FREE AGREEMENT
I
Accustomed as we are by heredity prejudices and our unsound education
and training to represent ourselves the beneficial hand of Government,
legislation and magistracy everywhere, we have come to believe that man
would tear his fellow-man to pieces like a wild beast the day the police
took his eye off him; that absolute chaos would come about if authority
were overthrown during a revolution. And with our eyes shut we pass by
thousands and thousands of human groupings which form themselves freely,
without any intervention of the law, and attain results infinitely
superior to those achieved under governmental tutelage.
If you open a daily paper you find that its pages are entirely devoted
to Government transactions and to political jobbery. A man from another
world, reading it, would believe that, with the exception of the Stock
Exchange transactions, nothing gets done in Europe save by order of some
master. You find nothing in the paper about institutions that spring up,
grow up, and develop without ministerial prescription! Nothing--or
almost nothing! Even where there is a heading, "Sundry Events" (_Faits
divers_, a favorite column in the French papers), it is because they are
connected with the police. A family drama, an act of rebellion, will
only be mentioned if the police have appeared on the scene.
Three hundred and fifty million Europeans love or hate one another,
work, or live on their incomes; but, apart from literature, theatre, or
sport, their lives remain ignored by newspapers if Governments have not
intervened in it in some way or other. It is even so with history. We
know the least details of the life of a king or of a parliament; all
good and bad speeches pronounced by the politicians have been preserved:
"speeches that have never had the least influence on the vote of a
single member," as an old parliamentarian said. Royal visits, the good
or bad humour of politicians, their jokes and intrigues, are all
carefully recorded for posterity. But we have the greatest difficulty to
reconstitute a city of the Middle Ages, to understand the mechanism of
that immense commerce that was carried on between Hanseatic cities, or
to know how the city of Rouen built its cathedral. If a scholar spends
his life in studying these questions, his works remain unknown, and
parliamentary histories--that is to say, the defective ones, as they
only treat of one side of social life--multiply; they are circulated,
they are taught in schools.
In this way we do not even perceive the prodigious work, accomplished
every day by spontaneous groups of men, which constitutes the chief work
of our century.
We therefore propose to point out some of these most striking
manifestations, and to show how men, as soon as their interests do not
absolutely clash, act in concert, harmoniously, and perform collective
work of a very complex nature.
It is evident that in present society, based on individual
property--that is to say, on plunder, and on a narrow-minded, and
therefore foolish individualism--facts of this kind are necessarily
limited; agreements are not always perfectly free, and often they have a
mean, if not execrable aim.
But what concerns us is not to give examples which might be blindly
followed, and which, moreover, present society could not possibly give
us. What we have to do is to show that, in spite of the authoritarian
individualism which stifles us, there remains in our life, taken as a
whole, a very great part in which we only act by free agreement; and
that therefore it would be much easier than is usually thought, to
dispense with Government.
In support of our view we have already mentioned railways, and we will
now return to them.
We know that Europe has a system of railways, over 175,000 miles long,
and that on this network you can nowadays travel from north to south,
from east to west, from Madrid to Petersburg, and from Calais to
Constantinople, without delays, without even changing carriages (when
you travel by express). More than that: a parcel deposited at a station
will find its addressee anywhere, in Turkey or in Central Asia, without
more formality needed for sending it than writing its destination on a
bit of paper.
This result might have been obtained in two ways. A Napoleon, a
Bismarck, or some potentate having conquered Europe, would from Paris,
Berlin, or Rome, draw a railway map and regulate the hours of the
trains. The Russian Tsar Nicholas I. dreamt of such a power. When he was
shown rough drafts of railways between Moscow and Petersburg, he seized
a ruler and drew on the map of Russia a straight line between these two
capitals, saying, "Here is the plan." And the road was built in a
straight line, filling in deep ravines, building bridges of a giddy
height, which had to be abandoned a few years later, after the railway
had cost about £120,000 to £150,000 per English mile.
This is one way, but happily things were managed differently. Railways
were constructed piece by piece, the pieces were joined together, and
the hundred different companies, to whom these pieces belonged,
gradually came to an understanding concerning the arrival and departure
of their trains, and the running of carriages on their rails, from all
countries, without unloading merchandise as it passes from one network
to another.
All this was done by free agreement, by exchange of letters and
proposals, and by congresses at which delegates met to discuss well
specified special points, and to come to an agreement about them, but
not to make laws. After the congress was over, the delegates returned to
their respective companies, not with a law, but with the draft of a
contract to be accepted or rejected.
Of course difficulties were met in the way. There were obstinate men
who would not be convinced. But a common interest compelled them to
agree in the end, without invoking the help of armies against the
refractory members.
This immense network of railways connected together, and the enormous
traffic it has given rise to, no doubt constitutes the most striking
trait of the nineteenth century; and it is the result of free agreement.
If somebody had foretold it eighty years ago, our grandfathers would
have thought him idiotic or mad. They would have said: "Never will you
be able to make the shareholders of a hundred companies listen to
reason! It is a Utopia, a fairy tale. A central Government, with an
'iron' dictator, can alone enforce it."
And the most interesting thing in this organization is, that there is no
European Central Government of Railways! Nothing! No minister of
railways, no dictator, not even a continental parliament, not even a
directing committee! Everything is done by free agreement.
So we ask the believers in the State, who pretend that "we can never do
without a central Government, were it only for regulating the traffic,"
we ask them: "But how do European railways manage without them? How do
they continue to convey millions of travellers and mountains of luggage
across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to
agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of
railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg-Warsaw Company and
that of Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the
luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies,
consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government?"
II
When we endeavour to prove by examples that even to-day, in spite of the
iniquitous organization of society as a whole, men, provided their
interests be not diametrically opposed, agree without the intervention
of authority, we do not ignore the objections that will be put forth.
All such examples have their defective side, because it is impossible
to quote a single organization exempt from the exploitation of the weak
by the strong, the poor by the rich. This is why the Statists will not
fail to tell us with their wonted logic: "You see that the intervention
of the State is necessary to put an end to this exploitation!"
Only they forget the lessons of history; they do not tell us to what
extent the State itself has contributed towards the existing order by
creating proletarians and delivering them up to exploiters. They forget
to prove us that it is possible to put an end to exploitation while the
primal causes--private capital and poverty, two-thirds of which are
artificially created by the State--continue to exist.
When we speak of the accord established among the railway companies, we
expect them, the worshippers of the bourgeois State, to say to us: "Do
you not see how the railway companies oppress and ill-use their
employees and the travellers! The only way is, that the State should
intervene to protect the workers and the public!"
But have we not said and repeated over and over again, that as long as
there are capitalists, these abuses of power will be perpetuated? It is
precisely the State, the would-be benefactor, that has given to the
companies that monopoly and those rights upon us which they possess
to-day. Has it not created concessions, guarantees? Has it not sent its
soldiers against railwaymen on strike? And during the first trials
(quite lately we saw it still in Russia), has it not extended the
privilege of the railway magnates as far as to forbid the Press to
mention railway accidents, so as not to depreciate the shares it
guaranteed? Has it not favoured the monopoly which has anointed the
Vanderbilts and the Polyakoffs, the directors of the P.L.M., the C.P.R.,
the St. Gothard, "the kings of our days"?
Therefore, if we give as an example the tacit agreement come to between
railway companies, it is by no means as an ideal of economical
management, nor even an ideal of technical organization. It is to show
that if capitalists, without any other aim than that of augmenting
their dividends at other people's expense, can exploit railways
successfully without establishing an International
Department,--societies of working men will be able to do it just as
well, and even better, without nominating a Ministry of European
railways.
Another objection is raised that is more serious at first sight. We may
be told that the agreement we speak of is not perfectly _free_, that the
large companies lay down the law to the small ones. It might be
mentioned, for example, that a certain rich German company, supported by
the State, compel travellers who go from Berlin to Bâle to pass via
Cologne and Frankfort, instead of taking the Leipzig route; or that such
a company carries goods a hundred and thirty miles in a roundabout way
(on a long distance) to favour its influential shareholders, and thus
ruins the secondary lines. In the United States travellers and goods are
sometimes compelled to travel impossibly circuitous routes so that
dollars may flow into the pocket of a Vanderbilt.
Our answer will be the same: As long as Capital exists, the Greater
Capital will oppress the lesser. But oppression does not result from
Capital only. It is also owing to the support given them by the State,
to monopoly created by the State in their favour, that the large
companies oppress the small ones.
The early English and French Socialists have shown long since how
English legislation did all in its power to ruin the small industries,
drive the peasant to poverty, and deliver over to wealthy industrial
employers battalions of men, compelled to work for no matter what
salary. Railway legislation did exactly the same. Strategic lines,
subsidized lines, companies which received the International Mail
monopoly, everything was brought into play to forward the interests of
wealthy financiers. When Rothschild, creditor to all European States,
puts capital in a railway, his faithful subjects, the ministers, will do
their best to make him earn more.
In the United States, in the Democracy that authoritarians hold up to us
as an ideal, the most scandalous fraudulency has crept into everything
that concerns railroads. Thus, if a company ruins its competitors by
cheap fares, it is often enabled to do so because it is reimbursed by
land given to it by the State for a gratuity. Documents recently
published concerning the American wheat trade have fully shown up the
part played by the State in the exploitation of the weak by the strong.
Here, too, the power of accumulated capital has increased tenfold and a
hundredfold by means of State help. So that, when we see syndicates of
railway companies (a product of free agreement) succeeding in protecting
their small companies against big ones, we are astonished at the
intrinsic force of free agreement that can hold its own against
all-powerful Capital favoured by the State.
It is a fact that little companies exist, in spite of the State's
partiality. If in France, land of centralization, we only see five or
six large companies, there are more than a hundred and ten in Great
Britain who agree remarkably well, and who are certainly better
organized for the rapid transit of travellers and goods than the French
and German companies.
Moreover, that is not the question. Large Capital, favoured by the
State, can always, _if it be to its advantage_, crush the lesser one.
What is of importance to us is this: The agreement between hundreds of
capitalist companies to whom the railways of Europe belong, _was
established without intervention of a central government_ to lay down
the law to the divers societies; it has subsisted by means of congresses
composed of delegates, who discuss among themselves, and submit
_proposals_, not _laws_, to their constituents. It is a new principle
that differs completely from all governmental principle, monarchical or
republican, absolute or parliamentarian. It is an innovation that has
been timidly introduced into the customs of Europe, but has come to
stay.
III
How often have we not read in the writings of State-loving Socialists:
"Who, then, will undertake the regulation of canal traffic in the
future society? Should it enter the mind of one of your Anarchist
'comrades' to put his barge across a canal and obstruct thousands of
boats, who will force him to reason?"
Let us confess the supposition to be somewhat fanciful. Still, it might
be said, for instance: "Should a certain commune, or a group of
communes, want to make their barges pass before others, they might
perhaps block the canal in order to carry stones, while wheat, needed in
another commune, would have to stand by. Who, then, would regulate the
traffic if not the Government?"
But real life has again demonstrated that Government can be very well
dispensed with here as elsewhere. Free agreement, free organization,
replace that noxious and costly system, and do better.
We know what canals mean to Holland. They are its highways. We also
know how much traffic there is on the canals. What is carried along our
highroads and railroads is transported on canal-boats in Holland. There
you could find cause to fight, in order to make your boats pass before
others. There the Government might really interfere to keep the traffic
in order.
Yet it is not so. The Dutch settled matters in a more practical way,
long ago, by founding guilds, or syndicates of boatmen. These were free
associations sprung from the very needs of navigation. The right of way
for the boats was adjusted by the order of inscription in a navigation
register; they had to follow one another in turn. Nobody was allowed to
get ahead of the others under pain of being excluded from the guild.
None could station more than a certain number of days along the quay;
and if the owner found no goods to carry during that time, so much the
worse for him; he had to depart with his empty barge to leave room for
newcomers. Obstruction was thus avoided, even though the competition
between the private owners of the boats continued to exist. Were the
latter suppressed, the agreement would have been only the more cordial.
It is unnecessary to add that the shipowners could adhere or not to the
syndicate. That was their business, but most of them elected to join it.
Moreover, these syndicates offered such great advantages that they
spread also along the Rhine, the Weser, the Oder, and as far as Berlin.
The boatmen did not wait for a great Bismarck to annex Holland to
Germany, and to appoint an Ober Haupt General Staats Canal Navigation's
Rath (Supreme Head Councillor of the General States Canal Navigation),
with a number of gold stripes on his sleeves, corresponding to the
length of the title. They preferred coming to an international
understanding. Besides, a number of shipowners, whose sailing-vessels
ply between Germany and Scandinavia, as well as Russia, have also joined
these syndicates, in order to regulate traffic in the Baltic, and to
bring about a certain harmony in the _chassé-croisé_ of vessels. These
associations have sprung up freely, recruiting volunteer adherents, and
have nought in common with governments.
It is, however, more than probable that here too greater capital
oppresses lesser. Maybe the syndicate has also a tendency to become a
monopoly, especially where it receives the precious patronage of the
State that surely did not fail to interfere with it. Let us not forget
either, that these syndicates represent associations whose members have
only private interests at stake, and that if at the same time each
shipowner were compelled--by the socializing of production, consumption,
and exchange--to belong to federated Communes, or to a hundred other
associations for the satisfying of his needs, things would have a
different aspect. A group of shipowners, powerful on sea, would feel
weak on land, and they would be obliged to lessen their claims in order
to come to terms with railways, factories, and other groups.
At any rate, without discussing the future, here is another spontaneous
association that has dispensed with Government. Let us quote more
examples.
As we are talking of ships and boats, let us mention one of the most
splendid organizations that the nineteenth century has brought forth,
one of those we may with right be proud of--the English Lifeboat
Association.
It is known that every year more than a thousand ships are wrecked on
the shores of England. At sea a good ship seldom fears a storm. It is
near the coasts that danger threatens--rough seas that shatter her
stern-post, squalls that carry off her masts and sails, currents that
render her unmanageable, reefs and sand banks on which she runs aground.
Even in olden times, when it was a custom among inhabitants of the
coasts to light fires in order to attract vessels on to reefs, in order
to plunder their cargoes, they always strove to save the crew. Seeing a
ship in distress, they launched their boats and went to the rescue of
shipwrecked sailors, only too often finding a watery grave themselves.
Every hamlet along the sea shore has its legends of heroism, displayed
by woman as well as by man, to save crews in distress.
No doubt the State and men of science have done something to diminish
the number of casualties. Lighthouses, signals, charts, meteorological
warnings have diminished them greatly, but there remains a thousand
ships and several thousand human lives to be saved every year.
To this end a few men of goodwill put their shoulders to the wheel.
Being good sailors and navigators themselves, they invented a lifeboat
that could weather a storm without being torn to pieces or capsizing,
and they set to work to interest the public in their venture, to collect
the necessary funds for constructing boats, and for stationing them
along the coasts, wherever they could be of use.
These men, not being Jacobins, did not turn to the Government. They
understood that to bring their enterprise to a successful issue they
must have the co-operation, the enthusiasm, the local knowledge, and
especially the self-sacrifice of the local sailors. They also understood
that to find men who at the first signal would launch their boat at
night, in a chaos of waves, not suffering themselves to be deterred by
darkness or breakers, and struggling five, six, ten hours against the
tide before reaching a vessel in distress--men ready to risk their lives
to save those of others--there must be a feeling of solidarity, a spirit
of sacrifice not to be bought with galloon. It was therefore a perfectly
spontaneous movement, sprung from agreement and individual initiative.
Hundreds of local groups arose along the coasts. The initiators had the
common senses not to pose as masters. They looked for sagacity in the
fishermen's hamlets, and when a rich man sent £1,000 to a village on the
coast to erect a lifeboat station, and his offer was accepted, he left
the choice of a site to the local fishermen and sailors.
Models of new boats were not submitted to the Admiralty. We read in a
Report of the Association: "As it is of importance that life-boatmen
should have full confidence in the vessel they man, the Committee will
make a point of constructing and equipping the boats according to the
life-boatmen's expressed wish." In consequence every year brings with it
new improvements.
The work is wholly conducted by volunteers organizing in committees and
local groups; by mutual aid and agreement!--Oh, Anarchists! Moreover,
they ask nothing of the ratepayers, and in a year they may receive
£40,000 in spontaneous subscriptions.
As to the results, here they are: In 1891 the Association possessed 293
lifeboats. The same year it saved 601 shipwrecked sailors and 33
vessels. Since its foundation it has saved 32,671 human beings.
In 1886, three lifeboats with all their men having perished at sea,
hundreds of new volunteers entered their names, organized themselves
into local groups, and the agitation resulted in the construction of
twenty additional boats. As we proceed, let us note that every year the
Association sends to the fishermen and sailors excellent barometers at a
price three times less than their sale price in private shops. It
propagates meteorological knowledge, and warns the parties concerned of
the sudden changes of weather predicted by men of science.
Let us repeat that these hundreds of committees and local groups are
not organized hierarchically, and are composed exclusively of
volunteers, lifeboatmen, and people interested in the work. The Central
Committee, which is more of a centre for correspondence, in no wise
interferes.
It is true that when a voting on some question of education or local
taxation takes place in a district, these committees of the National
Lifeboat Association do not, as such, take part in the deliberations--a
modesty, which unfortunately the members of elected bodies do not
imitate. But, on the other hand, these brave men do not allow those who
have never faced a storm to legislate for them about saving life. At the
first signal of distress they rush to their boats, and go ahead. There
are no embroidered uniforms, but much goodwill.
Let us take another society of the same kind, that of the Red Cross. The
name matters little; let us examine it.
Imagine somebody saying fifty years ago: "The State, capable as it is of
massacring twenty thousand men in a day, and of wounding fifty thousand
more, is incapable of helping its own victims; consequently, as long as
war exists private initiative must intervene, and men of goodwill must
organize internationally for this humane work!" What mockery would not
have met the man who would have dared to speak thus! To begin with, he
would have been called a Utopian, and if that did not silence him he
would have been told: "What nonsense! Your volunteers will be found
wanting precisely where they are most needed, your volunteer hospitals
will be centralized in a safe place, while everything will be wanting in
the ambulances. Utopians like you forget the national rivalries which
will cause the poor soldiers to die without any help." Such
disheartening remarks would have only been equalled by the number of
speakers. Who of us has not heard men hold forth in this strain?
Now we know what happened. Red Cross societies organized themselves
freely, everywhere, in all countries, in thousands of localities; and
when the war of 1870-1 broke out, the volunteers set to work. Men and
women offered their services. Thousands of hospitals and ambulances
were organized; trains were started carrying ambulances, provisions,
linen, and medicaments for the wounded. The English committees sent
entire convoys of food, clothing, tools, grain to sow, beasts of
draught, even steam-ploughs with their attendants to help in the tillage
of departments devastated by the war! Only consult _La Croix Rouge_, by
Gustave Moynier, and you will be really struck by the immensity of the
work performed.
As to the prophets ever ready to deny other men's courage, good sense,
and intelligence, and believing themselves to be the only ones capable
of ruling the world with a rod, none of their predictions were realized.
The devotion of the Red Cross volunteers was beyond all praise. They
were only too eager to occupy the most dangerous posts; and whereas the
salaried doctors of the Napoleonic State fled with their staff when the
Prussians approached, the Red Cross volunteers continued their work
under fire, enduring the brutalities of Bismarck's and Napoleon's
officers, lavishing their care on the wounded of all nationalities.
Dutch, Italians, Swedes, Belgians, even Japanese and Chinese agreed
remarkably well. They distributed their hospitals and their ambulances
according to the needs of the occasion. They vied with one another
especially in the hygiene of their hospitals. And there is many a
Frenchman who still speaks with deep gratitude of the tender care he
received from the Dutch or German volunteers in the Red Cross
ambulances. But what is this to an authoritarian? His ideal is the
regiment doctor, salaried by the State. What does he care for the Red
Cross and its hygienic hospitals, if the nurses be not functionaries!
Here is then an organization, sprung up but yesterday, and which reckons
its members by hundreds of thousands; possesses ambulances, hospital
trains, elaborates new processes for treating wounds, and so on, and is
due to the spontaneous initiative of a few devoted men.
Perhaps we shall be told that the State has something to do with this
organization. Yes, States have laid hands on it to seize it. The
directing committees are presided over by those whom flunkeys call
princes of the blood. Emperors and queens lavishly patronize the
national committees. But it is not to this patronage that the success of
the organization is due. It is to the thousand local committees of each
nation; to the activity of individuals, to the devotion of all those who
try to help the victims of war. And this devotion would be far greater
if the State did not meddle with it.
In any case, it was not by the order of an International Directing
Committee that Englishmen and Japanese, Swedes and Chinamen, bestirred
themselves to send help to the wounded in 1871. It was not by order of
an international ministry that hospitals rose on the invaded territory
and that ambulances were carried on to the battlefield. It was by the
initiative of volunteers from each country. Once on the spot, they did
not get hold of one another by the hair as was foreseen by the
Jacobinists of all nations; they all set to work without distinction of
nationality.
We may regret that such great efforts should be put to the service of so
bad a cause, and we may ask ourselves like the poet's child: "Why
inflict wounds if you are to heal them afterwards?" In striving to
destroy the power of capitalist and middle-class authority, we work to
put an end to the massacres called wars, and we would far rather see the
Red Cross volunteers put forth their activity to bring about (with us)
the suppression of war; but we had to mention this immense organization
as another illustration of results produced by free agreement and free
aid.
If we wished to multiply examples taken from the art of exterminating
men we should never end. Suffice to quote the numerous societies to
which the German army owes its force, that does not only depend on
discipline, as is generally believed. I mean the societies whose aim is
to propagate military knowledge.
At one of the last congresses of the Military Alliance (Kriegerbund),
delegates from 2,452 federated societies, comprising 151,712 members,
were present. But there are besides very numerous Shooting, Military
Games, Strategical Games, Topographical Studies Societies--these are the
workshops in which the technical knowledge of the German army is
developed, not in regimental schools. It is a formidable network of all
kinds of societies, including military men and civilians, geographers
and gymnasts, sportsmen and technologists, which rise up spontaneously,
organize, federate, discuss, and explore the country. It is these
voluntary and free associations that go to make the real backbone of the
German army.
Their aim is execrable. It is the maintenance of the Empire. But what
concerns us, is to point out that, in spite of military organization
being the "Great Mission of the State," success in this branch is the
more certain the more it is left to the free agreement of groups and to
the free initiative of individuals.
Even in matters pertaining to war, free agreement is thus appealed to;
and to further prove our assertion let us mention the Volunteer
Topographers' Corps of Switzerland who study in detail the mountain
passages, the Aeroplane Corps of France, the three hundred thousand
British volunteers, the British National Artillery Association, and the
Society, now in course of organization, for the defence of England's
coasts, as well as the appeals made to the commercial fleet, the
Bicyclists' Corps, and the new organizations of private motorcars and
steam launches.
Everywhere the State is abdicating and abandoning its holy functions to
private individuals. Everywhere free organization trespasses on its
domain. And yet, the facts we have quoted give us only a glimpse of what
free government has in store for us in the future when there will be no
more State.