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Title: Anarchy Author: Errico Malatesta Date: 1891 Language: en Topics: classical, introductory Source: Retrieved on December 9, 2009 from http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/1598/Errico-Malatesta--Anarchy Notes: Freedom Press 1974, 1994. ISBN 0 900384 74 3. LâAnarchia was written in 1891, appeared in English translation in the monthly journal Freedom (September 1891âJune 1892) and was reprinted as a pamphlet by Freedom Press in 1892. **On the translation:** This is a new 1973, 1994 translation from the Italian original by Vernon Richards, that, according to the translator, âmakes no âcutsâ in the original text and seeks to render Malatestaâs thought and way of expressing himself as literally as possible.â
The word Anarchy comes from the Greek and its literal meaning is without
government: the condition of a people who live without a constituted
authority, without government.
Before such an organisation had begun to be considered both possible and
desirable by a whole school of thinkers and accepted as the objective of
a party, which has now become one of the most important factors in the
social struggles of our time, the word anarchy was universally used in
the sense of disorder and confusion; and it is to this day used in that
sense by the uninformed as well as by political opponents with an
interest in distorting the truth.
We will not enter into a philological discussion, since the question is
historical and not philological. The common interpretation of the word
recognises its true and etymological meaning; but it is a derivative of
that meaning due to the prejudiced view that government was a necessary
organ of social life, and that consequently a society without government
would be at the mercy of disorder, and fluctuate between the unbridled
arrogance of some, and the blind vengeance of others.
The existence of this prejudice and its influence on the publicâs
definition of the word anarchy, is easily explained. Man, like all
living beings, adapts and accustoms himself to the conditions under
which he lives, and passes on acquired habits. Thus, having being born
and bred in bondage, when the descendants of a long line of slaves
started to think, they believed that slavery was an essential condition
of life, and freedom seemed impossible to them. Similarly, workers who
for centuries were obliged, and therefore accustomed, to depend for
work, that is bread, on the goodwill of the master, and to see their
lives always at the mercy of the owners of the land and of capital,
ended by believing that it is the master who feeds them, and ingenuously
ask one how would it be possible to live if there were no masters.
In the same way, someone whose legs had been bound from birth but had
managed nevertheless to walk as best he could, might attribute his
ability to move to those very bonds which in fact serve only to weaken
and paralyse the muscular energy of his legs.
If to the normal effects of habit is then added the kind of education
offered by the master, the priest, the teacher, etc., who have a vested
interest in preaching that the masters and the government are necessary;
if one were to add the judge and the policeman who are at pains to
reduce to silence those who might think differently and be tempted to
propagate their ideas, then it will not be difficult to understand how
the prejudiced view of the usefulness of, and the necessity for, the
master and the government took root in the unsophisticated minds of the
labouring masses.
Just imagine if the doctor were to expound to our fictional man with the
bound legs a theory, cleverly illustrated with a thousand invented cases
to prove that if his legs were freed he would be unable to walk and
would not live, then that man would ferociously defend his bonds and
consider as his enemy anyone who tried to remove them.
So, since it was thought that government was necessary and that without
government there could only be disorder and confusion, it was natural
and logical that anarchy, which means absence of government, should
sound like absence of order.
Nor is the phenomenon without parallel in the history of words. In times
and in countries where the people believed in the need for government by
one man (monarchy), the word republic, which is government by many, was
in fact used in the sense of disorder and confusion â and this meaning
is still to be found in the popular language of almost all countries.
Change opinion, convince the public that government is not only
unnecessary, but extremely harmful, and then the word anarchy, just
because it means absence of government, will come to mean for everybody:
natural order, unity of human needs and the interests of all, complete
freedom within complete solidarity.
Those who say therefore that the anarchists have badly chosen their name
because it is wrongly interpreted by the masses and lends itself to
wrong interpretations, are mistaken. The error does not come from the
word but from the thing; and the difficulties anarchists face in their
propaganda do not depend on the name they have taken, but on the fact
that their concept clashes with all the publicâs long established
prejudices on the function of government, or the State as it is also
called.
Before going on, it would be as well to make oneself clear on this word
State, which in our opinion is the cause of the real misunderstanding.
Anarchists, including this writer, have used the word State, and still
do, to mean the sum total of the political, legislative, judiciary,
military and financial institutions through which the management of
their own affairs, the control over their personal behaviour, the
responsibility for their personal safety, are taken away from the people
and entrusted to others who, by usurpation or delegation, are vested
with the powers to make the laws for everything and everybody, and to
oblige the people to observe them, if need be, by the use of collective
force.
In this sense the word State means government, or to put it another way,
it is the impersonal abstract expression of that state of affairs,
personified by government: and therefore the terms abolition of the
State, Society without the State, etc., describe exactly the concept
which anarchists seek to express, of the destruction of all political
order based on authority, and the creation of a society of free and
equal members based on a harmony of interests and the voluntary
participation of everybody in carrying out social responsibilities.
But the word has many other meanings, some of which lend themselves to
misunderstanding, especially when used with people whose unhappy social
situation has not given them the opportunity to accustom themselves to
the subtle distinctions of scientific language, or worse still, when the
word is used with political opponents who are in bad faith and who want
to create confusion and not understanding.
Thus the word State is often used to describe a special kind of society,
a particular human collectivity gathered together in a particular
territory and making up what is called a social unit irrespective of the
way the members of the said collectivity are grouped or of the state of
relations between them. It is also used simply as a synonym for society.
And because of these meanings given to the word State, opponents
believe, or rather they pretend to believe, that anarchists mean to
abolish every social bond, all collective work, and to condemn all men
to living in a state of isolation, which is worse than living in
conditions of savagery.
The word State is also used to mean the supreme administration of a
country: the central power as opposed to the provincial or communal
authority. And for this reason others believe that anarchists want a
simple territorial decentralisation with the governmental principle left
intact, and they thus confuse anarchism with cantonalism and
communalism.
Finally, State means the condition of being, a way of social life, etc.
And therefore we say, for instance, that the economic state of the
working class must be changed or that the anarchist state is the only
social state based on the principle of solidarity, and other similar
phrases which, coming from us who, in another context, talk of wanting
to abolish the State can, at first hearing, seem fantastic or
contradictory.
For these reasons we believe it would be better to use expressions such
as abolition of the State as little as possible, substituting for it the
clearer and more concrete term abolition of government.
Anyway, it is what we shall do in the course of this pamphlet.
We said that anarchy is society without government. But is the abolition
of governments possible, desirable or foreseeable?
Let us see.
What is government? The metaphysical tendency[1] which in spite of the
blows it has suffered at the hands of positive science still has a
strong hold on the minds of people today, so much so that many look upon
government as a moral institution with a number of given qualities of
reason, justice, equity which are independent of the people who are in
office. For them government, and in a more vague way, the State, is the
abstract social power; it is the ever abstract representative of the
general interest; it is the expression of the rights of all considered
as the limits of the rights of each individual. And this way of
conceiving of government is encouraged by the interested parties who are
concerned that the principle of authority should be safeguarded and that
it should always survive the shortcomings and the mistakes committed by
those who follow one another in the exercise of power.
For us, government is made up of all the governors; and the governors â
kings, presidents, ministers, deputies, etc. â are those who have the
power to make laws regulating inter-human relations and to see that they
are carried out; to levy taxes and to collect them; to impose military
conscription; to judge and punish those who contravene the laws; to
subject private contracts to rules, scrutiny and sanctions; to
monopolise some branches of production and some public services or, if
they so wish, all production and all public services; to promote or to
hinder the exchange of goods; to wage war or make peace with the
governors of other countries; to grant or withdraw privileges ... and so
on. In short, the governors are those who have the power, to a greater
or lesser degree, to make use of the social power, that is of the
physical, intellectual and economic power of the whole community, in
order to oblige everybody to carry out their wishes. And this power, in
our opinion, constitutes the principle of government, of authority.
But what reason is there for the existence of government? Why give up
oneâs personal liberty and initiative to a few individuals? Why give
them this power to take over willy nilly the collective strength to use
as they wish? Are they so exceptionally gifted as to be able to
demonstrate with some show of reason their ability to replace the mass
of the people and to safeguard the interests, all the interests, of
everybody better than the interested parties themselves? Are they
infallible and incorruptible to the point that one could, with some
semblance of prudence, entrust the fate of each and all to their
knowledge and to their goodness?
And even if men of infinite goodness and knowledge existed, and even
supposing, what has never been observed in history, that governmental
power were to rest in the hands of the most able and kindest among us,
would government office add anything to their beneficial potential? Or
would it instead paralyse and destroy it by reason of the necessity men
in government have of dealing with so many matters which they do not
understand, and above all of wasting their energy keeping themselves in
power, their friends happy, and holding in check the malcontents as well
as subduing the rebels?
Furthermore, however good or bad, knowledgeable or stupid the governors
may be, who will appoint them to their exalted office? Do they impose
themselves by right of conquest, war or revolution? But in that case
what guarantee has the public that they will be inspired by the general
good? Then it is a clear question of a coup dâĂ©tat and if the victims
are dissatisfied the only recourse open to them is that of force to
shake off the yoke. Are they selected from one particular class or
party? In which case the interests and ideas of that class or party will
certainly triumph, and the will and the interests of the others will be
sacrificed. Are they elected by universal suffrage? But in that case the
only criterion is in numbers, which certainly are proof neither of
reason, justice nor ability. Those elected would be those most able to
deceive the public; and the minority, which can well be the other half
minus one, would be sacrificed. And all this without taking into account
that experience has demonstrated the impossibility of devising an
electoral machine where the successful candidates are at least the real
representatives of the majority.
Many and varied are the theories with which some have sought to explain
and justify the existence of government. Yet all are based on the
prejudiced view, whether admitted or not, that men have conflicting
interests, and that an external, higher, authority is needed to oblige
one section of the people to respect the interests of the other,
prescribing and imposing that rule of conduct by which opposing
interests can best be resolved, and by which each individual will
achieve the maximum satisfaction with the least possible sacrifice.
The Authoritarian theoreticians ask: if the interests, tendencies and
aspirations of an individual are at odds with those of another or even
those of society as a whole, who will have the right and the power to
oblige each to respect the otherâs interests? Who will be able to
prevent an individual from violating the general will? They say that the
freedom of each is limited by the freedom of others; but who will
establish these limits and who will see to it that they are respected?
The natural antagonisms of interests and temperament create the need for
government and justify authority which is a moderating influence in the
social struggle, and defines the limits of individual rights and duties.
This is the theory; but if theories are to be valid they must be based
on facts and explain them â and one knows only too well that in social
economy too often are theories invented to justify the facts, that is to
defend privilege and make it palatable to those who are its victims. Let
us instead look at the facts.
Throughout history, just as in our time, government is either the
brutal, violent, arbitrary rule of the few over the many or it is an
organised instrument to ensure that dominion and privilege will be in
the hands of those who by force, by cunning, or by inheritance, have
cornered all the means of life, first and foremost the land, which they
make use of to keep the people in bondage and to make them work for
their benefit.
There are two ways of oppressing men: either directly by brute force, by
physical violence; or indirectly by denying them the means of life and
thus reducing them to a state of surrender. The former is at the root of
power, that is of political privilege; the latter was the origin of
property, that is of economic privilege. Men can also be suppressed by
working on their intelligence and their feelings, which constitutes
religious or âuniversitarianâ power; but just as the spirit does not
exist except as the resultant of material forces, so a lie and the
organisms set up to propagate it have no raison dâĂȘtre except in so far
as they are the result of political and economic privileges, and a means
to defend and to consolidate them.
In sparsely populated primitive societies with uncomplicated social
relations, in any situation which prevented the establishment of habits,
customs of solidarity, or which destroyed existing ones and established
the domination of man by man â the two powers, political and economic,
were to be found in the same hands, which could even be those of a
single man. Those who by force have defeated and intimidated others,
dispose of the persons and the belongings of the defeated and oblige
them to serve and to work for them and obey their will in all respects.
They are at the same time the landowners, kings, judges and
executioners.
But with the growth of society, with increasing needs, with more complex
social relations, the continued existence of such a despotism became
untenable. The rulers, for security reasons, for convenience and because
of it being impossible to act otherwise, find themselves obliged on the
one hand to have the support of a privileged class, that is of a number
of individuals with a common interest in ruling, and on the other to
leave it to each individual to fend for himself as best he can,
reserving for themselves supreme rule, which is the right to exploit
everybody as much as possible, and is the way to satisfy the vanity of
those who want to give the orders. Thus, in the shadow of power, for its
protection and support, often unbeknown to it, and for reasons beyond
its control, private wealth, that is the owning class, is developed. And
the latter, gradually concentrating in their hands the means of
production, the real sources of life, agriculture, industry, barter,
etc., end up by establishing their own power which, by reason of the
superiority of its means, and the wide variety of interests that it
embraces, always ends by more or less openly subjecting the political
power, which is the government, and making it into its own gendarme.
This phenomenon has occurred many times in history. Whenever as a result
of invasion or any military enterprise physical, brutal force has gained
the upper hand in society, the conquerors have shown a tendency to
concentrate government and property in their own hands. But always the
governmentâs need to win the support of a powerful class, and the
demands of production, the impossibility of controlling and directing
everything, have resulted in the re-establishment of private property,
the division of the two powers, and with it the dependence in fact of
those who control force â governments â on those who control the very
source of force â the property-owners. The governor inevitably ends by
becoming the ownersâ gendarme.
But never has this phenomenon been more accentuated than in modern
times. The development of production, the vast expansion of commerce,
the immeasurable power assumed by money, and all the economic questions
stemming from the discovery of America, from the invention of machines,
etc., have guaranteed this supremacy to the capitalist class which, no
longer content with enjoying the support of the government, demanded
that government should arise from its own ranks. A government which owed
its origin to the right of conquest (divine right as the kings and their
priests called it) though subjected by existing circumstances to the
capitalist class, went on maintaining a proud and contemptuous attitude
towards its now wealthy former slaves, and had pretensions to
independence of domination. That government was indeed the defender, the
property ownersâ gendarme, but the kind of gendarmes who think they are
somebody, and behave in an arrogant manner towards the people they have
to escort and defend, when they donât rob or kill them at the next
street corner; and the capitalist class got rid of it, or is in the
process of so, doing by means fair or foul, and replacing it by a
government of its own choosing, consisting of members of its own class,
at all times under its control and specifically organised to defend that
class against any possible demands by the disinherited. The modern
Parliamentary system begins here.
Today, government, consisting of property owners and people dependent on
them, is entirely at the disposal of the owners, so much so that the
richest among them disdain to take part in it. Rothschild does not need
to be either a Deputy or a Minister; it suffices that Deputies and
Ministers take their orders from him.
In many countries workers nominally have a more or less important say in
the election of the government. It is a concession made by the
bourgeoisie, both to avail itself of popular support in its struggle
against the monarchical and aristocratic power as well as to dissuade
the people from thinking of emancipation by giving them the illusion of
sovereignty. But whether the bourgeoisie foresaw it or not when they
first gave the people the vote, the fact is that that right proved to be
entirely derisory, and served only to consolidate the power of the
bourgeoisie while giving the most active section of the working class
false hopes of achieving power. Even with universal suffrage â and we
could well say even more so with universal suffrage â the government
remained the bourgeoisieâs servant and gendarme. For were it to be
otherwise with the government hinting that it might take up a hostile
attitude, or that democracy could ever be anything but a pretence to
deceive the people, the bourgeoisie, feeling its interests threatened,
would be quick to react, and would make use of all the influence and
force at its disposal, by reason of its wealth, to recall the government
to its proper place as the bourgeoisieâs gendarme.
The basic function of government everywhere in all times, whatever title
it adopts and whatever its origin and organisation may be, is always
that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, of defending the
oppressors and the exploiters: and its principal, characteristic and
indispensable, instruments are the police agent and the tax-collector,
the soldier and the gaoler â to whom must be invariably added the trader
in lies, be he priest or schoolmaster, remunerated or protected by the
government to enslave minds and make them docilely accept the yoke.
It is true that to these basic functions, to these essential organs of
government, other functions, other organs have been added in the course
of history. Let us even also admit that never or hardly ever has a
government existed in any country with a degree of civilisation which
did not combine with its oppressive and plundering activities others
which were useful or indispensable to social life. But this does not
detract from the fact that government is by its nature oppressive and
plundering, and that it is in origin and by its attitude, inevitably
inclined to defend and strengthen the dominant class; indeed it confirms
and aggravates the position.
In fact government takes the trouble to protect, more or less, the lives
of citizens against direct and violent attack; it recognises and
legalises a number of basic rights and duties as well as usages and
customs without which social life would not be possible; it organises
and manages a number of public services, such as the post, roads,
cleansing and refuse disposal, land improvement and conservation, etc.;
it promotes orphanages and hospitals, and often it condescends to pose
as the protector and benefactor of the poor and the weak. But it is
enough to understand how and why it carries out these functions to find
the practical evidence that whatever governments do is always motivated
by the desire to dominate, and is always geared to defending, extending
and perpetuating its privileges and those of the class of which it is
both the representative and defender.
A government cannot maintain itself for long without hiding its true
nature behind a pretence of general usefulness; it cannot impose respect
for the lives of privileged people if it does not appear to demand
respect for all human life, it cannot impose acceptance of the
privileges of the few if it does not pretend to be the guardian of the
rights of all. âThe lawâ â says Kropotkin, and by which is meant those
who have made the law, that is, the government â âhas used Manâs social
feelings to get passed not only the moral precepts which were acceptable
to Man, but also orders which were useful only to the minority of
exploiters against whom he would have rebelled.â
A government cannot want society to break up, for it would mean that it
and the dominant class would be deprived of the sources of exploitation;
nor can it leave society to maintain itself without official
intervention, for then the people would soon realise that government
serves only to defend the property owners who keep them in conditions of
starvation, and they would hasten to rid themselves of both the
government and the property owners.
Today, governments, faced with the pressing and threatening demands of
the workers, show a tendency to arbitrate in the dealings between
masters and workers; in this way they seek to sidetrack the workersâ
movement and, with a few deceptive reforms, to prevent the poor from
taking for themselves what is their due, that is a part of wellbeing
equal to that enjoyed by others.
Furthermore, one must bear in mind that on the one hand the bourgeoisie
(the property owners) are always at war among themselves and gobbling
each other up and that on the other hand the government, though
springing from the bourgeoisie and its servant and protector, tends, as
with every servant and every protector, to achieve its own emancipation
and to dominate whoever it protects. Thus the game of the swings, the
manoeuvres, the concessions and withdrawals, the attempts to find allies
among the people against the conservatives, and among the conservatives
against the people, which is the science of the governors, and which
blinds the ingenuous and the phlegmatic who always wait for salvation to
come down to them from above.
Despite all this, the nature of government does not change. If it
assumes the role of controller and guarantor of the rights and duties of
everyone, it perverts the sentiment of justice; it qualifies as a crime
and punishes every action which violates or threatens the privileges of
the rulers and the property owners, and declares as just and legal the
most outrageous exploitation of the poor, the slow and sustained
material and moral assassination perpetrated by those who have, at the
expense of those who have not. If it appoints itself as the
administrator of public services, again, as always, it looks after the
interests of the rulers and the property owners and does not attend to
those of the working people except where it has to because the people
agree to pay. If it assumes the role of teacher, it hampers the
propagation of truth and tends to prepare the minds and the hearts of
the young to become either ruthless tyrants or docile slaves, according
to the class to which they belong. In the hands of government everything
becomes a means for exploitation, everything becomes a policing
institution, useful only for keeping the people in check.
And it had to be thus. For if human existence is a struggle between men,
there must obviously be winners and losers, and government, which is the
prize in the struggle and a means for guaranteeing to the victors the
results of victory and for perpetuating them, will certainly never fall
into the hands of those who lose, whether the struggle is based on
physical force, is intellectual, or is in the field of economics. And
those who have struggled to win, that is, to secure better conditions
for themselves than others enjoy, and to win privileges and power, will
certainly not use it to defend the rights of the vanquished and set
limits on their own power as well as that of their friends and
supporters.
The government, or as some call it, the justiciary State, as moderator
in the social struggle and the impartial administrator of the public
interest, is a lie â an illusion, an utopia never achieved and never to
be realised.
If Manâs interests were really mutually antagonistic, if the struggle
between men was indeed a basic essential law of human societies and if
the liberty of the individual were to be limited by the liberty of
others, then everyone would always seek to ensure that his interests
prevailed, everyone would try to increase his own freedom at the expense
of other peopleâs freedom, and one would have a government, not just
because it would be more or less useful to all members of society to
have one, but because the victors would want to make sure of the fruits
of victory by thoroughly subjecting the vanquished, and so free
themselves from the trouble of being permanently on the defensive,
entrusting their defence to men specially trained as professional
gendarmes. In that case mankind would be condemned to perish or be for
ever struggling between the tyranny of the victors and the rebellion of
the vanquished.
But fortunately the future of mankind is a happier one because the law
governing it is milder. This law is solidarity.
Manâs fundamental essential characteristics are the instinct of his own
preservation, without which no living being could exist, and the
instinct of the preservation of the species, without which no species
could have developed and endured. He is naturally driven to defend his
individual existence and wellbeing, as well as that of his offspring,
against everything and everybody.
In nature living beings have two ways of surviving and of making life
more pleasant. One is by individual struggle against the elements and
against other individuals of the same or other species; the other is by
mutual aid, by cooperation, which could also be described as association
for the struggle against all natural factors antagonistic to the
existence, the development and wellbeing of the associates.
Apart from considerations of space, there is no need to examine in the
pages that follow the relative role in the evolution of the organic
world played by these two principles: of struggle and of cooperation. It
will suffice to state that so far as Man is concerned, cooperation
(voluntary or compulsory) has become the only means towards progress,
advancement and security; and that struggle â a relic of our ancestors â
has not only proved useless in ensuring individual wellbeing, but also
is harmful to everybody, victors and vanquished alike.
The accumulated and communicated experience of the generations taught
men that by uniting with other men their individual safety and wellbeing
were enhanced. Thus, as a result of the very struggle for existence
waged against the natural environment and against individuals of the
same species, a social feeling was developed in Man which completely
transformed the conditions of his existence. And on the strength of
this, Man was able to emerge from the animal state and rise to great
power, and so lift himself above other animals that antimaterialist
philosophers thought it necessary to invent an immaterial and immortal
soul for him.
Many concurrent causes have contributed to the development of this
social feeling which, starting from the animal basis of the instinct of
preservation of the species (which is the social instinct limited to the
natural family), has reached great heights both in intensity and in
extent, so much so that it constitutes the very basis of manâs moral
nature.
Man, though he had emerged from the lower order of animal life, was weak
and unequipped to engage in individual struggle against the carnivorous
beasts. But with a brain capable of great development, a vocal organ
capable of expressing with a variety of sounds different cerebral
vibrations, and with hands specially suitable for fashioning matter to
his will, must have very soon felt the need for, and the advantages to
be derived from, association; indeed one can say that he could only
emerge from the animal state when he became a social being and acquired
the use of language, which is at the same time a consequence of, and an
important factor in, sociability.
The relatively small number of human beings, because it made the
struggle for existence between men, even without association, less
bitter, less prolonged, less necessary, must have greatly facilitated
the development of feelings of sympathy, and allowed time to discover
and appreciate the usefulness of mutual aid.
Finally, Manâs ability to modify his external environment and adapt it
to his needs, which he acquired thanks to his original qualities applied
in cooperation with a smaller or larger number of associates; the
increasing number of demands which grow as the means of satisfying them
grow and become needs; the division of labour which is the outcome of
the systematic exploitation of nature to Manâs advantage, all these
factors have resulted in social life becoming the necessary environment
for Man, outside of which he cannot go on living, or if he does, he
returns to the animal state.
And by the refinement of feelings with the growth of relations, and by
customs impressed on the species through heredity over thousands of
centuries, this need of a social life, of an exchange of thoughts and
feelings, has become for mankind a way of being which is essential to
our way of life, and has been transformed into sympathy, friendship,
love, and goes on independently of the material advantages that
association provides, so much so that in order to satisfy it one often
faces all kinds of sufferings and even death.
In other words, the enormous advantages that accrue to men through
association; the state of physical inferiority, in no wise comparable to
his intellectual superiority, in which he finds himself in relation to
the animal kingdom if he remains isolated; the possibility for men to
join with an ever growing number of individuals and in relationships
ever more intimate and complex to the point where the association
extends to all mankind and all aspects of life, and perhaps more than
anything, to the possibility for Man to produce, through work in
cooperation with others, more than he needs for survival, and the
affective sentiments that spring from all these â all have given to the
human struggle for existence quite a different complexion from the
struggle that is generally waged by other members of the animal kingdom.
Although we now know â and the findings of contemporary naturalists are
daily providing us with new evidence â that cooperation has played and
continues to play a most important role in the development of the
organic world unsuspected by those who sought, quite irrelevantly
anyway, to justify bourgeois rule with Darwinian theories, yet the gulf
separating the struggle of man from that of the animal kingdom remains
enormous, and in direct ratio to the distance between man and the other
animals.
Other animals fight either individually or, more often, in small
permanent or transitory groups against all nature including other
individuals of the same species. The more social creatures among them,
such as the ants, bees, etc., are loyal to all the individuals within
the same ant-hill or swarm, but are at war with or indifferent to other
communities of the same species. Human struggle instead tends always to
widen the association among men, their community of interests, and to
develop the feeling of love of man for his fellows, of conquering and
overcoming the external forces of nature by humanity and for humanity.
Every struggle aimed at gaining advantages independently of or at the
expense of others, is contrary to the social nature of modern Man and
tends to drive him back towards the animal state.
Solidarity, that is the harmony of interests and of feelings, the coming
together of individuals for the wellbeing of all, and of all for the
wellbeing of each, is the only environment in which Man can express his
personality and achieve his optimum development and enjoy the greatest
possible wellbeing. This is the goal towards which human evolution
advances; it is the higher principle which resolves all existing
antagonisms, that would otherwise be insoluble, and results in the
freedom of each not being limited by, but complemented â indeed finding
the necessary raison dâĂȘtre in â the freedom of others.
Michael Bakunin said that âNo individual can recognise his own humanity,
and consequently realise it in his lifetime, if not by recognising it in
others and cooperating in its realisation for others. No man can achieve
his own emancipation without at the same time working for the
emancipation of all men around him. My freedom is the freedom of all
since I am not truly free in thought and in fact, except when my freedom
and my rights are confirmed and approved in the freedom and rights of
all men who are my equals.
âIt matters to me very much what other men are, because however
independent I may appear to be or think I am, because of my social
position, were I Pope, Tzar, Emperor or even Prime Minister, I remain
always the product of what the humblest among them are: if they are
ignorant, poor, slaves, my existence is determined by their slavery. I,
an enlightened or intelligent man am, for instance â in the event â
rendered stupid by their stupidity; as a courageous man I am enslaved by
their slavery; as a rich man I tremble before their poverty; as a
privileged person I blanch at their justice. I who want to be free
cannot be because all the men around me do not yet want to be free, and
consequently they become tools of oppression against me.â
Solidarity is therefore the state of being in which Man attains the
greatest degree of security and wellbeing; and therefore egoism itself,
that is the exclusive consideration of oneâs own interests, impels Man
and human society towards solidarity; or it would be better to say that
egoism and altruism (concern for the interests of others) become fused
into a single sentiment just as the interests of the individual and
those of society coincide.
Yet Man could not in one leap pass from the animal state to the human
state, from the brutish struggle between man and man to the joint
struggle of all men united in comradeship against the outside forces of
nature.
Guided by the advantages which association and the consequent division
of labour offer, Man developed towards solidarity; but his development
met with an obstacle which led him away from his goal and continues to
do so to this day. Man discovered that he could, at least up to a
certain point and for the material and basic needs which only then did
he feel, achieve the advantages of cooperation by subjecting other men
to his will instead of joining with them; and in view of the fact that
the fierce and anti-social instincts inherited from his animal ancestry
were still strong in him, he obliged the weakest to work for him,
preferring domination to association. Perhaps too, in most cases, it was
in exploiting the vanquished that Man learned for the first time to
understand the advantages of association, the good that Man could derive
from the support of his fellows.
Thus the realisation of the usefulness of cooperation, which should have
led to the triumph of solidarity in all human relations, instead gave
rise to private property and government, that is to the exploitation of
the labour of the whole community by a privileged minority.
It was still association and cooperation, outside which there is no
possible human life; but it was a way of cooperation, imposed and
controlled by a few for their own personal interest.
From this fact has arisen the great contradiction, which fills the pages
of human history, between the tendency to association and comradeship
for the conquest and adaptation of the external world to Manâs needs and
for the satisfaction of sentiments of affection â and the tendency to
divide into many units separate and hostile as are the groupings
determined by geographic and ethnographic conditions, as are the
economic attitudes, as are those men who have succeeded in winning an
advantage and want to make sure of it and add to it, as are those who
hope to win a privilege, as are those who suffer by an injustice or a
privilege and rebel and seek to make amends.
The principle of each for himself, which is the war of all against all,
arose in the course of history to complicate, to sidetrack and paralyse
the war of all against nature for the greatest wellbeing of mankind
which can be completely successful only by being based on the principle
of all for one and one for all.
Mankind has suffered great harm as a result of this intrusion of
domination and exploitation in the midst of human association. But in
spite of the terrible oppression to which the masses have been
subjected, in spite of poverty, in spite of vice, crime and the
degradation which poverty and slavery produce in the slaves and in the
masters, in spite of accumulated antagonism, of wars of extermination,
in spite of artificially created conflicting interests, the social
instinct has survived and developed. Cooperation having always remained
the essential condition for man to wage a successful war against
external nature, it also remained the permanent cause for bringing men
close together and for developing among them sentiments of sympathy. The
very oppression of the masses created a feeling of comradeship among the
oppressed; and it is only because of the more or less conscious and
widespread solidarity that existed among the oppressed that they were
able to endure the oppression and that mankind survived the causes of
death that crept into their midst.
Today the immense development of production, the growth of those
requirements which can only be satisfied by the participation of large
numbers of people in all countries, the means of communication, with
travel becoming a commonplace, science, literature, businesses and even
wars, all have drawn mankind into an ever tighter single body whose
constituent parts, united among themselves, can only find fulfilment and
freedom to develop through the wellbeing of the other constituent parts
as well as of the whole.
The inhabitant of Naples is as concerned in the improvement to the
living conditions of the people inhabiting the banks of the Ganges from
whence cholera comes to him, as he is in the drainage of the fondaci of
his own city. The wellbeing, the freedom and the future of a highlander
lost among the gorges of the Apennines, are dependent not only on the
conditions of prosperity or of poverty of the inhabitants of his village
and on the general condition of the Italian people, but also on workersâ
conditions in America or Australia, on the discovery made by a Swedish
scientist, on the state of mind and material conditions of the Chinese,
on there being war or peace in Africa; in other words on all the
circumstances large and small which anywhere in the world are acting on
a human being.
In present day conditions in society, this vast solidarity which joins
together all men is for the most part unconscious, since it emerges
spontaneously out of the friction between individual interests, whereas
men are hardly if at all concerned with the general interest. And this
is the clearest proof that solidarity is a natural law of mankind, which
manifests itself and commands respect in spite of all the obstacles, and
the dissensions created by society as at present constituted.
On the other hand the oppressed masses who have never completely
resigned themselves to oppression and poverty, and who today more than
ever show themselves thirsting for justice, freedom and wellbeing, are
beginning to understand that they will not be able to achieve their
emancipation except by union and solidarity with all the oppressed, with
the exploited everywhere in the world. And they also understand that the
indispensable condition for their emancipation which cannot be neglected
is the possession of the means of production, of the land and of the
instruments of labour, and therefore the abolition of private property.
And science, the observation of social manifestations, indicates that
this abolition of private property would be of great value even to the
privileged minority, if only they were to want to give up their
domineering attitude and work with everybody else for the common good.
So therefore if the oppressed masses were to refuse to work for others,
and were to take over the land and the instruments of work from the
landowners, or were to want to use them on their own account or for
their own benefit, that is the benefit of all, if they were to decide
never again to put up with domination and brute force, nor with economic
privilege, and if the sentiment of human solidarity, strengthened by a
community of interests, were to have put an end to wars and colonialism
â what justification would there be for the continued existence of
government?
Once private property has been abolished, government which is its
defender must disappear. If it were to survive it would tend always to
re-establish a privileged and oppressing class in one guise or another.
And the abolition of government does not and cannot mean the breakdown
of the social link. Quite the contrary, cooperation which today is
imposed and directed to the benefit of a few, would be free, voluntary
and directed to everybodyâs interests; and therefore it would become
that much more widespread and effective.
Social instinct, the sentiment of solidarity, would be developed to the
highest degree; and every man would strive to do his best for everybody
else, both to satisfy his intimate feelings as well as for his clearly
understood interest.
From the free participation of all, by means of the spontaneous grouping
of men according to their requirements and their sympathies, from the
bottom to the top, from the simple to the complex, starting with the
most urgent interests and arriving in the end at the most remote and
most general, a social organisation would emerge the function of which
would be the greatest wellbeing and the greatest freedom for everybody,
and would draw together the whole of mankind into a community of
comradeship, and would be modified and improved according to changing
circumstances and the lessons learned from experience.
This society of free people, this society of friends is Anarchy.
So far we have considered government as it is, as it must of necessity
be in a society based on privilege, exploitation and the oppression of
man by man, on the conflict of interests, on the intrasocial struggle,
in a word, on individual property.
We have seen how this state of conflict, far from being a necessary
condition in Manâs existence, is against the interests both of
individuals and mankind; we have seen how cooperation, solidarity, is
the law of human progress, and have concluded that by abolishing private
property and all rule over man, government loses its reason for existing
and must be abolished.
We might be told however: âBut once the principle on which social
organisation is based today were to be changed, and solidarity were to
replace struggle, and common property were to take over from private
property, government would change its nature and from being the
protector and the representative of the interests of a class, since
classes would no longer exist, would become the representative of the
interests of society as a whole. Its role would be to provide and
regulate social cooperation in the interests of all; to defend society
from any direct attempts to reintroduce privilege, to forestall and
suppress attempts from whatever quarter against the life, the wellbeing
and freedom of each one of us.
âThere are in society some offices too important and requiring too much
attention and continuity, for them to be left to the free will of
individuals, without the danger of seeing everything thrown into
confusion.
âWho would organise and guarantee, if there were no government, food
supplies, distribution, health services, the post and telegraph services
and the railways, etc.? Who would look after public education? Who would
undertake those vast exploratory projects, land drainage schemes,
scientific research, which transform the face of the earth and increase
Manâs power a hundredfold?
âWho would watch over the conservation and development of social wealth
to pass it on enriched and improved for future generations?
âWho would have a mandate to prevent and punish crime, that is
anti-social actions?
âAnd what of those who fall short of the law of solidarity and donât
want to work? And those who were to spread disease in a country and
refused to take the kinds of hygienic precautions recognised as useful
by science? And supposing there were some people, sane or insane, who
wanted to set fire to the harvest, sexually assault children, or take
advantage of their strength to assault the weak?
âTo destroy private property and abolish existing governments, without
then creating a government which would organise social life and ensure
social solidarity, would not mean abolishing privilege and ushering in a
world of peace and wellbeing; it would instead mean the destruction of
all social ties, and drive mankind to barbarism, towards the rule of
each for himself, which is the triumph firstly of brute force and
secondly of economic privilege.â
Such are the objections the authoritarians face us with, even when they
are socialists, that is when they want to abolish private property and
the class government which it gives rise to.
We can answer that in the first place it is not true that once the
social conditions are changed the nature and the role of government
would change. Organ and function are inseparable terms. Take away from
an organ its function and either the organ dies or the function is
re-established. Put an army in a country in which there are neither
reasons for, nor fear of, war, civil or external, and it will provoke
war or, if it does not succeed in its intentions, it will collapse. A
police force where there are no crimes to solve or criminals to
apprehend, will invent both, or cease to exist.
In France there has existed for centuries an institution, the louveterie
now incorporated in the Forestry Administration, the officials of which
are entrusted with the task of destroying wolves and other harmful
creatures. No one will be surprised to learn that it is just because
this institution exists that there are still wolves in France and in
exceptional winters they play havoc. The public hardly worries about the
wolves as there are the wolf-exterminators who are there to deal with
them, and these certainly hunt the wolves but they do so intelligently,
sparing the dens long enough for them to rear their young and so prevent
the extermination of an interesting animal species. French peasants have
in fact little confidence in these wolf-catchers, and consider them more
as wolf-preservers. And it is understandable: what would the
âLieutenants of the louveterieâ do if there were no more wolves?
A government, that is a group of people entrusted with making the laws
and empowered to use the collective power to oblige each individual to
obey them, is already a privileged class and cut off from the people. As
any constituted body would do, it will instinctively seek to extend its
powers, to be beyond public control, to impose its own policies and to
give priority to its special interests. Having been put in a privileged
position, the government is already at odds with the people whose
strength it disposes of.
In any case, even if a government wanted to, it could not please
everybody, even if it did manage to please a few. It would have to
defend itself against the malcontents, and would therefore need to get
the support of one section of the people to do so. And then the old
story of the privileged class which arises through the complicity of the
government starts all over again and, in this instance, if it did not
seize the land would certainly capture key posts, specially created, and
would oppress and exploit no less than the capitalist class.
The rulers accustomed to giving orders, would not wish to be once more
members of the public, and if they could not hold on to power they would
at least make sure of securing privileged positions for when they must
hand over power to others. They would use every means available to those
in power to have their friends elected as the successors who would then
in their turn support and protect them. And thus government would be
passed to and fro in the same hands, and democracy, which is the alleged
government of all, would end up, as usual, in an oligarchy, which is the
government of a few, the government of a class.
And what an all-powerful, oppressive, all-absorbing oligarchy must be
one which has at its service, that is at its disposal, all social
wealth, all public services, from food to the manufacture of matches,
from the universities to the music-halls!
But let us even suppose that the government were not in any case a
privileged class, and could survive without creating around itself a new
privileged class, and remain the representative, the servant as it were,
of the whole of society. And what useful purpose could this possibly
serve? How and in what way would this increase the strength, the
intelligence, the spirit of solidarity, the concern for the wellbeing of
all and of future generations, which at any given time happen to exist
in a given society?
It is always the old question of the bound man who having managed to
live in spite of his bonds thinks he lives because of them. We are used
to living under a government which takes over all that energy,
intelligence and will which it can direct for its own ends; and it
hinders, paralyses and suppresses those who do not serve its purpose or
are hostile â and we think that everything that is done in society is
carried out thanks to the government, and that without the government
there would no longer be any energy, intelligence or goodwill left in
society. Thus (as we have already pointed out), the landowner who has
seized the land gets others to work it for his profit, leaving the
worker with the bare necessities so that he can and will want to go on
working â and the enslaved worker imagines that he could not live
without the master, as if the latter had created the land and the forces
of nature.
What can government itself add to the moral and material forces that
exist in society? Would it be a similar case to that of the God of the
Bible who creates from nothing?
Since nothing is created in what is usually called the material world,
so nothing is created in this more complicated form of the material
world which is the social world. And so the rulers can only make use of
the forces that exist in society â except for those great forces which
governmental action paralyses and destroys, and those rebel forces, and
all that is wasted through conflicts; inevitably tremendous losses in
such an artificial system. If they contribute something of their own
they can only do so as men and not as rulers. And of those material and
moral forces which remain at the disposal of the government, only a
minute part is allowed to play a really useful role for society. The
rest is either used up in repressive actions to keep the rebel forces in
check or is otherwise diverted from its ends of the general good and
used to benefit a few at the expense of the majority of the people.
Much has been said about the respective roles of individual initiative
and social action in the life and progress of human societies, and by
the usual tricks of the language of metaphysics, the issues have become
so confused that in the end those who declared that everything is
maintained and kept going in the human world thanks to individual
initiative appear as radicals. In fact this is a commonsense truth which
is obvious the moment one tries to understand the significance of words.
The real being is man, the individual. Society or the collectivity â and
the State or government which claims to represent it â if it is not a
hollow abstraction, must be made up of individuals. And it is in the
organism of every individual that all thoughts and human actions
inevitably have their origin, and from being individual they become
collective thoughts and acts when they are or become accepted by many
individuals. Social action, therefore, is neither the negation nor the
complement of individual initiative, but is the resultant of
initiatives, thoughts and actions of all individuals who make up
society; a resultant which, all other things being equal, is greater or
smaller depending on whether individual forces are directed to a common
objective or are divided or antagonistic. And if instead, as do the
authoritarians, one means government action when one talks of social
action, then this is still the resultant of individual forces, but only
of those individuals who form the government or who by reason of their
position can influence the policy of the government.
Therefore in the age-long struggle between liberty and authority, or in
other words between socialism and a class state, the question is not
really one of changing the relationships between society and the
individual; nor is it a question of increasing the independence of the
individual at the expense of social interference or vice versa. But
rather is it a question of preventing some individuals from oppressing
others; of giving all individuals the same rights and the same means of
action; and of replacing the initiative of the few, which inevitably
results in the oppression of everybody else. It is after all a question
of destroying once and for all the domination and exploitation of man by
man, so that everyone can have a stake in the commonweal, and individual
forces, instead of being destroyed or fighting among themselves or being
cut off from each other, will find the possibility of complete
fulfilment, and come together for the greater benefit of everybody.
Even if we pursue our hypothesis of the ideal government of the
authoritarian socialists, it follows from what we have said that far
from resulting in an increase in the productive, organising and
protective forces in society, it would greatly reduce them, limiting
initiative to a few, and giving them the right to do everything without,
of course, being able to provide them with the gift of being
all-knowing.
Indeed, if you take out from the law and the entire activity of a
government all that exists to defend the privileged minority and which
represents the wishes of the latter themselves, what is left which is
not the result of the action of everybody? Sismondi said that âthe State
is always a conservative power which legalises, regularises and
organises the victories of progressâ (and history adds that it directs
them for its own ends and that of the privileged class) âbut never
introduces them. These victories are always started down below, they are
born in the heart of society, from individual thought which is then
spread far and wide, becomes opinion, the majority, but in making its
way it must always meet with and combat in the powers-that-be,
tradition, habit, privilege and error.â
Anyway, in order to understand how a society can live without
government, one has only to observe in depth existing society, and one
will see how in fact the greater part, the important part, of social
life is discharged even today outside government intervention, and that
government only interferes in order to exploit the masses, to defend the
privileged minority, and moreover it finds itself sanctioning, quite
ineffectually, all that has been done without its intervention, and
often in spite of and even against it. Men work, barter, study, travel
and follow to the best of their knowledge moral rules and those of
wellbeing; they benefit from the advances made in science and the arts,
have widespread relations among themselves â all without feeling the
need for somebody to tell them how to behave. Indeed it is just those
matters over which government has no control that work best, that give
rise to less controversy and are resolved by general consent so that
everybody feels happy as well as being useful.
Nor is the government specially needed for the large-scale enterprises
and public services requiring the full-time employment of a large number
of people from different countries and conditions. Thousands of these
undertakings are, even today, the result of individual associations
freely constituted, and are by common accord those that work best. Nor
are we talking of capitalist associations, organised for the purpose of
exploitation, however much they too demonstrate the potentialities and
the power of a free association and how it can spread to include people
from every country as well as vast and contrasting interests. But rather
let us talk about those associations which, inspired by a love of oneâs
fellow beings, or by a passion for science, or more simply by the desire
to enjoy oneself and to be applauded, are more representative of the
groupings as they will be in a society in which, having abolished
private property and the internecine struggle between men, everybody
will find his interest in that of everybody else, and his greatest
satisfaction in doing good and in pleasing others. Scientific Societies
and Congresses, the international life-saving association, the Red
Cross, the geographical societies, the workersâ organisations, the
voluntary bodies that rush to help whenever there are great public
disasters, are a few examples among many of the power of the spirit of
association, which always manifests itself when it is a question of a
need or an issue deeply felt, and the means are not lacking. If the
voluntary association is not world-wide and does not embrace all the
material and moral aspects of activity it is because of the obstacles
put in its path by governments, by the dissensions created by private
property, and the impotence and discouragement felt by most people as a
result of the seizure of all wealth by a few.
For instance, the government takes over the responsibilities of the
postal services, the railways and so on. But in what way does it help
these services? When the people are enabled to enjoy them, and feel the
need for these services, they think about organising them, and the
technicians donât need a government licence to get to work. And the more
the need is universal and urgent, the more volunteers will there be to
carry it out. If the people had the power to deal with the problems of
production and food supplies, oh! have no fear that they might just die
of hunger waiting for a government to make the necessary laws to deal
with the problem. If there had to be a government, it would still be
obliged to wait until the people had organised everything, in order then
to come along with laws to sanction and exploit what had already been
done. It is demonstrated that private interest is the great incentive
for all activities: well, when the interest of all will be that of each
individual (and this would obviously be the case if private property did
not exist) then everyone will act, and if we do things now which only
interest a few, we will do them that much better and more intensively
when they will be of interest to everybody. And it is difficult to
understand why there should be people who believe that the carrying out
and the normal functioning of public services vital to our daily lives
would be more reliable if carried out under the instructions of a
government rather than by the workers themselves who, by direct election
or through agreements made with others, have chosen to do that kind of
work and carry it out under the direct control of all the interested
parties.
Of course in every large collective undertaking, a division of labour,
technical management, administration, etc., is necessary. But
authoritarians clumsily play on words to produce a raison dâĂȘtre for
government out of the very real need for the organisation of work.
Government, it is well to repeat it, is the concourse of individuals who
have had, or have seized, the right and the means to make laws and to
oblige people to obey; the administrator, the engineer, etc., instead
are people who are appointed or assume the responsibility to carry out a
particular job and do so. Government means the delegation of power, that
is the abdication of initiative and sovereignty of all into the hands of
a few; administration means the delegation of work, that is tasks given
and received, free exchange of services based on free agreement. The
governor is a privileged person since he has the right to command others
and to make use of the efforts of others to make his ideas and his
personal wishes prevail; the administrator, the technical director,
etc., are workers like the rest, that is, of course, in a society in
which everyone has equal means to develop and that all are or can be at
the same time intellectual and manual workers, and that the only
differences remaining between men are those which stem from the natural
diversity of aptitudes, and that all jobs, all functions give an equal
right to the enjoyment of social possibilities. Let one not confuse the
function of government with that of an administration, for they are
essentially different, and if today the two are often confused, it is
only because of economic and political privilege.
But let us hasten to pass on to the functions for which government is
considered, by all who are not anarchists, as quite indispensable: the
internal and external defence of a society, that is to say war, the
police and justice.
Once governments have been abolished and the social wealth has been put
at the disposal of everybody, then all the antagonisms between people
will soon disappear and war will no longer have a raison dâĂȘtre. We
would add, furthermore, that in the present state of the world, when a
revolution occurs in one country, if it does not have speedy
repercussions elsewhere it will however meet with much sympathy
everywhere, so much so that no government will dare to send its troops
abroad for fear of having a revolutionary uprising on its own doorstep.
But, by all means, let us admit that the governments of the still
unemancipated countries were to want to, and could, attempt to reduce
free people to a state of slavery once again. Would this people require
a government to defend itself? To wage war men are needed who have the
necessary geographical and mechanical knowledge, and above all large
masses of the population willing to go and fight. A government can
neither increase the abilities of the former nor the will and courage of
the latter. And the experience of history teaches us that a people who
really want to defend their own country are invincible; and in Italy
everyone knows that before the corps of volunteers (anarchist
formations) thrones topple, and regular armies composed of conscripts or
mercenaries, disappear.
And what of the police and of justice? Many suppose that if there were
no carabineers, policemen and judges, everyone would be free to kill, to
ravish, to harm others as the mood took one; and that anarchists, in the
name of their principles, would wish to see that strange liberty
respected which violates and destroys the freedom and life of others.
They seem almost to believe that after having brought down government
and private property we would allow both to be quietly built up again,
because of a respect for the freedom of those who might feel the need to
be rulers and property owners. A truly curious way of interpreting our
ideas! ... of course it is easier to brush them off with a shrug of the
shoulders than to take the trouble of confuting them.
The freedom we want, for ourselves and for others, is not an absolute
metaphysical, abstract freedom which in practice is inevitably
translated into the oppression of the weak; but it is real freedom,
possible freedom, which is the conscious community of interests,
voluntary solidarity. We proclaim the maxim do as you wish, and with it
we almost summarise our programme, for we maintain â and it doesnât take
much to understand why â that in a harmonious society, in a society
without government and without property, each one will want what he must
do.
But supposing that as a result of the kind of education received from
present society, or for physical misfortune or for any other reason,
someone were to want to do harm to us and to others, one can be sure
that we would exert ourselves to prevent him from so doing with all the
means at our disposal. Of course, because we know that man is the
consequence of his own organism as well as of the cosmic and social
environment in which he lives; because we do not confuse the inviolate
right of defence with the claimed ridiculous right to punish; and since
with the delinquent, that is with he who commits anti-social acts, we
would not, to be sure, see the rebel slave, as happens with judges
today, but the sick brother needing treatment, so would we not introduce
hatred in the repression, and would make every effort not to go beyond
the needs of defence, and would not think of avenging ourselves but of
seeking to cure, redeem the unhappy person with all the means that
science offered us. In any case, irrespective of the anarchistsâ
interpretation (who could, as happens with all theorists, lose sight of
reality in pursuing a semblance of logic), it is certain that the people
would not allow their wellbeing and their freedom to be attacked with
impunity, and if the necessity arose, they would take measures to defend
themselves against the anti-social tendencies of a few. But to do so,
what purpose is served by people whose profession is the making of laws;
while other people spend their lives seeking out and inventing
law-breakers? When the people really disapprove of something and
consider it harmful, they always manage to prevent it more successfully
than do the professional legislators, police and judges. When in the
course of insurrections the people have, however mistakenly, wanted
private property to be respected, they did so in a way that an army of
policemen could not.
Customs always follow the needs and feelings of the majority: and the
less they are subject to the sanctions of law the more are they
respected, for everyone can see and understand their use, and because
the interested parties, having no illusions as to the protection offered
by government, themselves see to it that they are respected. For a
caravan travelling across the deserts of Africa the good management of
water stocks is a matter of life and death for all; and in those
circumstances water becomes a sacred thing and no one would think of
wasting it. Conspirators depend on secrecy, and the secret is kept or
abomination strikes whoever violates it. Gambling debts are not secured
by law, and among gamblers whoever does not pay up is considered and
considers himself dishonoured.
Is it perhaps because of the gendarmes that more people are not killed?
In most of the villages in Italy the gendarmes are only seen from time
to time; millions of people cross the mountains and pass through the
countryside far from the protecting eye of authority, such that one
could strike them down without the slightest risk of punishment; yet
they are no less safe than those who live in the most protected areas.
And statistics show that the number of crimes is hardly affected by
repressive measures, whereas it changes dramatically with changes in
economic conditions and in the attitudes of public opinion.
Anyway, punitive laws are only concerned with exceptional, unusual
occurrences. Daily life carries on beyond the reach of the codicil and
is controlled, almost unconsciously, with the tacit and voluntary
agreement of all, by a number of usages and customs which are much more
important to social life than the Articles of the Penal Code, and better
respected in spite of being completely free from any sanction other than
the natural one of the disesteem in which those who violate them are
held and the consequences that arise therefrom.
And when differences were to arise between men, would not arbitration
voluntarily accepted, or pressure of public opinion, be perhaps more
likely to establish where the right lies than through an irresponsible
magistrature which has the right to adjudicate on everything and
everybody and is inevitably incompetent and therefore unjust?
Since, generally speaking, government only exists to protect the
privileged classes, so the police and the magistrature exist only to
punish those crimes which are not so considered by the public and only
harm the privileges of the government and of property-owners. There is
nothing more pernicious for the real defence of society, for the defence
of the wellbeing and freedom of all, than the setting up of these
classes which exist on the pretext of defending everybody but become
accustomed to consider every man as game to be caged, and strike at you
without knowing why, by orders of a chief whose irresponsible, mercenary
ruffians they are.
Thatâs all very well, some say, and anarchy may be a perfect form of
human society, but we donât want to take a leap in the dark. Tell us
therefore in detail how your society will be organised. And there
follows a whole series of questions, which are very interesting if we
were involved in studying the problems that will impose themselves on
the liberated society, but which are useless, or absurd, even
ridiculous, if we are expected to provide definitive solutions. What
methods will be used to teach children? How will production be
organised? Will there still be large cities, or will the population be
evenly distributed over the whole surface of the earth? And supposing
all the inhabitants of Siberia should want to spend the winter in Nice?
And if everyone were to want to eat partridge and drink wine from the
Chianti district? And who will do a minerâs job or be a seaman? And who
will empty the privies? And will sick people be treated at home or in
hospital? And who will establish the railway timetable? And what will be
done if an engine-driver has a stomach-ache while the train is moving?
... And so on to the point of assuming that we have all the knowledge
and experience of the unknown future, and that in the name of anarchy,
we should prescribe for future generations at what time they must go to
bed, and on what days they must pare their corns.
If indeed our readers expect a reply from us to these questions, or at
least to those which are really serious and important, which is more
than our personal opinion at this particular moment, it means that we
have failed in our attempt to explain to them what anarchism is about.
We are no more prophets than anyone else; and if we claimed to be able
to give an official solution to all the problems that will arise in the
course of the daily life of a future society, then what we meant by the
abolition of government would be curious to say the least. For we would
be declaring ourselves the government and would be prescribing, as do
the religious legislators, a universal code for present and future
generations. It is just as well that not having the stake or prisons
with which to impose our bible, mankind would be free to laugh at us and
at our pretensions with impunity!
We are very concerned with all the problems of social life, both in the
interest of science, and because we reckon to see anarchy realised and
to take part as best we can in the organisation of the new society.
Therefore we do have our solutions which, depending on the
circumstances, appear to us either definitive or transitory â and but
for space considerations we would say something on this here. But the
fact that because today, with the evidence we have, we think in a
certain way on a given problem does not mean that this is how it must be
dealt with in the future. Who can foresee the activities which will grow
when mankind is freed from poverty and oppression, when there will no
longer be either slaves or masters, and when the struggle between
peoples, and the hatred and bitterness that are engendered as a result,
will no longer be an essential part of existence? Who can predict the
progress in science and in the means of production, of communication and
so on?
What is important is that a society should be brought into being in
which the exploitation and domination of man by man is not possible; in
which everybody has free access to the means of life, of development and
of work, and that all can participate, as they wish and know how, in the
organisation of social life. In such a society obviously all will be
done to best satisfy the needs of everybody within the framework of
existing knowledge and conditions; and all will change for the better
with the growth of knowledge and the means.
After all, a programme which is concerned with the bases of the social
structure, cannot do other than suggest a method. And it is the method
which above all distinguishes between the parties and determines their
historical importance. Apart from the method, they all talk of wanting
the wellbeing of humanity and many really do; the parties disappear and
with them all action organised and directed to a given end. Therefore
one must consider anarchy above all as a method.
The methods from which the different non-anarchist parties expect, or
say they do, the greatest good of one and all can be reduced to two, the
authoritarian and the so-called liberal. The former entrusts to a few
the management of social life and leads to the exploitation and
oppression of the masses by the few. The latter relies on free
individual enterprise and proclaims, if not the abolition, at least the
reduction of governmental functions to an absolute minimum; but because
it respects private property and is entirely based on the principle of
each for himself and therefore of competition between men, the liberty
it espouses is for the strong and for the property owners to oppress and
exploit the weak, those who have nothing; and far from producing
harmony, tends to increase even more the gap between rich and poor and
it too leads to exploitation and domination, in other words, to
authority. This second method, that is liberalism, is in theory a kind
of anarchy without socialism, and therefore is simply a lie, for freedom
is not possible without equality, and real anarchy cannot exist without
solidarity, without socialism. The criticism liberals direct at
government consists only of wanting to deprive it of some of its
functions and to call on the capitalists to fight it out among
themselves, but it cannot attack the repressive functions which are of
its essence: for without the gendarme the property owner could not
exist, indeed the governmentâs powers of repression must perforce
increase as free competition results in more discord and inequality.
Anarchists offer a new method: that is free initiative of all and free
compact when, private property having been abolished by revolutionary
action, everybody has been put in a situation of equality to dispose of
social wealth. This method, by not allowing access to the reconstitution
of private property, must lead, via free association, to the complete
victory of the principle of solidarity.
Viewed in this way, one sees how all the problems that are advanced in
order to counter anarchist ideas are instead an argument in their
favour, because only anarchy points the way along which they can find,
by trial and error, that solution which best satisfies the dictates of
science as well as the needs and wishes of everybody.
How will children be educated? We donât know. So what will happen?
Parents, pedagogues and all who are concerned with the future of the
young generation will come together, will discuss, will agree or divide
according to the views they hold, and will put into practice the methods
which they think are the best. And with practice that method which in
fact is the best, will in the end be adopted.
And similarly with all problems which present themselves.
It follows from what we have said so far, that anarchy, as understood by
the anarchists and as only they can interpret it, is based on socialism.
Indeed were it not for those schools of socialism which artificially
divide the natural unity of the social question, and only consider some
aspects out of context, and were it not for the misunderstandings with
which they seek to tangle the path to the social revolution, we could
say straight out that anarchy is synonymous with socialism, for both
stand for the abolition of the domination and exploitation of man by
man, whether they are exercised at bayonet point or by a monopoly of the
means of life.
Anarchy, in common with socialism, has as its basis, its point of
departure, its essential environment, equality of conditions; its beacon
is solidarity and freedom is its method. It is not perfection, it is not
the absolute ideal which like the horizon recedes as fast as we approach
it; but it is the way open to all progress and all improvements for the
benefit of everybody.
Having established that anarchy is the only form of human society which
leaves open the way to the achievement of the greatest good for mankind,
since it alone destroys every class bent on keeping the masses oppressed
and in poverty; having established that anarchy is possible and since,
in fact, all it does is to free mankind from the government and
obstacles against which it has always had to struggle in order to
advance along its difficult road, authoritarians withdraw to their last
ditches where they are reinforced by many who though they are passionate
lovers of freedom and justice, fear freedom and cannot make up their
minds to visualise a humanity which lives and progresses without
guardians and without shepherds and, pressed by the truth, they
pitifully ask that the matter should be put off for as long as possible.
This is the substance of the arguments that are put to us at this point
in the discussion.
This society without government, which maintains itself by means of free
and voluntary cooperation; this society which relies in everything on
the spontaneous action of interests and which is entirely based on
solidarity and love, is certainly a wonderful ideal, they say; but like
all ideals it lives in the clouds. We find ourselves in a world which
has always been divided into oppressors and oppressed; and if the former
are full of the spirit of domination and have all the vices of tyrants,
the latter are broken by servility and have the even worse vices that
result from slavery. The feeling of solidarity is far from being
dominant in contemporary society, and if it is true that men are and
become always more united, it is equally true that what one sees
increasingly, and which makes a deeper impression on human character, is
the struggle for existence which each individual is waging daily against
everybody else; it is competition which presses on everybody, workers
and masters alike, and makes every man into an enemy in the eyes of his
neighbour. How will these men, brought up in a society based on class
and individual conflict, ever be able to change themselves suddenly and
become capable of living in a society in which everyone will do as he
wishes and must do, and without outside coercion and through the force
of his own will, seek the welfare of others? With what
single-mindedness, with what common sense would you entrust the fate of
the revolution and of mankind to an ignorant mob, weakened by poverty,
brainwashed by the priest, and which today will be blindly bloodthirsty,
while tomorrow it will allow itself to be clumsily deceived by a rogue,
or bow its head servilely under the heel of the first military dictator
who dares to make himself master? Would it not be more prudent to
advance towards the anarchist ideal by first passing through a
democratic or socialist republic? Will there not be a need for a
government of the best people to educate and to prepare the generations
for things to come?
These objections also would not have a raison dâĂȘtre if we had succeeded
in making ourselves understood and in convincing readers with what we
have already written; but in any case, even at the risk of repeating
ourselves, it will be as well to answer them.
We are always faced with the prejudice that government is a new force
that has emerged from no one knows where which in itself adds something
to the total forces and capacities of those individuals who constitute
it and of those who obey it. Instead all that happens in the world is
done by people; and government qua government, contributes nothing of
its own apart from the tendency to convert everything into a monopoly
for the benefit of a particular party or class, as well as offering
resistance to every initiative which comes from outside its own clique.
To destroy authority, to abolish government, does not mean the
destruction of individual and collective forces which operate in
society, nor the influences which people mutually exert on each other;
to do so would reduce humanity to being a mass of detached and inert
atoms, which is an impossibility, but assuming it were possible, would
result in the destruction of any form of society, the end of mankind.
The abolition of authority means, the abolition of the monopoly of force
and of influence; it means the abolition of that state of affairs for
which social power, that is the combined forces of society, is made into
the instrument of thought, the will and interests of a small number of
individuals, who by means of the total social power, suppress, for their
personal advantage and for their own ideas the freedom of the
individual; it means destroying a way of social organisation with which
the future is burdened between one revolution and the next, for the
benefit of those who have been the victors for a brief moment.
Michael Bakunin in an article published in 1872, after pointing out that
the principal means of action of the International were the propagation
of its ideas and the organisation of the spontaneous action of its
members on the masses, adds that:
âTo whoever might claim that action so organised would be an assault on
the freedom of the masses, an attempt to create a new authoritarian
power, we would reply that he is nothing but a sophist and a fool. So
much the worse for those who ignore the natural and social law of human
solidarity, to the point of imagining that an absolute mutual
independence of individuals and of the masses is something possible, or
at least desirable. To wish it means to want the destruction of society,
for the whole of social life is no other than this unceasing mutual
dependence of individuals and masses. All individuals, even the most
intelligent and the strongest, indeed above all the intelligent and
strong, each at every moment in his life is at the same time its
producer and its product. The very freedom of each individual is no
other than the resultant, continually reproduced, of this mass of
material, intellectual and moral influences exerted on him by all who
surround him, by the society in the midst of which he is born, develops,
and dies. To want to escape from this influence in the name of a
transcendental, divine, freedom that is absolutely egoistic and
sufficient unto itself, is the tendency of non-being. This much vaunted
independence of the idealists and metaphysicians, and individual freedom
thus conceived, are therefore nothingness.
âIn nature, as in human society, which is no other than this same
nature, all that lives, only lives on the supreme condition of
intervening in the most positive manner, and as powerfully as its nature
allows, in the lives of others. The abolition of this mutual influence
would be death. And when we vindicate the freedom of the masses, we are
by no means suggesting the abolition of any of the natural influences
that individuals or groups of individuals exert on them; what we want is
the abolition of influences which are artificial, privileged, legal,
official.â
Obviously, in the present state of mankind, when the vast majority of
people, oppressed by poverty and stupefied by superstition, stagnate in
a state of humiliation, the fate of humanity depends on the action of a
relatively small number of individuals; obviously it will not be
possible suddenly to get people to raise themselves to the point where
they feel the duty, indeed the pleasure from controlling their own
actions in such a way that others will derive the maximum benefit
therefrom. But if today the thinking and directing forces in society are
few, it is not a reason for paralysing yet more of them and of
subjecting many others to a few of them. It is not a reason for
organising society in such a way that (thanks to the apathy that is the
result of secured positions, thanks to birth, patronage, esprit de
corps, and all the government machinery) the most lively forces and real
ability end up by finding themselves outside the government and almost
without influence on social life; and those that attain to government,
finding themselves out of their environment, and being above all
interested in remaining in power, lose all possibilities of acting and
only serve as an obstacle to others.
Once this negative power that is government is abolished, society will
be what it can be, but all that it can be given the forces and abilities
available at the time. If there are educated people who wish to spread
knowledge they will organise the schools and make a special effort to
persuade everybody of the usefulness and pleasure to be got from an
education. And if there were no such people, or only a few, a government
could not create them; all it could do would be what happens now, take
the few that there are away from their rewarding work, and set them to
drafting regulations which have to be imposed with policemen, and make
intelligent and devoted teachers into political beings, that is useless
parasites, all concerned with imposing their whims and with maintaining
themselves in power.
If there are doctors and experts in public health, they will organise
the health service. And if there were none, the government could not
create them: all it could do would be to cast doubts on the abilities of
existing doctors which a public, justifiably suspicious of all that is
imposed from above, would seize upon to get rid of them.
If there are engineers, engine drivers and so on, they will organise the
railways. And if there were none, once again, a government could not
create them.
The revolution, by abolishing government and private property, will not
create forces that do not exist; but it will leave the way open for the
development of all available forces and talents, will destroy every
class with an interest in keeping the masses in a state of brutishness,
and will ensure that everyone will be able to act and to influence
according to his abilities, his enthusiasm and his interests.
And this is the only way that the masses can raise themselves, for it is
only through freedom that one educates oneself to be free, just as it is
only by working that one can learn to work. A government, assuming it
had no other disadvantages, would always have that of accustoming the
governed to timidity, and of tending to become always more oppressive
and of making itself ever more necessary.
Besides, if one wants a government which has to educate the masses and
put them on the road to anarchy, one must also indicate what will be the
background, and the way of forming this government.
Will it be the dictatorship of the best people? But who are the best?
And who will recognise these qualities in them? The majority is
generally attached to established prejudices, and has ideas and
attitudes which have already been superseded by a better endowed
minority; but among the thousand minorities all of which believe
themselves to be right, and can all be right on some issues, by whom and
with what criterion will the choice be made to put the social forces at
the disposal of one of them when only the future can decide between the
parties in conflict? If you take a hundred intelligent supporters of
dictatorship, you will discover that each one of them believes that he
should be if not the dictator himself, or one of them, at least very
close to the dictatorship. So dictators would be those who, pursuing one
course or another, succeed in imposing themselves; and in the present
political climate, one can safely say that all their efforts would be
employed in the struggle to defend themselves against the attacks of
their enemies, conveniently forgetting any vague intentions of social
education, assuming that they ever had such intentions.
Will it be instead a government elected by universal suffrage, and thus
the more or less sincere expression of the wishes of the majority? But
if you consider these worthy electors as unable to look after their own
interests themselves, how is it that they will know how to choose for
themselves the shepherds who must guide them? And how will they be able
to solve this problem of social alchemy, of producing the election of a
genius from the votes of a mass of fools? And what will happen to the
minorities which are still the most intelligent, most active and radical
part of a society?
In order to solve the social problem for the benefit of everybody there
is only one means: to crush those who own social wealth by revolutionary
action, and put everything at the disposal of everybody, and leave all
the forces, the ability, and all the goodwill that exist among the
people, free to act and to provide for the needs of all.
We struggle for anarchy, and for socialism, because we believe that
anarchy and socialism must be realised immediately, that is to say that
in the revolutionary act we must drive government away, abolish property
and entrust public services, which in this context will include all
social life, to the spontaneous, free, not official, not authorised
efforts of all interested parties and of all willing helpers.
Of course there will be difficulties and drawbacks; but they will be
resolved, and they will only be resolved in an anarchist way, by means,
that is, of the direct intervention of the interested parties and by
free agreements.
We do not know whether anarchy and socialism will triumph when the next
revolution takes place; but there is no doubt that if the so-called
programmes of compromise triumph, it will be because on this occasion,
we have been defeated, and never because we believed it useful to leave
standing any part of the evil system under which mankind groans.
In any case we will have on events the kind of influence which will
reflect our numerical strength, our energy, our intelligence and our
intransigence. Even if we are defeated, our work will not have been
useless, for the greater our resolve to achieve the implementation of
our programme in full, the less property, and less government will there
be in the new society. And we will have performed a worthy task for,
after all, human progress is measured by the extent government power and
private property are reduced.
And if today we fall without compromising, we can be sure of victory
tomorrow.
Â
[1] which is a disease of the mind in which Man, once having by a
logical process abstracted an individual's qualities, undergoes a kind
of hallucination which makes him accept the abstraction for the real
being.