Now let me pass to the third part of my subject--the most important with
respect to the future.
There is no more room for doubting that religions are going; the
nineteenth century has given them their death blow. But religions--all
religions--have a double composition. They contain in the first place a
primitive cosmogony, a rude attempt at explaining nature, and they
furthermore contain a statement of the public morality born and
developed within the mass of the people. But when we throw religions
overboard or store them among our public records as historical
curiosities, shall we also relegate to museums the moral principles
which they contain? This has sometimes been done, and we have seen
people declare that as they no longer believed in the various religions
so they despised morality and boldly proclaimed the maxim of bourgeois
selfishness, "Everyone for himself." But a Society, human or animal,
cannot exist without certain rules and moral habits springing up within
it; religion may go, morality remains. If we were to come to consider
that a man did well in lying, deceiving his neighbours, or plundering
them when possible (this is the middle-class business morality), we
should come to such a pass that we could no longer live together. You
might assure me of your friendship, but perhaps you might only do so in
order to rob me more easily; you might promise to do a certain thing for
me, only to deceive me; you might promise to forward a letter for me,
and you might steal it just like an ordinary governor of a jail. Under
such conditions society would become impossible, and this is so
generally understood that the repudiation of religions in no way
prevents public morality from being maintained, developed, and raised to
a higher and ever higher standard. This fact is so striking that
philosophers seek to explain it by the principles of utilitarianism, and
recently Spencer sought to base the morality which exists among us upon
physiological causes and the needs connected with the preservation of
the race.
Let me give you an example in order to explain to you what _we_ think on
the matter.
A child is drowning, and four men who stand upon the bank see it
struggling in the water. One of them does not stir, he is a partisan of
"Each one for himself," the maxim of the commercial middle-class; this
one is a brute and we need not speak of him further. The next one
reasons thus: "If I save the child, a good report of my action will be
made to the ruler of heaven, and the Creator will reward me by
increasing my flocks and my serfs," and thereupon he plunges into the
water. Is he therefore a moral man? Clearly not! He is a shrewd
calculator, that is all. The third, who is an utilitarian, reflects thus
(or at least utilitarian philosophers represent him as so reasoning):
"Pleasures can be classed in two categories, inferior pleasures and
higher ones. To save the life of anyone is a superior pleasure
infinitely more intense and more durable than others; therefore I will
save the child." Admitting that any man ever reasoned thus, would he not
be a terrible egotist? and, moreover, could we ever be sure that his
sophistical brain would not at some given moment cause his will to
incline toward an inferior pleasure, that is to say, towards refraining
from troubling himself? There remains the fourth individual. This man
has been brought up from his childhood to feel himself _one_ with the
rest of humanity: from his childhood he has always regarded men as
possessing interests in common: he has accustomed himself to suffer when
his neighbours suffer, and to feel happy when everyone around him is
happy. Directly he hears the heart-rending cry of the mother, he leaps
into the water, not through reflection but by instinct, and when she
thanks him for saving her child, he says, "What have I done to deserve
thanks, my good woman? I am happy to see you happy; I have acted from
natural impulse and could not do otherwise!"
You recognise in this case the truly moral man, and feel that the others
are only egotists in comparison with him. The whole anarchist morality
is represented in this example. It is the morality of a people which
does not look for the sun at midnight--a morality without compulsion or
authority, a morality of habit. Let us create circumstances in which man
shall not be led to deceive nor exploit others, and then by the very
force of things the moral level of humanity will rise to a height
hitherto unknown. Men are certainly not to be moralised by teaching them
a moral catechism: tribunals and prisons do not diminish vice; they pour
it over society in floods. Men are to be moralised only by placing them
in a position which shall contribute to develop in them those habits
which are social, and to weaken those which are not so. A morality which
has become instinctive is the true morality, the only morality which
endures while religions and systems of philosophy pass away.
Let us now combine the three preceding elements, and we shall have
Anarchy and its place in Socialistic Evolution.
Emancipation of the producer from the yoke of capital; production in
common and free consumption of all the products of the common labour.
Emancipation from the governmental yoke; free development of individuals
in groups and federations; free organisation ascending from the simple
to the complex, according to mutual needs and tendencies.
Emancipation from religious morality; free morality, without compulsion
or authority, developing itself from social life and becoming habitual.
The above is no dream of students, it is a conclusion which results from
an analysis of the tendencies of modern society: Anarchist Communism is
the union of the two fundamental tendencies of our society--a tendency
towards economic equality, and a tendency towards political liberty. So
long as Communism presented itself under an authoritarian form, which
necessarily implies government, armed with much greater power than that
which it possesses to-day, inasmuch as it implies economic in addition
to political power--so long as this was the case, Communism met with no
sufficient response. Before 1848 it could, indeed, sometimes excite for
a moment the enthusiasm of the worker who was prepared to submit to any
all-powerful government, provided it would release him from the terrible
situation in which he was placed, but it left the true friends of
liberty indifferent.
Anarchist Communism maintains that most valuable of all
conquests--individual liberty--and moreover extends it and gives it a
solid basis--economic liberty--without which political liberty in
delusive; it does not ask the individual who has rejected god, the
universal tyrant, god the king, and god the parliament, to give unto
himself a god more terrible than any of the preceding--god the
Community, or to abdicate upon its altar his independence, his will, his
tastes, and to renew the vow of asceticism which he formerly made before
the crucified god. It says to him, on the contrary, "No society is free
so long as the individual is not so! Do not seek to modify society by
imposing upon it an authority which shall make everything right; if you
do, you will fail as popes and emperors have failed. Modify society so
that your fellows may not be any longer your enemies by the force of
circumstances: abolish the conditions which allow some to monopolise the
fruit of the labour of others; and instead of attempting to construct
society from top to bottom, or from the centre to the circumference, let
it develop itself freely from the simple to the composite, by the free
union of free groups. This course, which is so much obstructed at
present, is the true forward march of society: do not seek to hinder it,
do not turn your back on progress, but march along with it! Then the
sentiment of sociability which is common to human beings, as it is to
all animals living in society, will be able to develop itself freely,
because our fellows will no longer be our enemies, and we shall thus
arrive at a state of things in which each individual will be able to
give free rein to his inclinations, and even to his passions, without
any other restraint than the love and respect of those who surround
him."
This is our ideal, and it is the ideal which lies deep in the hearts of
peoples--of all peoples. We know full well that this ideal will not be
attained without violent shocks; the close of this century has a
formidable revolution in store for us: whether it begins in France,
Germany, Spain, or Russia, it will be an European one, and spreading
with the same rapidity as that of our fathers, the heroes of 1848, it
will set all Europe in a blaze. This coming Revolution will not aim at a
mere change of government, but will have a social character; the work of
expropriation will commence, and exploiters will be driven out. Whether
we like it or not, this will be done independently of the will of
individuals, and when hands are laid on private property we shall arrive
at Communism, because we shall be forced to do so. Communism, however,
cannot be either authoritarian or parliamentary, it must either be
anarchist or non-existent; the mass of the people does not desire to
trust itself again to any saviour, but will seek to organise itself by
itself.
We do not advocate Communism and Anarchy because we imagine men to be
better than they really are; if we had angels among us we might be
tempted to entrust to them the task of organising us, though doubtless
even _they_ would show the cloven foot very soon. But it is just because
we take men as they are that we say: "Do not entrust them with the
governing of you. This or that despicable minister might have been an
excellent man if power had not been given to him. The only way of
arriving at harmony of interests is by a society without exploiters and
without rulers." It is precisely because men are not angels that we say,
"Let us arrange matters so that each man may see his interest bound up
with the interests of others, then you will no longer have to fear his
evil passions."
Anarchist Communism being the inevitable result of existing tendencies,
it is towards this ideal that we must direct our steps, instead of
saying, "Yes, Anarchy is an excellent ideal," and then turning our backs
upon it. Should the approaching revolution not succeed in realising the
whole of this ideal, still all that shall have been effected in the
direction of it will remain; but all that shall have been done in a
contrary direction will be doomed to disappear. It is a general rule
that a popular revolution may be vanquished, but that, nevertheless, it
furnishes a motto for the evolution of the succeeding century. France
expired under the heel of the allies in 1815, and yet the action of
France had rendered serfdom impossible of continuance, all over Europe,
and representative government inevitable; universal suffrage was drowned
in blood, and yet universal suffrage is the watchword of the century. In
1871 the Commune expired under volleys of grapeshot, and yet the
watchword in France to-day is "the Free Commune." And if Anarchist
Communism is vanquished in the coming revolution, after having asserted
itself in the light of day, not only will it leave behind it the
abolition of private property, not only will the working man have
learned his true place in society, not only will the landed and
mercantile aristocracy have received a mortal blow, but Communist
Anarchism will be the goal of the evolution of the twentieth century.
Anarchist Communism sums up all that is most beautiful and most durable
in the progress of humanity; the sentiment of justice, the sentiment of
liberty, and solidarity or community of interest. It guarantees the free
evolution, both of the individual and of society. Therefore, it will
triumph.
Printed by THE NEW TEMPLE PRESS, Norbury, London, Great Britain.