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Title: The Philosophy of Anarchism Author: Herbert Read Date: September 1940 Language: en Topics: introductory Source: Retrieved on March 1, 2010 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/read/philsofanar.html Notes: First published September 1940 by Freedom Press. 27, Red Lion Street. London, W.C.1,Second Impression, June 1941Third Impression, December 1941Fourth Impression, July 1942Fifth Impression, February 1943Sixth Impression, December 1944.Seventh Impression, November 1947.Originally printed in Great Britain by Express Printers, London.
Ts’ui Chii said to Lao Tzu, “You say there must be no government. But it
there is no government, how are men’s hearts to be improved?” “The last
thing you should do,” said Lao Tzu, “is to tamper with men’s hearts. The
heart of man is like a spring; if you press it down, it only springs up
the higher.... It can be hot as the fiercest fire; cold as the hardest
ice. So swift is it that in the space of a nod it can go twice to the
end of the world and back again. In repose, it is quiet as the bed at a
pool; in action, mysterious as Heaven. A wild steed that cannot be
tethered — such is the heart of man.”
Chuang Tzu (Trans. Waley).
Liberty, morality, and the human dignity of man consist precisely in
this, that he does good, not because it is commanded, but because he
conceives it, wills it, and loves it.
Bakunin.
A perfect society is that which excludes all private property. Such was
the primitive well being which was overturned by the sin of our first
fathers.
St. Basil.
If beans and millet were as plentiful as fire and water, such a thing as
a bad man would not exist among the people.
Mencius.
The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive
belief, but of despair. Nobody seriously believes in the social
philosophies of the immediate past. There are a few people, but a
diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic
system, offer a a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has,
indeed, triumphed in one country. But it has not changed the servile
nature of human bondage. Man is everywhere still in chains. The motive
of his activity remains economic, and this economic motive inevitably
leads to the social inequalities from which he had hoped to escape. In
face of this double failure, of capitalism and of socialism, the
desperation of the masses has taken shape as fascism — a revolutionary
but wholly negative movement which aims at establishing a selfish
organization of power within the general chaos. In this political
wilderness most people are lost, and if they do not give way to despair,
they resort to a private world of prayer. But others persist in
believing that a new world could be built if only we would abandon the
economic concepts upon which both socialism and capitalism are based. To
realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality
above all other values — above personal wealth, technical power and
nationalism. In the past this view has been held by the world’s greatest
seers, but their followers have been a numerically insignificant
minority, especially in the political sphere, where their doctrine has
been called anarchism. It may be a tactical mistake to try and restate
the eternal truth under a name which is ambiguous — for what is “without
ruler,” the literal meaning of the word, is not necessarily “without
order,” the meaning often loosely ascribed to it. The sense of
historical continuity, and a feeling for philosophical rectitude cannot,
however, be compromised. Any vague or romantic associations which the
word has acquired are incidental. The doctrine itself remains absolute
and pure. There are thousands, if not millions, of people who
instinctively hold these ideas, and who would accept the doctrine if it
were made clear to them. A doctrine must be recognized by a common name.
I know of no better name than Anarchism. In this essay I shall attempt
to restate the fundamental principles of the political philosophy
denoted by this name.
Let us begin by asking a very simple question; What is the measure of
human progress? There is no need to discuss whether such progress exists
or not, for even to come to a negative conclusion we must have a
measure.
In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of
social coherence. The earliest records of our species point to group
organizations — the primitive horde, nomadic tribes, settlements,
communities, cities, nations. As these groups progressed in numbers,
wealth and intelligence, they subdivided into specialised groups —
social classes, religious sects, learned societies and professional or
craft unions. Is this complication or articulation of society in itself
a symptom of progress? I do not think it can be described as such in so
far as it is merely a quantitative change. But if it implies a division
of men according to their innate abilities, so that the strong man does
work requiring great strength and the subtle man does work requiring
skill or sensibility, then obviously the corn unity as a whole is in a
better position to carry on the struggle for a qualitatively better
life.
These groups within a society can be distinguished according as to
whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body;
or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and
otherwise function as separate individuals. In one case an aggregation
of impersonal units to form a body with a single purpose; in the other
case a suspension of individual activities for the purpose of rendering
mutual aid.
The former type of group — the army, for example — is historically the
most primitive. It is true that secret societies of medicine-men appear
quite early on the scene, but such groups are really of the first type
they act as a group rather than as separate individuals. The second type
of group — the organization of individuals for the active promotion of
their common interests — comes relatively late in social development.
The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the
individual is merely a unit; in more developed forms of society he is an
independent personality.
This brings me to my measure of progress. Progress is measured by the
degree of differentiation within a society. If the individual is a unit
in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull
and mechanical. If the individual is a unit on his own, with space and
potentiality for separate action, then he may be more subject to
accident or chance, but at least he can expand and express himself. He
can develop — develop in the only real meaning of the word — develop in
consciousness of strength, vitality and joy.
All this may seem very elementary, but it is a fundamental distinction
which still divides people into two camps. You might think that it would
be the natural desire of every man to develop as an independent
personality, but this does not seem to be true. Because they are either
economically or psychologically predisposed, there are many people who
find safety in numbers, happiness in anonymity, and dignity in routine.
They ask for nothing better than to be sheep under a shepherd, soldiers
under a captain, slaves under a tyrant. The few that must expand become
the shepherds, the captains and leaders of these willing followers.
Such servile people exist by the million, but again I ask: What is our
measure of progress? And again I answer that it is only in the degree
that the slave is emancipated and the personality differentiated that we
can speak of progress. The slave may be happy, but happiness is not
enough. A dog or a cat can be happy, but we do not therefore conclude
that such animals are superior to human beings — though Walt Whitman, in
a well-known poem, holds them up for our emulation. Progress is measured
by richness and intensity of experience — by a wider and deeper
apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.
Such is, indeed, the conscious or unconscious criterion of all
historians and philosophers. The worth of a civilization or a culture is
not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by
the quality and achievements of its representative individuals — its
philosophers, its poets and its artists.
We might therefore express our definition of progress in a slightly more
precise form. Progress, we might say, is the gradual establishment of a
qualitative differentiation of the individuals within a society.[1] In
the long history of mankind the group is to be regarded as an expedient
— an evolutionary aid. It is a means to security and economic
well-being: it is essential to the establishment of a civilization. But
the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality
or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the
course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and
independent of the parent group. The farther a society progresses, the
more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group.
At certain periods in the history of the world a society has become
conscious of its personalities: it would perhaps be truer to say that it
has established social and economic conditions which permit the free
development of the personality. The great age of Greek civilization is
the age of the great personalities of Greek poetry, Greek art and Greek
oratory: and in spite of the institution of slavery, it can be
described, relatively to the ages which preceded it, as an age of
political liberation. But nearer our time we have the so-called
Renaissance, inspired by this earlier Hellenic civilization, and even
more conscious of the value of free individual development. The European
Renaissance is an age of political confusion; but in spite of tyrannies
and oppression, there is no doubt that compared with the previous
period,[2] it also was an age of liberation. The individual once more
comes into his own, and the arts are cultivated and appreciated as never
before. But still more significantly, there arises a consciousness of
the very fact that the value of a civilization is dependent on the
freedom and variety of the individuals composing it. For the first time
the personality is deliberately cultivated as such; and from that time
until to-day it has not been possible to separate the achievements of a
civilization from the achievements of the individuals composing it. Even
in the sciences we now tend to think of the growth of knowledge in
particular and personal terms of physics, for example, as a line of
individuals stretching between Galileo and Einstein.
I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation
represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind. It may be that we
are only at the beginning of such a phase — a few centuries are a short
time in the history of a biological process. Creeds and castes, and all
forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past. The
future unit is the individual, a world in himself, self-contained and
self-creative, freely giving and freely receiving, but essentially a
free spirit.
It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the
individual as a term in the evolutionary process — in that part of the
evolutionary process which has still to take place. Nevertheless, there
exists in Nietzsche’s writings a confusion which must be avoided. That
it can be avoided is due mainly to scientific discoveries made since
Nietzsche’s day, so Nietzsche must to some extent be excused. I refer to
the discoveries of psycho-analysis. Freud has shown one thing very
clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the
unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their
solution under a disguised form in adult life. I do not wish to import
the technical language of psycho-analysis into this discussion, but it
has been shown that the irrational devotion which a group will show to
its leader is simply a transference of an emotional relationship which
has been dissolved or repressed within the family circle. When we
describe a king as “the Father of his People,” the metaphor is an exact
description of an unconscious symbolism. Moreover, we transfer to this
figure — head all sorts of imaginary virtues which we ourselves would
like to possess — it is the reverse process of the scapegoat, who is the
recipient of our secret guilt.
Nietzsche, like the admirers of our contemporary dictators, did not
sufficiently realize this distinction, and he is apt to praise as a
superman a figure who is merely inflated with the unconscious desires of
the group. The true superman is the man who holds himself aloof from the
group — a fact which Nietzsche acknowledged on other occasions. When an
individual has become conscious, not merely of his “Eigentum,” of his
own closed circuit of desires and potentialities (at which stage he is
an egoist), but also of the laws which govern his reactions to the group
of which lie is a member, then he is on the way to become that new type
of human being which Nietzsche called the Superman.
The individual and the group — this is the relationship out of which
spring all the complexities of our existence and the need for
unravelling and simplifying them. Conscience itself is born of this
relationship, and all those instincts of mutuality and sympathy which
become codified in morals. Morality, as has often been pointed out, is
antecedent to religion — it even exists in a rudimentary form among
animals. Religion and politics follow, as attempts to define the
instinctive conduct natural to the group, and finally you get the
historical process only too well known to us, in which the institutions
of religion and politics are captured by an individual or a class and
turned against the group which they were designed to benefit. Man finds
his instincts, already deformed by being defined, now altogether
inhibited. The organic life of the group, a self-regulative life like
the life of all organic entities, is stretched on the rigid frame of a
code. It ceases to be life in any real sense, and only functions as
convention, conformity and discipline.
There is a distinction to be made here between a discipline imposed on
life, and the law which is inherent in life. My own early experiences in
war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where
it is so often regarded as the first essential for success. It was not
discipline, but two qualities which I would call initiative and free
association, that proved essential in the stress of action. These
qualities are developed individually, and tend to be destroyed by the
mechanical routine of the barrack square. As for the unconscious
obedience which discipline and drill are supposed to inculcate, it
breaks as easily as eggshell in the face of machine-guns and high
explosives.
The law which is inherent in life is of an altogether different kind. We
must admit “the singular fact,” as Nietzsche called it, “that everything
of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly
certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself,
or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in
conduct, has only developed by the means of the tyranny of such
arbitrary law; and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that
precisely this is ‘nature and ‘natural.” (Beyond Good and Evil, §188.)
That ‘nature’ is penetrated throughout by ‘law’ is a fact which becomes
clearer with every advance of science; and we need only criticise
Nietzsche for calling such law ‘arbitrary.’ What is arbitrary is not the
law of nature, in whatever sphere it exists, but man’s interpretation of
it. The only necessity is to discover the true laws of nature and
conduct our lives in accordance with them.
The most general law in nature is equity — the principle of balance and
symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the
greatest structural efficiency. It is the law which gives the leaf as
well as the tree, the human body and the universe itself, an harmonious
and functional shape, which is at the same time objective beauty. But
when we use the expression: the law of equity, a curious paradox
results. If we look up the dictionary definition of equity we find:
“recourse to principles of justice to correct or supplement law.” As so
often, the words we use betray us: we have to confess, by using the word
equity, that the common statute law which is the law imposed by the
State is not necessarily the natural or just law; that there exist
principles of justice which are superior to these man-made
laws-principles of equality and fairness inherent in the natural order
of the universe.
The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence
and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word. In a
classical discussion of the subject in his book on Ancient Law, Sir
Henry Maine points out that the Aequitas of the Romans does in fact
imply the principle of equal or proportionate distribution. “The equal
division of numbers or physical magnitudes is doubtless closely entwined
with our perceptions of justice; there are few associations which keep
their ground in the mind so stubbornly or are dismissed from it with
such difficulty by the deepest thinkers.” “The feature of the Jus
Gentium which was presented to the apprehension of a Roman by the word
Equity, was exactly the first and most vividly realised characteristic
of the hypothetical state of nature. Nature implied symmetrical order,
first in the physical world, and next in the moral, and tile earliest
notion of order doubtless involved straight lines, even surfaces, and
measured distances.” I emphasize this origin of the word because it is
very necessary to distinguish between the laws of nature (which, to
avoid confusion, we ought rather to call the laws of the physical
universe) and that theory of a pristine state of nature which was made
the basis of Rousseau’s sentimental egalitarianism. It was. this latter
concept which, as Maine dryly remarked, “helped most powerfully to bring
about the grosser disappointments of which the first French Revolution
was fertile.” The theory is still that of the: Roman lawyers, but the
theory is, as it were, turned upside down. “The Roman had conceived that
by careful observation of existing institutions parts of them could be
singled out which either exhibited already, or could by judicious
purification be made. to exhibit, the vestiges of that reign of nature
whose reality be faintly affirmed. Rousseau’s belief was that a perfect
social order could be evolved from the unassisted consideration of the
natural state, a social order wholly irrespective of the actual
condition of the world and wholly unlike it. The great difference
between the views is that one bitterly and broadly condemns the present
for its. unlikeness to the ideal past; while the other, assuming the
present to be as necessary as the past, does, not affect to disregard or
censure it.”
I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to
Roman jurisprudence; but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of
nature rather than in the state of nature. It is based on analogies
derived from the simplicity and harmony of universal physical laws,
rather than on any assumptions of the natural goodness of human nature —
and this is precisely where it begins to diverge fundamentally from
democratic socialism,which goes back to Rousseau, the true founder of
state socialism.[3] Though state socialism may aim at giving to each
according to his needs, or, as nowadays in Russia, according to his
deserts, the abstract notion of equity is really quite foreign to its
thought. The tendency of modern socialism is to establish a vast system
of statutory law against which there no longer exists a plea in equity.
The object of anarchism, on the other hand, is to extend the principle
of equity until it altogether supersedes statutory law.
This distinction was already clear to Bakunin, as the following
quotation will show:
“When we speak of justice, we do not mean what is laid down in codes and
in the edicts of Roman jurisprudence, founded for the most part on acts
,of violence, consecrated by time and the benedictions of some church,
whether pagan or christian, — and as such accepted as absolute
principles from — which the rest can be deduced logically enough; we
mean rather that justice which is based solely on the conscience of
mankind, which is present in the conscience of each of us, even in the
minds of, children, and which is simply translated as equalness
(equation).
“This justice which is universal but which, thanks to the abuse of force
and to religious influences, has never yet prevailed, neither in the
political nor in the juridical, nor in the economic world this universal
sense of justice must be made the basis of the new world. Without it no
liberty, no republic, no prosperity, no peace!”
(Oeuvres, 1 (1912), pp.54–5.)
Admittedly a system of equity, no less than a system of law, implies a
machinery for determining and administering its principles. I can
imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration. But
just as the judge in equity is supposed to appeal to universal
principles of reason, and to ignore statutory law when it comes into
conflict with these principles, so the arbiter in an anarchist community
will appeal to these same principles, as determined by philosophy or
common sense; and will do so unimpeded by all those legal and economic
prejudices which the present organization of society entails.
It will be said that I am appealing to mystical entities, to idealistic
notions which all good materialists reject. I do not deny it. What I do
deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such
mystical ethos. Such a statement will shock the Marxian socialist, who,
in spite of Marx’s warnings, is usually a naive materialist. Marx’s
theory — as I think he himself would have been the first to admit — was
not a universal theory. It did not deal with all the facts of life or
only dealt with some of them in a very’ superficial way. Marx rightly
rejected the unhistorical methods of the German metaphysicians, who
tried to make the facts fit a pre-conceived theory. He also, just as
firmly, rejected the mechanical materialism of the eighteenth century
rejected it on the grounds that though it could explain the existing
nature of things, it ignored the whole process of historical development
— the universe as organic growth. Most Marxians forget the first thesis
on Feuerbach, which reads: “The chief defect of all hitherto existing
materialism that of Feuerbach included — is that the object, reality,
sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object but not as
human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively.” Naturally, when it
came to interpreting the history of religion, Marx would have treated it
as a social product; but that is far from treating it as an illusion.
Indeed, the historical evidence must tend altogether in the opposite
direction, and compel us to recognize in religion a social necessity.
There has never been a civilization without its corresponding religion,
and the appearance of rationalism and scepticism is always a symptom of
decadence.
Admittedly there is a general fund of reason to, which all civilizations
contribute their share and which includes an attitude of comparative
detachment from the particular religion of one’s epoch. But to recognize
the historical evolution of at phenomenon like religion does not explain
it away. It is far more likely to give it a scientific justification, to
reveal it as a necessary “human sensuous activity,” and therefore to
throw suspicion on any social philosophy which arbitrarily excludes
religion from the organization it proposes for society.
It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if
you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually
revert to the old one. Communism has, of course, its religious aspects,
and apart from the gradual readmission of the Orthodox Church,[4] the
deification of Lenin (sacred tomb, effigies, creation of a legend — all
the elements are there) is a deliberate attempt to create an outlet for
religious emotions. Still more deliberate attempts to create the
paraphernalia of a new creed are being made in Germany, where the
necessity for a religion of some kind has never been officially denied.
In Italy Mussolini has been far too wily to do anything but come to
terms with the prevailing Catholic Church. Far from scoffing at these
irrational aspects of communism and fascism, we should rather only
criticize them for their stupidity — for their lack of any real sensuous
and aesthetic content, for the poverty of their ritual, and above all
for their misunderstanding of the function of poetry and imagination in
the life of the community.
We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a
new religion will emerge,just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of
the Roman civilization. Socialism, as conceived by it pseudo-historical
materialists, is not such a religion, and never will be. And though,
from this point of view, it must be conceded that Fascism has shown more
imagination, it is in itself such a phenomenon of decadence the first
defensive awareness of the fate awaiting the existing social order —
that its ideological superstructure is not of much permanent interest.
For a religion is never a synthetic creation — you cannot select your
legends and saints from the mythical past and combine them with some
kind of political or racial policy to make a nice convenient creed. A
prophet, like a poet, is born. But even granted your prophet, you are
still far from the establishment of a religion. It needed five centuries
to build the religion of Christianity on the message of Christ. That
message had to be moulded, enlarged and to a considerable extent
distorted until it expressed what Jung has called the collective
unconscious — that complex of psychological factors which gives cohesion
to a society. Religion, in its later stages, may well become the opium
of the people; but whilst it is vital it is the only force which can
hold a people together — which can supply them with a natural authority
to appeal to when their personal interests clash.
I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived
as a supernatural authority. It is natural in relation to the morphology
of society; supernatural in relation to the morphology of the physical
universe. But in either aspect it is in opposition to the artificial
authority of the ‘State. The State only acquires its supreme authority
when religion begins to decline, and the great struggle between Church
and State, when, as in modern Europe, it ends so decisively in favour of
the State, is from the point of view of the organic life of a society,
eventually fatal. It is because modern socialism has been unable to
perceive this truth and has instead linked itself to the dead hand of
the State, that everywhere socialism is meeting its defeat. The natural
ally of socialism was the Church, though admittedly in the actual
historical circumstances of the nineteenth century it was difficult to
see this. The Church was so corrupted, so much a dependency of the
ruling classes, that only a few rare spirits could see through
appearances to the realities, and conceive socialism in the terms of a
new religion, or more simply as a new reformation of Christianity.
Whether, in the actual circumstances of today, it is still possible to
find a path from the old religion to a new religion is doubtful.
Christianity has so compromised itself that any reformation that would
be drastic enough is almost inconceivable. A new religion is more likely
to arise step by step with a new society — perhaps in Mexico, perhaps in
Spain, perhaps in the United States: it is impossible to say where,
because even the germ of such a new society is nowhere evident and its
full formation lies deeply buried in the future.
I am not a Christian revivalist — I have no religion to recommend and
none to believe in. I merely affirm, on the evidence of the history of
civilizations, that a religion is a necessary element in any organic
society.[5] And I am so conscious of the slow process of spiritual
development that I am in no mood to look for a new religion, much less
expect to find one. I would only venture one observation. Both in its
origins and development, up to its zenith, religion is closely
associated with art. Religion and art are, indeed, if not alternative
modes of expression, modes intimately associated. Apart from the
essentially aesthetic nature of religious ritual; apart, too, from the
dependence of religion on art for the vizualization of its subjective
concepts; there is besides, an identity of the highest forms of poetic
and mystic expression. Poetry, in its intensest and most creative
moments, penetrates to the same level of the unconscious as mysticism.
Certain writers — and they are among the greatest — St. Francis, Dante,
St. Theresa, St. John of the Cross, Blake — rank equally as poets and as
mystics. For this reason it may well happen that the origins of a new
religion will be found in art rather than in any form of moralistic
revivalism.[6]
What has all this to do with anarchism? Merely this: socialism of the
Marxist tradition, that is today, state socialism, has so completely cut
itself off from religious sanctions and has been driven to such pitiful
subterfuges in its search for substitutes for religion, that by contrast
anarchism, which is not without its mystic strain, is a religion itself.
It is possible, that is to say, to conceive a new religion developing
out of anarchism. During the Spanish Civil War many observers were
struck by the religious intensity of the anarchists. In that country of
potential renaissance anarchism has inspired, not only heroes but even
saints — a new race of men whose lives are devoted, in sensuous
imagination and in practice, to the creation of a new type of human
society.
These are the resounding phrases of a visionary, it will be said, and
not the practical accents of “constructive” socialism. But the
scepticism of the so-called practical man is destructive of the only
force that can bring a socialist community into existence. It was always
prophesied, in the pre-war years, that State socialism was a visionary
ideal, impossible of realisation. Apart from the fact that every
industrial country in the world has been moving rapidly towards State
socialism during the last quarter of a century, there is the example of
Russia to prove how very possible a central organization of production
and distribution is, provided you have visionaries ruthless enough, and
in this case inhuman enough, to carry an ideal into practice. I do not
believe that this particular kind of social organization can endure for
long, simply because, as I have already suggested, it is not organic.
But if such an arbitrary (or, if you prefer the word, logical) form of
society can be established even for a few years, how much more likely it
is that a society which does not contradict the laws of organic growth
can be established and will endure. A beginning was being made in Spain,
in spite of the Civil War and all the restrictions that a condition of
emergency implied. The textile industry of Alcoy, the wood industry in
Cuenca, the transport system in Barcelona — these are a few examples of
the many anarchist collectives which were functioning efficiently for
more than two years.[7] It has been demonstrated beyond any possibility
of denial that whatever may be the merits or demerits of the
anarcho-syndicalist system, it can and does work. Once it prevails over
the whole economic life of the country, it should function better still
and provide a standard of living far higher than that realized under any
previous form of social organization.
I do not intend to repeat in any detail the syndicalist proposals for
the organization of production and distribution. The general principle
in clear: each industry forms itself into a federation of self-governing
collectives; the control of each industry is wholly in the hands of the
workers in that industry, and these collectives administer the whole
economic life of the country. That there will be something in the nature
of a parliament of industry to adjust mutual relations between the
various collectives and to decide on general questions of policy goes
without saying, but this parliament will be in no sense an
administrative or executive body, It will form a kind of industrial
diplomatic service, adjusting relations and preserving peace, but
possessing no legislative powers and no privileged status. There might
also be a corresponding body to represent the interests of the
consumers, and to arrange questions of price and distribution with the
collectives.
Admittedly there will be all sorts of practical difficulties to
overcome, but the system is simplicity itself compared with the monster
of centralized state control, which sets such an inhuman distance
between the worker and the administrator that there is room for a
thousand difficulties; to intervene. Once you make subsistence and not
profit the motive for association and mutual aid, there it everything to
be said for local control, individual initiative and absolute equality.
Otherwise we may be sure that some deus ex machina will be controlling
things for his own benefit, and perhaps putting a spoke in the wheel for
his own sadistic satisfaction.
The only other practical problem to consider at this stage is what I
will call the interpretation of equity rather than the administration of
justice. Obviously the great mass of civil and criminal proceedings will
simply disappear with the disappearance of the profit motive; such as
remain unnatural act of acquisitiveness, of anger and self-indulgence —
will to a great extent be dealt with by the collectives, just as the old
minor court dealt with all offences against the peace of the parish. If
it is true that certain dangerous tendencies will persist, these must be
kept in check. “Kept in check” is the cliche that first springs to the
mind, but it indicates the repressive methods of the old morality. The
more fashionable word would be “sublimated,” and by this we mean the
devising of harmless outlets for emotional energies which, when
repressed, become evil and anti-social. The aggressive instincts, for
example, are expended in competitive games of various kinds — the most
playful nation is even now the least aggressive.
The whole case for anarchism rests on a general assumption which makes
detailed speculations of this kind quite unnecessary. The assumption is
that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous
to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and
digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason. Just as an
individual by a proper balance of these faculties can maintain himself
in health, so a community can live naturally and freely, without the
disease of crime. Crime is a symptom of social illness — of poverty,
inequality and restriction.[8] Rid the social body of these illnesses
and you rid society of crime. Unless you can believe this, not as an
ideal or fancy, but as a biological truth, you cannot be an anarchist.
But if you do believe it, you must logically come to anarchism. Your
only alternative is to be a sceptic and authoritarian — a person who has
so little faith in the natural order that he will attempt to make the
world conform to some artificial system of his own devising.
I have said little about the actual organization of an anarchist
community, partly because I have nothing to add to what has been said by
Kropotkin and by contemporary syndicalists like Dubreuil; partly because
it is always a mistake to build a priori constitutions. The main thing
is to establish your principles — the principles of equality, of
individual freedom, of workers’ control. The community then aims at the
establishment of these principles from the starting — point of local
needs and local conditions. That they must be established by
revolutionary methods is perhaps inevitable. But in this connection I
would like to revive the distinction made by Max Stirner between
revolution and insurrection. Revolution “consists in an overturning of
conditions, of the established condition or status, the State or
society, and is accordingly a political or social act.” Insurrection
“has for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances,
yet does not start from it but from men’s discontent with themselves, is
not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without
regard to the arrangements that spring from it.” Stirner carried the
distinction farther, but the point I wish to make is that there is all
the difference in the world between a movement that aims at an exchange
of political institutions, which is the bourgeois socialist (Fabian)
notion of a revolution; and a movement that aims at getting rid of these
political institutions altogether. An insurrection, therefore, is
directed against the State as such, and this aim will determine our
tactics. It would obviously be a mistake to create the kind of machinery
which, at the successful end of a revolution, would merely be taken over
by the leaders of the revolution, who then assume the functions of a
government. That is out of the frying pan into the fire. It is for this
reason that the defeat of the Spanish Government, regrettable in that it
leaves the power of the State in still more ruthless hands, is to be
looked upon with a certain indifference; for in the process of defending
its existence the Spanish Government had created, in the form of a
standing array and a secret police, all the instruments of oppression,
and there was little prospect that these instruments would have been
discarded by the particular group of men who would have been in control
if the war had ended in a Government victory.
The natural weapon of the working classes is the strike, and if I am
told that the strike has been tried and has failed, I must reply that
the strike as a strategic force is in its infancy. This supreme power
which is in the hands of the working classes boa never yet been used
with intelligence and with courage. The general strike — our General
Strike of 1926, for example — is an imbecility. What is required is a
disposition of forces in depth, so that the vast resources of the
workers can be organised in support of an attack on a vital spot. The
State is just as vulnerable as a human being, and can be killed by the
cutting of a single artery. But you must see that surgeons do not rush
in to save the victim. You must work secretly and act swiftly: the event
must be catastrophic. Tyranny, whether of a person or a class, can never
be destroyed in any other way. It was the Great Insurgent himself who
said: “Be ye wise as serpents.”
An insurrection is necessary for the simple reason that when it comes to
the point, even your man of good will, if he is on the top, will not
sacrifice his personal advantages to the general good. In the rapacious
type of capitalism existing in this country and America, such personal
advantages are the result of an exercise of low cunning hardly
compatible with a sense of justice; or they are based on a callous
speculation in finance which neither knows nor cares what human elements
are involved in the abstract movement of market prices. For the last
fifty years it has been obvious to anyone with an enquiring mind that
the capitalist system has reached a stage in its development at which it
can only continue under cover of imperial aggression — at which it can
only extend its markets behind a barrage of high explosives. But even
that realization — the realization that capitalism involves a human
sacrifice beyond the lusts of Moloch — even that realization has not
persuaded our rulers to humanize the social economy of nations. Nowhere
— not even in Russia — have they abandoned the economic values upon
which every society since the Middle Ages has vainly tried to base
itself. It has only been proved, again and again, that on the question
of spiritual values there can be no compromise. Half-measures have
failed and now the inevitable catastrophe has overwhelmed us. Whether
that catastrophe is the final paroxysm of a doomed system, leaving the
world darker and more despairing than ever; or whether it is the prelude
to a spontaneous and universal insurrection, will depend on a swift
apprehension of the destiny that is upon us. Faith in the fundamental
goodness of man; humility in the presence of natural law; reason and
mutual aid — these are the qualities that can save us. But they must be
unified and vitalized by an insurrectionary passion, a flame in which
all virtues are tempered and clarified, and brought to their most
effective strength.
[1] It is worth observing that this is Plato’s measure of progress in
the Republic, II, 369 ff.
[2] Stylistically it is no longer possible to regard the Renaissance as
an epoch which begins arbitrarily about 1400. Giotto and Masaccio can
fairly be regarded as the culmination of Gothic art no less than as the
forerunners of Renaissance art. There was actually a continuous process
of growth, which began imperceptibly as the new force of Christianity
penetrated the dead forms of late Roman art, which reached maturity in
the Gothic style of the 12^(th) and 13^(th) centuries, and which then
grew in richness and complexity as it became more personal and
individual during the 14^(th) and succeeding two centuries. From an
esthetic point of view the earlier and later phases of this process
(Gothic and Renaissance) cannot be judged absolutely: what the one gains
from co-operative unity it loses in variety, and vice versa.
[3] This is clearly demonstrated by Rudolf Rocker in Nationalism and
Culture. (New York, 1937.)
[4] For the present relations between the Soviet Government and the
Church, see A. Ciliga, The Russian Enigma (Routledge, 1940), pp. 160–5.
[5] See note 3
[6] See note 3
[7] See note 3
[8] See note 3