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Title: A Critic of Anarchism Author: Sydney Olivier Date: October 1, 1887 Language: en Topics: Freedom Press, Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, critique, not anarchist Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 2 -- No. 13, retrieved on September 3, 2019, from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=2979. Notes: Freedom Press, London
(BY A NON-ANARCHIST CORRESPONDENT.)
"When Anarchism was first heard of in the Socialist movement in England,
it was welcomed & a protest against the insane disregard of the lessons
of political experience a& to personal liberty apparent in some
Collectivist ideals. But it ha& since developed into a doctrine of
unmitigated individualism, having for it& economic basis an invincible
ignorance of the late of Rent. As such it i& no longer welcome, or even
tolerable, to Socialists."
The above appears as a note to an article by G. Bernard Shaw in the
September number of To-Day. The fact that the article in question "A
Word for War," is written for the furtherance of the policy which Mr.
Shaw has for some time past been urging on that section of the Socialist
party with which he is most in sympathy,, of cutting loose from and
repudiating the Anarchist section, perhaps accounts for though it hardly
excuses, the gratuitously misleading attack. Anarchists and
Collectivists have their differences., which have not yet estranged
them. But it takes two to make a quarrel, and an unexpected stinger on
the sm---- nose, in what was understood to be a friendly engagement, has
before now been found of service in promoting the alienation of an
acquaintance whose comradeship has ceased to be desired. Whether the
Right and Left of the Socialist party should adopt the policy of mutual
disavowal and denunciation, I do not desire here to discuss. Nor is it
for me, who do not claim to be an Anarchist, to pretend to put forward
the Anarchist criticism of the general purport of Mr. Shaw's article.
But as the observations in his note are just the sort of language which
we constantly hear from common-sensible people who are not Socialists,
and other folk who know no better, it seems to me, as a Socialist, a
pity that they should be allowed to pass as expressing what Socialists
think of Anarchism.
Mr. Shaw knows quite well that "ignorance of the law of Rent" is no
distinction of the Anarchist. It is a general characteristic of men and
women whose education in economics has been neglected. His reproach
against the Anarchist is just what Mr. Mallock's is against him, as the
typical Socialist. And when Mr. Shaw points out to Mr. Mallock that,
whatever the ignorance of the rank and file, he is one of those superior
persons who know all about rent, and are Socialists because of that
knowledge, he might just as well remember that there are Anarchists
among his own acquaintance who, if not quite so handy with the
text-books, could at any rate pass muster as to the principles. The
assertion that the ignorance of their companions is invincible while
that of his own associates is transient,, does but bear witness equally
to Mr. Shaw's modesty and to the educational influence of his society.
If there is any essential distinction between Anarchists and other
Socialists in their views as to rent, it is not as to the existence or
the nature of the advantages which may be classed under that name but
rather as to the effective means for their equitable distribution. And,,
whatever Mr. Shaw may mean by "unmitigated individualism" as a
characteristic of Anarchists, it is certainly true that they have not
the least confidence that such equitable distribution will be secured by
the system of mitigated Individualism-selfishness tempered by
repression-which some people preach under the name of Socialism. They
are not at all of the opinion, to which we have heard Mr. Shaw himself
give encouragement, that when the workers have appropriated the existing
sources of rent and interest, and it has been made penal for any man to
let his property for hire or usury, the work of Socialism will be
accomplished, and that the products of the labor of the community will
then be distributed in the beat and fairest way possible by giving free
play and encouragement to the predatory and competitive impulses of the
individual. If Mr. Shaw frankly extols the instinct of predatory
individualism, as I admit that any one on Darwinian grounds may show
considerable reason for doing, and believes that it is only the co
existence in modern society of the capitalist system of exploitation
that causes its effects to be evil, then Socialism means for him
Individualism mitigated by the making of such exploitation penal,, or at
least restraining it in some manner by executive pressure. As regards
the rent and interest, which the abolition of the exploiting class would
restore for the benefit of the community, the Collectivist scheme
proposes that they should be pooled in a national or municipal treasury
and redistributed in the form of remission of taxation or works of
public utility. Not only is the Anarchist extremely skeptical as to the
likelihood of the majority of the people getting any share of the rents
at all under such an arrangement, but he points out, with the
commonplace bourgeois critic, that assuming the competitive predatory
spirit to be developed in the government lessees, it is not at all
probable that the full rent will ever get itself pooled. These doubts he
is entitled to harbor without exposing himself to the charge of
invincible ignorance in economics.
But it is of more importance to him to invite a consideration of what
would be the result to society of the establishment of this system of
merely mitigated individualism, assuming the retention of the legal
guarantee of private property, other than capital, and the persistence
of competitive individualism. The result would be that each worker would
obtain as private property the competitive exchange value of his own
contribution to production. It is admitted--at least I have heard Mr.
Shaw admit--that the man of exceptional and indispensable, or much
prized, ability would make a large income, and that the feeble person
would starve or live a pauper, the annual product being distributed as
wages in amounts graduated between these extremes. The dynasty of the
armed man and the dynasty of capital having passed away, their place in
the exploitation of humanity would be taken by the man of superior
efficiency.
In such a prospect the Anarchists see no blessedness If I do not
misinterpret them, they hold that the abolition of the laws and legal
machinery by which the " rights " of property are protected and enforced
is a simpler method of extinguishing its abuses than the creation of new
laws and machinery for the repression of capitalist exploitation which
is just one of those abuses, while the absence of all property law would
abate that inequality of distribution which would be left unaffected by
the extinction of that exploitation. But that this implies a doctrine of
unmitigated individualism, in the sense in which the word has been used
above--the bad sense in which Mr. Shaw employed it in his note--no
Socialist can seriously pretend. On the contrary, it is because of this
insistence on, and confidence in, what is an indispensable part of true
Socialist teaching--the doctrine of the social nature and propensities
of man--that they urge the suppression of that machinery of law and
order which the Socialist Right only desire to modify. They believe that
the selfish and predatory Individualism is born only of fear and
distrust, of which the most fruitful source is the power of man over
man. They believe--and surely every Socialist believes with them--that
under favorable and fitting conditions man's impulse is to cooperation,
and that were it not so no readjustment of material conditions would be
worth fighting for. I hold, as convincedly as any Anarchist-Socialist
can, that the ultimate advantage of any readjustment that should not be
accompanied by an abatement of egoistic competition would be nil. The "
individualism" of the Anarchists is the unfolding of the true nature of
the individual, and if I and other Socialists are not quite in agreement
with them as to the safest conditions for such evolution, we at any rate
welcome the reminder, which we get far more often from the Anarchists
than from Mr. Shaw, that the ultimate aim of Socialism is the making of
Man, and that we have reason to think that there is enough of noble and
lovely in his nature to warrant him worth the making.
Sydney Olivier.