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Title: What is Authority? Author: Michail Bakunin Date: 1871 Language: en Topics: classical, introductory Source: Retrieved on February 24th, 2009 from http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/bakunin/wia.html
What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which
manifest themselves in the necessary linking and succession of phenomena
in the physical and social worlds? Indeed, against these laws revolt is
not only forbidden — it is even impossible. We may misunderstand them or
not know them at all, but we cannot disobey them; because they
constitute the basis and the fundamental conditions of our existence;
they envelop us, penetrate us, regulate all our movements, thoughts and
acts; even when we believe that we disobey them, we only show their
omnipotence.
Yes, we are absolutely the slaves of these laws. But in such slavery
there is no humiliation, or, rather, it is not slavery at all. For
slavery supposes an external master, a legislator outside of him whom he
commands, while these laws are not outside of us; they are inherent in
us; they constitute our being, our whole being, physically,
intellectually, and morally; we live, we breathe, we act, we think, we
wish only through these laws. Without them we are nothing, we are not.
Whence, then, could we derive the power and the wish to rebel against
them?
In his relation to natural laws but one liberty is possible to man —
that of recognising and applying them on an ever-extending scale of
conformity with the object of collective and individual emancipation of
humanisation which he pursues. These laws, once recognised, exercise an
authority which is never disputed by the mass of men. One must, for
instance, be at bottom either a fool or a theologician or at least a
metaphysician, jurist or bourgeois economist to rebel against the law by
which twice two make four. One must have faith to imagine that fire will
not burn nor water drown, except, indeed, recourse be had to some
subterfuge founded in its turn on some other natural law. But these
revolts, or rather, these attempts at or foolish fancies of an
impossible revolt, are decidedly the exception: for, in general, it may
be said that the mass of men, in their daily lives, acknowledge the
government of common sense — that is, of the sum of the general laws
generally recognised — in an almost absolute fashion.
The great misfortune is that a large number of natural laws, already
established as such by science, remain unknown to the masses, thanks to
the watchfulness of those tutelary governments that exist, as we know,
only for the good of the people. There is another difficulty — namely,
that the major portion of the natural laws connected with the
development of human society, which are quite as necessary, invariable,
fatal, as the laws that govern the physical world, have not been duly
established and recognised by science itself.
Once they shall have been recognised by science, and then from science,
by means of an extensive system of popular education and instruction,
shall have passed into the consciousness of all, the question of liberty
will be entirely solved. The most stubborn authorities must admit that
then there will be no need either of political organisation or direction
or legislation, three things which, whether they emanate from the will
of the sovereign or from the vote of a parliament elected by universal
suffrage, and even should they conform to the system of natural laws —
which has never been the case and never will be the case — are always
equally fatal and hostile to the liberty of the masses from the very
fact that they impose on them a system of external and therefore
despotic laws.
The Liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws
because he has himself recognised them as such, and not because they
have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatsoever,
divine or human, collective or individual.
Suppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious
representatives of science; suppose this academy charged with
legislation for and the organisation of society, and that, inspired only
by the purest love of truth, it frames none but the laws but the laws in
absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science. Well, I
maintain, for my part, that such legislation and such organisation would
be a monstrosity, for two reasons: first, that human science is always
and necessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered
with what remains to be discovered, we may say that it is still in its
cradle. So that were we to try to force the practical life of men,
collective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity
with the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as
individuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon
end by dislocating and stifling them, life ever remaining an infinitely
greater thing than science.
The second reason is this: a society which should obey legislation
emanating from a scientific academy, not because it understood itself
the rational character of this legislation (in which case the existence
of the academy would become useless), but because this legislation,
emanating from the academy, was imposed in the name of a science which
it venerated without comprehending — such a society would be a society,
not of men, but of brutes. It would be a second edition of those
missions in Paraguay which submitted so long to the government of the
Jesuits. It would surely and rapidly descend to the lowest stage of
idiocy.
But there is still a third reason which would render such a government
impossible — namely that a scientific academy invested with a
sovereignty, so to speak, absolute, even if it were composed of the most
illustrious men, would infallibly and soon end in its own moral and
intellectual corruption. Even today, with the few privileges allowed
them, such is the history of all academies. The greatest scientific
genius, from the moment that he becomes an academian, an officially
licensed savant, inevitably lapses into sluggishness. He loses his
spontaneity, his revolutionary hardihood, and that troublesome and
savage energy characteristic of the grandest geniuses, ever called to
destroy old tottering worlds and lay the foundations of new. He
undoubtedly gains in politeness, in utilitarian and practical wisdom,
what he loses in power of thought. In a word, he becomes corrupted.
It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position
to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether
practically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart. That
is a social law which admits of no exception, and is as applicable to
entire nations as to classes, corporations and individuals. It is the
law of equality, the supreme condition of liberty and humanity. The
principle object of this treatise is precisely to demonstrate this truth
in all the manifestations of social life.
A scientific body to which had been confided the government of society
would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to
quite another affair; and that affair, as in the case of all established
powers, would be its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society
confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of
its government and direction.
But that which is true of scientific academies is also true of all
constituent and legislative assemblies, even those chosen by universal
suffrage. In the latter case they may renew their composition, it is
true, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years’ time of a
body of politicans, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting
themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a
country, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy.
Witness the United States of America and Switzerland.
Consequently, no external legislation and no authority — one, for that
matter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the
servitude of society and the degradation of the legislators themsleves.
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought.
In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker;
concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect
or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or
such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor
savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with
all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their
knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and
censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in
any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and
choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no
infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever
respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such
individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would
be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my
undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an
instrument of the will and interests of others.
If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness
to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary,
their indications and even their directions, it is because their
authority is imposed on me by no one, neither by men nor by God.
Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their
counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would
make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps
of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.
I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by
my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its
detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human
knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a
comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for
industry, the necessity of the division and association of labour. I
receive and I give — such is human life. Each directs and is directed in
his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a
continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary
authority and subordination.
This same reason forbids me, then, to recognise a fixed, constant and
universal authority, because there is no universal man, no man capable
of grasping in all that wealth of detail, without which the application
of science to life is impossible, all the sciences, all the branches of
social life. And if such universality could ever be realised in a single
man, and if he wished to take advantage thereof to impose his authority
upon us, it would be necessary to drive this man out of society, because
his authority would inevitably reduce all the others to slavery and
imbecility. I do not think that society ought to maltreat men of genius
as it has done hitherto: but neither do I think it should indulge them
too far, still less accord them any privileges or exclusive rights
whatsoever; and that for three reasons: first, because it would often
mistake a charlatan for a man of genius; second, because, through such a
system of privileges, it might transform into a charlatan even a real
man of genius, demoralise him, and degrade him; and, finally, because it
would establish a master over itself.