emphasis upon organization, co-operation and free federation

of the workers. To these the trade union is the nucleus of the free

cooperative group, which will obviate the necessity of an employer,

issue time-checks to its members, take charge of the finished product,

exchange with different trade groups for their mutual advantage through

the central federation, enable its members to utilize their credit, and

likewise insure them against loss. The mutualist position on the land

question is identical with that of the Individualists, as well as their

understanding of the State.

The material factor which accounts for such differences as there are

between Individualists and Mutualists, is, I think, the fact that the

first originated in the brains of those who, whether workmen or business

men, lived by so-called independent exertion. Josiah Warren, though a

poor man, lived in an Individualist way. and made his free-life social

experiment in small country settlements, far removed from the great

organized industries. Tucker also, though a city man, has never had

personal association with such industries. They had never known directly

the oppressions of the large factory, nor mingled with workers’

associations. The Mutualists had; consequently their leaning towards a

greater Communism. Dyer D. Lum spent the greater part of his life in

building up workmen’s unions, himself being a hand worker, a book-binder

by trade.

I have now presented the rough skeleton of four different economic

schemes entertained by Anarchists. Remember that the point of agreement

in all is: no compulsion. Those who favor one method have no intention

of forcing it upon those who favor another, so long as equal tolerance

is exercised toward themselves.

Remember, also, that none of these schemes is proposed for its own sake,

but because through it, its projectors believe, liberty may be best

secured. Every Anarchist, as an Anarchist, would be perfectly willing to

surrender his own scheme directly, if he saw that another worked better.

For myself, I believe that all these and many more could be

advantageously tried in different localities; I would see the instincts

and habits of the people express themselves in a free choice in every

community; and I am sure that distinct environments would call out

distinct adaptations.

Personally, while I recognize that liberty would be greatly extended

under any of these economies, I frankly confess that none of them

satisfies me.

Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and

administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly

consistent with ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting

upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all

compatible with my notions of freedom.

My ideal would be a condition in which all natural resources would be

forever free to all, and the worker individually able to produce for

himself sufficient for all his vital needs, if he so chose, so that he

need not govern his working or not working by the times and seasons of

his fellows. I think that time may come; but it will only be through the

development of the modes of production and the taste of the people.

Meanwhile we all cry with one voice for the freedom to try.

Are these all the aims of Anarchism? They are just the beginning. They

are an outline of what is demanded for the material producer. If as a

worker, you think no further than how to free yourself from the horrible

bondage of capitalism, then that is the measure of Anarchism for you.

But you yourself put the limit there, if there it is put. Immeasurably

deeper, immeasurably higher, dips and soars the soul which has come out

of its casement of custom and cowardice, and dared to claim its Self.

Ah, once to stand unflinchingly on the brink of that dark gulf of

passions and desires, once at last to send a bold, straight-driven gaze

down into the volcanic Me, once, and in that once, and in that once

forever, to throw off the command to cover and flee from the knowledge

of that abyss,—nay, to dare it to hiss and seethe if it will, and make

us writhe and shiver with its force! Once and forever to realize that

one is not a bundle of well-regulated little reasons bound up in the

front room of the brain to be sermonized and held in order with

copy-book maxims or moved and stopped by a syllogism, but a bottomless,

bottomless depth of all strange sensations, a rocking sea of feeling

wherever sweep strong storms of unaccountable hate and rage, invisible

contortions of disappointment, low ebbs of meanness, quakings and

shudderings of love that drives to madness and will not be controlled,

hungerings and meanings and sobbing that smite upon the inner ear, now

first bent to listen, as if all the sadness of the sea and the wailing

of the great pine forests of the North had met to weep together there in

that silence audible to you alone. To look down into that, to know the

blackness, the midnight, the dead ages in oneself, to feel the jungle

and the beast within,—and the swamp and the slime, and the desolate

desert of the heart’s despair—to see, to know, to feel to the

uttermost,—and then to look at one’s fellow, sitting across from one in

the street-car, so decorous, so well got up, so nicely combed and

brushed and oiled and to wonder what lies beneath that commonplace

exterior,—to picture the cavern in him which somewhere far below has a

narrow gallery running into your own—to imagine the pain that racks him

to the finger-tips perhaps while he wears that placid ironed-shirt-front

countenance—to conceive how he too shudders at himself and writhes and

flees from the lava of his heart and aches in his prison-house not

daring to see himself—to draw back respectfully from the Self-gate of

the plainest, most unpromising creature, even from the most debased

criminal, because one knows the nonentity and the criminal in oneself—to

spare all condemnation (how much more trial and sentence) because one

knows the stuff of which man is made and recoils at nothing since all is

in himself,—this is what Anarchism may mean to you. It means that to me.

And then, to turn cloudward, starward, skyward, and let the dreams rush

over one—no longer awed by outside powers of any order—recognizing

nothing superior to oneself—painting, painting endless pictures,

creating unheard symphonies that sing dream sounds to you alone,

extending sympathies to the dumb brutes as equal brothers, kissing the

flowers as one did when a child, letting oneself go free, go free beyond

the bounds of what fear and custom call the “possible,”—this too

Anarchism may mean to you, if you dare to apply it so. And if you do

some day,—if sitting at your work-bench, you see a vision of surpassing

glory, some picture of that golden time when there shall be no prisons

on the earth, nor hunger, nor houselessness, nor accusation, nor

judgment, and hearts open as printed leaves, and candid as fearlessness,

if then you look across at your lowbrowed neighbor, who sweats and

smells and curses at his toil,—remember that as you do not know his

depth neither do you know his height. He too might dream if the yoke of

custom and law and dogma were broken from him. Even now you know not

what blind, bound, motionless chrysalis is working there to prepare its

winged thing.

Anarchism means freedom to the soul as to the body,— in every

aspiration, every growth.

A few words as to the methods. In times past Anarchists have excluded

each other on these grounds also; revolutionists contemptuously said

“Quaker” of peace men; “savage Communists” anathematized the Quakers in

return.

This too is passing. I say this: all methods are to the individual

capacity and decision.

There is Tolstoy,—Christian, non-resistant, artist. His method is to

paint pictures of society as it is, to show the brutality of force and

the uselessness of it; to preach the end of government through the

repudiation of all military force. Good! I accent it in its entirety. It

fits his character, it fits his ability. Let us be glad that he works

so.

There is John Most—old, work-worn, with the weight of prison years upon

him,—yet fiercer, fiercer, bitterer in his denunciations of the ruling

class than would require the energy of a dozen younger men to

utter—going down the last hills of life, rousing the consciousness of

wrong among his fellows as he goes. Good! That consciousness must be

awakened. Long may that fiery tongue yet speak.

There is Benjamin Tucker—cool, self-contained, critical,—sending his

fine hard shafts among foes and friends with icy impartiality, hitting

swift and cutting keen,—and ever ready to nail a traitor. Holding to

passive resistance as most effective, ready to change it whenever he

deems it wise. That suits him; in his field he is alone, invaluable.

And there is Peter Kropotkin appealing to the young, and looking with

sweet, warm, eager eyes into every colonizing effort, and hailing with a

child’s enthusiasm the uprisings of the workers, and believing in

revolution with his whole soul. Him too we thank.

And there is George Brown preaching peaceable expropriation through the

federated unions of the workers; and this is good. It is his best place;

he is at home there; he can accomplish most in his own chosen field.

And over there in his coffin cell in Italy, lies the man whose method

was to kill a king, and shock the nations into a sudden consciousness of

the hollowness of their law and order. Him too, him and his act, without

reserve I accept, and bend in silent acknowledgement of the strength of

the man.

For there are some whose nature it is to think and plead, and yield and

yet return to the address, and so make headway in the minds of their

fellowmen; and there are others who are stern and still, resolute,

implacable as Judah’s dream of God;—and those men strike —strike once

and have ended. But the blow resounds across the world. And as on a

night when the sky is heavy with storm, some sudden great white flare

sheets across it, and every object starts sharply out, so in the flash

of Bresci’s pistol shot the whole world for a moment saw the tragic

figure of the Italian people, starved, stunted, crippled, huddled,

degraded, murdered; and at the same moment that their teeth chattered

with fear, they came and asked the Anarchists to explain themselves. And

hundreds of thousands of people read more in those few days than they

had ever read of the idea before.

Ask a method? Do you ask Spring her method? Which is more necessary, the

sunshine or the rain? They are contradictory—yes; they destroy each

other—yes, but from this destruction the flowers result.

Each choose that method which expresses your selfhood best, and condemn

no other man because he expresses his Self otherwise.