One word of warning to those who may find themselves attracted by
Siegfried's Anarchism, or, if they prefer a term with more respectable
associations, his neo-Protestantism. Anarchism, as a panacea, is just as
hopeless as any other panacea, and will still be so even if we breed
a race of perfectly benevolent men. It is true that in the sphere of
thought, Anarchism is an inevitable condition of progressive
evolution. A nation without Freethinkers--that is, without intellectual
Anarchists--will share the fate of China. It is also true that our
criminal law, based on a conception of crime and punishment which is
nothing but our vindictiveness and cruelty in a virtuous disguise, is
an unmitigated and abominable nuisance, bound to be beaten out of
us finally by the mere weight of our experience of its evil and
uselessness. But it will not be replaced by anarchy. Applied to the
industrial or political machinery of modern society, anarchy must always
reduce itself speedily to absurdity. Even the modified form of anarchy
on which modern civilization is based: that is, the abandonment
of industry, in the name of individual liberty, to the upshot of
competition for personal gain between private capitalists, is a
disastrous failure, and is, by the mere necessities of the case, giving
way to ordered Socialism. For the economic rationale of this, I must
refer disciples of Siegfried to a tract from my hand published by the
Fabian Society and entitled The Impossibilities of Anarchism, which
explains why, owing to the physical constitution of our globe, society
cannot effectively organize the production of its food, clothes and
housing, nor distribute them fairly and economically on any anarchic
plan: nay, that without concerting our social action to a much higher
degree than we do at present we can never get rid of the wasteful and
iniquitous welter of a little riches and a deal of poverty which current
political humbug calls our prosperity and civilization. Liberty is an
excellent thing; but it cannot begin until society has paid its daily
debt to Nature by first earning its living. There is no liberty before
that except the liberty to live at somebody else's expense, a liberty
much sought after nowadays, since it is the criterion of gentility, but
not wholesome from the point of view of the common weal.