Published in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, written by Peter Kropotkin.
ANARCHISM (from the Gr. an and archos,
contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life
and conduct under which society is conceived without government –
harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or
by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between
the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for
the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of
the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a
society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which
already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a
still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in
all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed
of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and
degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more
or less permanent – for all possible purposes: production, consumption
and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual
protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side,
for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific,
artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would
represent nothing immutable. On the contrary – as is seen in organic
life at large – harmony would (it is contended) result from an
ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the
multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the
easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection
from the state.
If, it is contended, society were organized on
these principles, man would not be limited in the free exercise of his
powers in productive work by a capitalist monopoly, maintained by the
state; nor would he be limited in the exercise of his will by a fear of
punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical
entities, which both lead to depression of initiative and servility of
mind. He would be guided in his actions by his own understanding, which
necessarily would bear the impression of a free action and reaction
between his own self and the ethical conceptions of his surroundings.
Man would thus be enabled to obtain the full development of all his
faculties, intellectual, artistic and moral, without being hampered by
overwork for the monopolists, or by the servility and inertia of mind of
the great number. He would thus be able to reach full individualization, which is not possible either under the present system ofindividualism, or under any system of state socialism in the so-called Volkstaat (popular state).
The anarchist writers consider, moreover, that their conception is not a utopia, constructed on the a priori method, after a few desiderata have been taken as postulates. It is derived, they maintain, from an analysis of tendencies that
are at work already, even though state socialism may find a temporary
favour with the reformers. The progress of modern technics, which
wonderfully simplifies the production of all the necessaries of life;
the growing spirit of independence, and the rapid spread of free
initiative and free understanding in all branches of activity –
including those which formerly were considered as the proper attribution
of church and state – are steadily reinforcing the no-government
tendency.
As to their economical conceptions, the anarchists, in
common with all socialists, of whom they constitute the left wing,
maintain that the now prevailing system of private ownership in land,
and our capitalist production for the sake of profits, represent a
monopoly which runs against both the principles of justice and the
dictates of utility. They are the main obstacle which prevents the
successes of modern technics from being brought into the service of all,
so as to produce general well-being. The anarchists consider the
wage-system and capitalist production altogether as an obstacle to
progress. But they point out also that the state was, and continues to
be, the chief instrument for permitting the few to monopolize the land,
and the capitalists to appropriate for themselves a quite
disproportionate share of the yearly accumulated surplus of production.
Consequently, while combating the present monopolization of land, and
capitalism altogether, the anarchists combat with the same energy the
state, as the main support of that system. Not this or that special
form, but the state altogether, whether it be a monarchy or even a
republic governed by means of the referendum.
The state
organization, having always been, both in ancient and modern history
(Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire, modern European states grown up on the
ruins of the autonomous cities), the instrument for establishing
monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities, cannot be made to work
for the destruction of these monopolies. The anarchists consider,
therefore, that to hand over to the state all the main sources of
economical life – the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance,
and so on – as also the management of all the main branches of
industry, in addition to all the functions already accumulated in its
hands (education, state-supported religions, defence of the territory,
etc.), would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State
capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism.
True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional,
in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and
of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the
present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery.
In common with
most socialists, the anarchists recognize that, like all evolution in
nature, the slow evolution of society is followed from time to time by
periods of accelerated evolution which are called revolutions; and they
think that the era of revolutions is not yet closed. Periods of rapid
changes will follow the periods of slow evolution, and these periods
must be taken advantage of – not for increasing and widening the powers
of the state, but for reducing them, through the organization in every
township or commune of the local groups of producers and consumers, as
also the regional, and eventually the international, federations of
these groups.
In virtue of the above principles the anarchists
refuse to be party to the present state organization and to support it
by infusing fresh blood into it. They do not seek to constitute, and
invite the working men not to constitute, political parties in the
parliaments. Accordingly, since the foundation of the International
Working Men’s Association in 1864-1866, they have endeavoured to promote
their ideas directly amongst the labour organizations and to induce
those unions to a direct struggle against capital, without placing their
faith in parliamentary legislation.
The historical development of anarchism
The
conception of society just sketched, and the tendency which is its
dynamic expression, have always existed in mankind, in opposition to the
governing hierarchic conception and tendency – now the one and now the
other taking the upper hand at different periods of history. To the
former tendency we owe the evolution, by the masses themselves, of those
institutions – the clan, the village community, the guild, the free
medieval city – by means of which the masses resisted the encroachments
of the conquerors and the power-seeking minorities. The same tendency
asserted itself with great energy in the great religious movements of
medieval times, especially in the early movements of the reform and its
forerunners. At the same time it evidently found its expression in the
writings of some thinkers, since the times of Lao-tsze, although, owing
to its non-scholastic and popular origin, it obviously found less
sympathy among the scholars than the opposed tendency.
As has been pointed out by Prof. Adler in his Geschichte des Sozialismus und Kommunismus,
Aristippus (b.c. 430 BC), one of the founders of the Cyrenaic school,
already taught that the wise must not give up their liberty to the
state, and in reply to a question by Socrates he said that he did not
desire to belong either to the governing or the governed class. Such an
attitude, however, seems to have been dictated merely by an Epicurean
attitude towards the life of the masses.
The best exponent of
anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was Zeno (342-267 or 270 BC),
from Crete, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, who distinctly opposed
his conception of a free community without government to the
state-utopia of Plato. He repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its
intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the
moral law of the individual – remarking already that, while the
necessary instinct of self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has
supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct –
that of sociability. When men are reasonable enough to follow their
natural instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute
the cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no
temples and no public worship, and use no money – free gifts taking the
place of the exchanges. Unfortunately, the writings of Zeno have not
reached us and are only known through fragmentary quotations. However,
the fact that his very wording is similar to the wording now in use,
shows how deeply is laid the tendency of human nature of which he was
the mouthpiece.
In medieval times we find the same views on the
state expressed by the illustrious bishop of Alba, Marco Girolamo Vida,
in his first dialogue De dignitate reipublicae (Ferd. Cavalli, in Mem. dell’Istituto Veneto, xiii.; Dr E. Nys, Researches in the History of Economics).
But it is especially in several early Christian movements, beginning
with the ninth century in Armenia, and in the preachings of the early
Hussites, particularly Chojecki, and the early Anabaptists, especially
Hans Denk (cf. Keller, Ein Apostel der Wiedertäufer), that one finds the same ideas forcibly expressed – special stress being laid of course on their moral aspects.
Rabelais
and Fenelon, in their utopias, have also expressed similar ideas, and
they were also current in the eighteenth century amongst the French
Encyclopaedists, as may be concluded from separate expressions
occasionally met with in the writings of Rousseau, from Diderot’s Preface to the Voyage of
Bougainville, and so on. However, in all probability such ideas could
not be developed then, owing to the rigorous censorship of the Roman
Catholic Church.
These ideas found their expression later during
the great French Revolution. While the Jacobins did all in their power
to centralize everything in the hands of the government, it appears now,
from recently published documents, that the masses of the people, in
their municipalities and ‘sections’, accomplished a considerable
constructive work. They appropriated for themselves the election of the
judges, the organization of supplies and equipment for the army, as also
for the large cities, work for the unemployed, the management of
charities, and so on. They even tried to establish a direct
correspondence between the 36,000 communes of France through the
intermediary of a special board, outside the National Assembly (cf.
Sigismund Lacroix, Actes de la commune de Paris).
It was Godwin, in his Enquiry concerning Political Justice (2
vols., 1793), who was the first to formulate the political and
economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that
name to the ideas developed in his remarkable work. Laws, he wrote, are
not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of
their passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The
remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure. If and
only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the decisions in the
arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen for that purpose,
real justice would gradually be evolved. As to the state, Godwin frankly
claimed its abolition. A society, he wrote, can perfectly well exist
without any government: only the communities should be small and
perfectly autonomous. Speaking of property, he stated that the rights of
every one ‘to every substance capable of contributing to the benefit of
a human being’ must be regulated by justice alone: the substance must
go ‘to him who most wants it’. His conclusion was communism. Godwin,
however, had not the courage to maintain his opinions. He entirely
rewrote later on his chapter on property and mitigated his communist
views in the second edition of Political Justice (8vo, 1796).
Proudhon was the first to use, in 1840 (Qu’est-ce que la propriete? first
memoir), the name of anarchy with application to the no government
state of society. The name of ‘anarchists’ had been freely applied
during the French Revolution by the Girondists to those revolutionaries
who did not consider that the task of the Revolution was accomplished
with the overthrow of Louis XVI, and insisted upon a series of
economical measures being taken (the abolition of feudal rights without
redemption, the return to the village communities of the communal lands
enclosed since 1669, the limitation of landed property to 120 acres,
progressive income-tax, the national organization of exchanges on a just
value basis, which already received a beginning of practical
realization, and so on).
Now Proudhon advocated a society without
government, and used the word anarchy to describe it. Proudhon
repudiated, as is known, all schemes of communism, according to which
mankind would be driven into communistic monasteries or barracks, as
also all the schemes of state or state-aided socialism which were
advocated by Louis Blanc and the collectivists. When he proclaimed in
his first memoir on property that ‘Property is theft’, he meant only
property in its present, Roman-law, sense of ‘right of use and abuse’;
in property-rights, on the other hand, understood in the limited sense
of possession, he saw the best protection against the
encroachments of the state. At the same time he did not want violently
to dispossess the present owners of land, dwelling-houses, mines,
factories and so on. He preferred to attain the same end by rendering
capital incapable of earning interest; and this he proposed to obtain by
means of a national bank, based on the mutual confidence of all those
who are engaged in production, who would agree to exchange among
themselves their produces at cost-value, by means of labour cheques
representing the hours of labour required to produce every given
commodity. Under such a system, which Proudhon described as
‘Mutuellisme’, all the exchanges of services would be strictly
equivalent. Besides, such a bank would be enabled to lend money without
interest, levying only something like I per cent, or even less, for
covering the cost of administration. Everyone being thus enabled to
borrow the money that would be required to buy a house, nobody would
agree to pay any more a yearly rent for the use of it. A general ‘social
liquidation’ would thus be rendered easy, without violent
expropriation. The same applied to mines, railways, factories and so on.
In
a society of this type the state would be useless. The chief relations
between citizens would be based on free agreement and regulated by mere
account keeping. The contests might be settled by arbitration. A
penetrating criticism of the state and all possible forms of government,
and a deep insight into all economic problems, were well-known
characteristics of Proudhon’s work.
It is worth noticing that
French mutualism had its precursor in England, in William Thompson, who
began by mutualism before he became a communist, and in his followers
John Gray (A Lecture on Human Happiness, 1825; The Social System, 1831) and J. F. Bray (Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy, 1839). It had also its precursor in America. Josiah Warren, who was born in 1798 (cf. W. Bailie, Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist,
Boston, 1900), and belonged to Owen’s ‘New Harmony’, considered that
the failure of this enterprise was chiefly due to the suppression of
individuality and the lack of initiative and responsibility. These
defects, he taught, were inherent to every scheme based upon authority
and the community of goods. He advocated, therefore, complete individual
liberty. In 1827 he opened in Cincinnati a little country store which
was the first ‘equity store’, and which the people called ‘time store’,
because it was based on labour being exchanged hour for hour in all
sorts of produce. ‘Cost – the limit of price’, and consequently ‘no
interest’, was the motto of his store, and later on of his ‘equity
village’, near New York, which was still in existence in 1865. Mr
Keith’s ‘House of Equity’ at Boston, founded in 1855, is also worthy of
notice.
While the economical, and especially the mutual-banking,
ideas of Proudhon found supporters and even a practical application in
the United States, his political conception of anarchy found but little
echo in France, where the Christian socialism of Lamennais and the
Fourierists, and the state socialism of Louis Blanc and the followers of
Saint-Simon, were dominating. These ideas found, however, some
temporary support among the left-wing Hegelians in Germany, Moses Hess
in 1843, and Karl Grün in 1845, who advocated anarchism. Besides, the
authoritarian communism of Wilhelm Weitling having given origin to
opposition amongst the Swiss working men, Wilhelm Marr gave expression
to it in the forties.
On the other side, individualist anarchism
found, also in Germany, its fullest expression in Max Stirner (Kaspar
Schmidt), whose remarkable works (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum and articles contributed to the Rheinische Zeitung) remained quite overlooked until they were brought into prominence by John Henry Mackay.
Prof. V. Basch, in a very able introduction to his interesting book, L’lndividualisme anarchiste: Max Stirner (1904), has shown how the development of the German philosophy from Kant to Hegel, and ‘the absolute’ of Schelling and the Geist of
Hegel, necessarily provoked, when the anti-Hegelian revolt began, the
preaching of the same ‘absolute’ in the camp of the rebels. This was
done by Stirner, who advocated, not only a complete revolt against the
state and against the servitude which authoritarian communism would
impose upon men, but also the full liberation of the individual from all
social and moral bonds – the rehabilitation of the ‘I’, the supremacy
of the individual, complete ‘amoralism’, and the ‘association of the
egotists’. The final conclusion of that sort of individual anarchism has
been indicated by Prof. Basch. It maintains that the aim of all
superior civilization is, not to permit all members of the
community to develop in a normal way, but to permit certain better
endowed individuals ‘fully to develop’, even at the cost of the
happiness and the very existence of the mass of mankind. It is thus a
return towards the most common individualism, advocated by all the
would-be superior minorities, to which indeed man owes in his history
precisely the state and the rest, which these individualists combat.
Their individualism goes so far as to end in a negation of their own
starting-point – to say nothing of the impossibility for the individual
to attain a really full development in the conditions of oppression of
the masses by the ‘beautiful aristocracies’. His development would
remain unilateral. This is why this direction of thought,
notwithstanding its undoubtedly correct and useful advocacy of the full
development of each individuality, finds a hearing only in limited
artistic and literary circles.
Anarchism in the International Working Men’s Association
A
general depression in the propaganda of all fractions of socialism
followed, as is known, after the defeat of the uprising of the Paris
working men in June 1848 and the fall of the Republic. All the socialist
press was gagged during the reaction period, which lasted fully twenty
years. Nevertheless, even anarchist thought began to make some progress,
namely in the writings of Bellegarrique (Caeurderoy), and especially
Joseph Déjacque (Les Lazaréennes, L’Humanisphère, an
anarchist-communist utopia, lately discovered and reprinted). The
socialist movement revived only after 1864, when some French working
men, all ‘mutualists’, meeting in London during the Universal Exhibition
with English followers of Robert Owen, founded the International
Working Men’s Association. This association developed very rapidly and
adopted a policy of direct economical struggle against capitalism,
without interfering in the political parliamentary agitation, and this
policy was followed until 1871. However, after the Franco-German War,
when the International Association was prohibited in France after the
uprising of the Commune, the German working men, who had received
manhood suffrage for elections to the newly constituted imperial
parliament, insisted upon modifying the tactics of the International,
and began to build up a Social Democratic political party. This soon led
to a division in the Working Men’s Association, and the Latin
federations, Spanish, Italian, Belgian and Jurassic (France could not be
represented), constituted among themselves a Federal union which broke
entirely with the Marxist general council of the International. Within
these federations developed now what may be described as modern anarchism.
After the names of ‘Federalists’ and ‘Anti-authoritarians’ had been
used for some time by these federations the name of ‘anarchists’, which
their adversaries insisted upon applying to them, prevailed, and finally
it was revindicated.
Bakunin (q.v.) soon became the leading
spirit among these Latin federations for the development of the
principles of anarchism, which he did in a number of writings, pamphlets
and letters. He demanded the complete abolition of the state, which —
he wrote — is a product of religion, belongs to a lower state of
civilization, represents the negation of liberty, and spoils even that
which it undertakes to do for the sake of general well-being. The state
was an historically necessary evil, but its complete extinction will be,
sooner or later, equally necessary. Repudiating all legislation, even
when issuing from universal suffrage, Bakunin claimed for each nation,
each region and each commune, full autonomy, so long as it is not a
menace to its neighbours, and full independence for the individual,
adding that one becomes really free only when, and in proportion as, all
others are free. Free federations of the communes would constitute free
nations.
As to his economical conceptions, Bakunin described
himself, in common with his Federalist comrades of the International
(César De Paepe, James Guillaume, Schwitzguébel), a ‘collectivist
anarchist’ – not in the sense of Vidal and Pecqueur in the 1840s, or of
their modern Social Democratic followers, but to express a state of
things in which all necessaries for production are owned in common by
the labour groups and the free communes, while the ways of retribution
of labour, communist or otherwise, would be settled by each group for
itself. Social revolution, the near approach of which was foretold at
that time by all socialists, would be the means of bringing into life
the new conditions.
The Jurassic, the Spanish and the Italian
federations and sections of the International Working Men’s Association,
as also the French, the German and the American anarchist groups, were
for the next years the chief centres of anarchist thought and
propaganda. They refrained from any participation in parliamentary
politics, and always kept in close contact with the labour
organizations. However, in the second half of the ’eighties and the
early ’nineties of the nineteenth century, when the influence of the
anarchists began to be felt in strikes, in the 1st of May
demonstrations, where they promoted the idea of a general strike for an
eight hours’ day, and in the anti-militarist propaganda in the army,
violent prosecutions were directed against them, especially in the Latin
countries (including physical torture in the Barcelona Castle) and the
United States (the execution of five Chicago anarchists in 1887).
Against these prosecutions the anarchists retaliated by acts of violence
which in their turn were followed by more executions from above, and
new acts of revenge from below. This created in the general public the
impression that violence is the substance of anarchism, a view
repudiated by its supporters, who hold that in reality violence is
resorted to by all parties in proportion as their open action is
obstructed by repression, and exceptional laws render them outlaws.
(Cf. Anarchism and Outrage, by C.M. Wilson, and Report of the Spanish Atrocities Committee, in ‘Freedom Pamphlets’; A Concise History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists, by Dyer Lum (New York, 1886); The Chicago Martyrs: Speeches, etc.).
Anarchism
continued to develop, partly in the direction of Proudhonian
‘mutuellisme’, but chiefly as communist-anarchism, to which a third
direction, Christian-anarchism, was added by Leo Tolstoy, and a fourth,
which might be ascribed as literary-anarchism, began amongst some
prominent modern writers.
The ideas of Proudhon, especially as
regards mutual banking, corresponding with those of Josiah Warren, found
a considerable following in the United States, creating quite a school,
of which the main writers are Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Grene,
Lysander Spooner (who began to write in 1850, and whose unfinished
work, Natural Law, was full of promise), and several others, whose names will be found in Dr Nettlau’s Bibliographie de l’anarchie.
A prominent position among the individualist anarchists in America has been occupied by Benjamin R. Tucker, whose journal Liberty was
started in 1881 and whose conceptions are a combination of those of
Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer. Starting from the statement that
anarchists are egotists, strictly speaking, and that every group of
individuals, be it a secret league of a few persons, or the Congress of
the United States, has the right to oppress all mankind, provided it has
the power to do so, that equal liberty for all and absolute equality
ought to be the law, and ‘mind every one your own business’ is the
unique moral law of anarchism, Tucker goes on to prove that a general
and thorough application of these principles would be beneficial and
would offer no danger, because the powers of every individual would be
limited by the exercise of the equal rights of all others. He further
indicated (following H. Spencer) the difference which exists between the
encroachment on somebody’s rights and resistance to such an
encroachment; between domination and defence: the former being equally
condemnable, whether it be encroachment of a criminal upon an
individual, or the encroachment of one upon all others, or of all others
upon one; while resistance to encroachment is defensible and necessary.
For their self-defence, both the citizen and the group have the right
to any violence, including capital punishment. Violence is also
justified for enforcing the duty of keeping an agreement. Tucker thus
follows Spencer, and, like him, opens (in the present writer’s opinion)
the way for reconstituting under the heading of ‘defence’ all the
functions of the state. His criticism of the present state is very
searching, and his defence of the rights of the individual very
powerful. As regards his economical views B.R. Tucker follows Proudhon.
The
individualist anarchism of the American Proudhonians finds, however,
but little sympathy amongst the working masses. Those who profess it –
they are chiefly ‘intellectuals’ – soon realize that the individualization they
so highly praise is not attainable by individual efforts, and either
abandon the ranks of the anarchists, and are driven into the liberal
individualism of the classical economist or they retire into a sort of
Epicurean amoralism, or superman theory, similar to that of Stirner and
Nietzsche. The great bulk of the anarchist working men prefer the
anarchist-communist ideas which have gradually evolved out of the
anarchist collectivism of the International Working Men’s Association.
To this direction belong – to name only the better known exponents of
anarchism Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave, Sebastien Faure, Emile Pouget in
France; Errico Malatesta and Covelli in Italy; R. Mella, A. Lorenzo, and
the mostly unknown authors of many excellent manifestos in Spain; John
Most amongst the Germans; Spies, Parsons and their followers in the
United States, and so on; while Domela Nieuwenhuis occupies an
intermediate position in Holland. The chief anarchist papers which have
been published since 1880 also belong to that direction; while a number
of anarchists of this direction have joined the so-called syndicalist
movement- the French name for the non-political labour movement, devoted
to direct struggle with capitalism, which has lately become so
prominent in Europe.
As one of the anarchist-communist direction,
the present writer for many years endeavoured to develop the following
ideas: to show the intimate, logical connection which exists between the
modern philosophy of natural sciences and anarchism; to put anarchism
on a scientific basis by the study of the tendencies that are apparent
now in society and may indicate its further evolution; and to work out
the basis of anarchist ethics. As regards the substance of anarchism
itself, it was Kropotkin’s aim to prove that communism at least partial –
has more chances of being established than collectivism, especially in
communes taking the lead, and that free, or anarchist-communism is the
only form of communism that has any chance of being accepted in
civilized societies; communism and anarchy are therefore two terms of
evolution which complete each other, the one rendering the other
possible and acceptable. He has tried, moreover, to indicate how, during
a revolutionary period, a large city – if its inhabitants have accepted
the idea could organize itself on the lines of free communism; the city
guaranteeing to every inhabitant dwelling, food and clothing to an
extent corresponding to the comfort now available to the middle classes
only, in exchange for a half-day’s, or five-hours’ work; and how all
those things which would be considered as luxuries might be obtained by
everyone if he joins for the other half of the day all sorts of free
associations pursuing all possible aims – educational, literary,
scientific, artistic, sports and so on. In order to prove the first of
these assertions he has analysed the possibilities of agriculture and
industrial work, both being combined with brain work. And in order to
elucidate the main factors of human evolution, he has analysed the part
played in history by the popular constructive agencies of mutual aid and
the historical role of the state.
Without naming himself an
anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious
movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Chojecki, Denk and
many others, took the anarchist position as regards the state and
property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the
teachings of the Christ and from the necessary dictates of reason. With
all the might of his talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God in Yourselves)
a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and
especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the
domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he
says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He makes a
searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning
the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state and the
existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of the Christ
he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of
all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with
arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present
evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious
and the non-religious reader alike.
It would be impossible to
represent here, in a short sketch, the penetration, on the one hand, of
anarchist ideas into modern literature, and the influence, on the other
hand, which the libertarian ideas of the best contemporary writers have
exercised upon the development of anarchism. One ought to consult the
ten big volumes of the Supplément Littéraire to the paper La Révolte and later the Temps Nouveaux,
which contain reproductions from the works of hundreds of modern
authors expressing anarchist ideas, in order to realize how closely
anarchism is connected with all the intellectual movement of our own
times. J.S. Mill’s Liberty, Spencer’s Individual versus the State, Marc Guyau’s Morality without Obligation or Sanction, and Fouillée’s La Morale, L’art et la religion, the works of Multatuli (E. Douwes Dekker), Richard Wagner’s Art and Revolution,
the works of Nietzsche, Emerson, W. Lloyd Garrison, Thoreau, Alexander
Herzen, Edward Carpenter and so on; and in the domain of fiction, the
dramas of Ibsen, the poetry of Walt Whitman, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Zola’s Paris and Le Travail,
the latest works of Merezhkovsky, and an infinity of works of less
known authors, are full of ideas which show how closely anarchism is
interwoven with the work that is going on in modern thought in the same
direction of enfranchisement of man from the bonds of the state as well
as from those of capitalism.
ENDS
