The greater part of the Italian people never see the police except
at long intervals. Millions of men go over the mountains and through
the country, far from the protecting eye of authority, where they
might be attacked without the slightest fear of their assailants
being traced; but they run no greater risk than those who live in
the best guarded spots. Statistics show that the number of crimes
rise in proportion to the increase of repressive measures; while
they vary rapidly with the fluctuations of economic conditions and
with the state of public opinion.
Preventive laws, however, only concern unusual, exceptional
acts. Every-day life goes on beyond the limits of the criminal
code, and is regulated almost unconsciously by the tacit and
voluntary assent of all, by means of a number of usages and customs
much more important to social life than the dictates of law.
And they are also much better observed, although completely
divested of any sanction beyond the natural odium which falls
upon those who violate them, and such injury as this odium
brings with it.
When disputes arise, would not voluntarily accepted arbitration
or the pressure of public opinion be far more likely to bring
about a just settlement of the difficulties in question than an
irresponsible magistrate, who has the right to pass judgment upon
everybody and everything, and who is necessarily incompetent
and therefore unjust?
As every form of government only serves to protect the privileged
classes, so do police and judges only aim at repressing those
crimes, often not considered criminal by the masses, which offend
only the privileges of the rulers or property-owners. For the
real defence of society, the defence of the welfare and liberty of
all, there can be nothing more pernicious than the formation of
this class of functionaries, who exist on the pretence of defending
all, and therefore habitually regard every man as game to be
hunted down, often striking at the command of a superior officer,
without themselves even knowing why, like hired assassins and
mercenaries.
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All that you have said may be true, say some; Anarchy may be a
perfect form of social life; but we have no desire to take a
leap in the dark. Therefore, tell us how your society will be
organized. Then follows a long string of questions, which would be
very interesting if it were our business to study the problems
that might arise in an emancipated society, but of which it is
useless and absurd to imagine that we could now offer a definite
solution. According to what method will children be taught? How will
production and distribution be organized? Will there still be large
cities, or will people spread equally over all the surface of the
earth? Will all the inhabitants of Siberia winter at Nice? Will
every one dine on partridges and drink champagne? Who will be the
miners and sailors? Who will clear the drains? Will the sick be
nursed at home or in hospitals? Who will arrange the railway
time-table? What will happen if the engine-driver falls ill while
the train is on its way? And so on, without end, as though we could
prophesy all the knowledge and experience of the future time,
or could, in the name of Anarchy, prescribe for the coming man
what time he should go to bed, and on what days he should cut
his nails!
Indeed if our readers expect from us an answer to these questions,
or even to those among them really serious and important, which
cannot be anything more than our own private opinion at this present
hour, we must have succeeded badly in our endeavor to explain what
Anarchy is.
We are no more prophets than other men; and should we pretend to
give an official solution to all the problems that will arise in the
life of the future society, we should have indeed a curious idea of
the abolition of government. We should then be describing a
government, dictating, like the clergy, a universal code for the
present and all future time. Seeing that we have neither police nor
prisons to enforce our doctrine, humanity might laugh with
impunity at us and our pretensions.
Nevertheless, we consider seriously all the problems of social
life which now suggest themselves, on account of their scientific
interest, and because, hoping to see Anarchy realized, we wish
to help towards the organization of the new society. We have
therefore our own ideas on these subjects, ideas which are to our
minds likely to be permanent or transitory, according to the
respective cases. And did space permit, we might add somewhat
more on these points. But the fact that we today think in a certain
way on a given question is no proof that such will be the mode of
procedure in the future. Who can foresee the activities which may
develop in humanity when it is emancipated from misery and
oppression? When all have the means of instruction and
self-development? When the strife between men, with the hatred and
rancour it breeds, will be no longer a necessary condition of
existence? Who can foresee the progress of science, the new sources
of production, means of communication, etc.?
The one essential is that a society be constituted in which
the exploitation and domination of man by man are impossible.
That the society, in other words, be such that the means of
existence and development of labor be free and open to every
one, and all be able to co-operate, according to their wishes and
their knowledge, in the organization of social life. Under such
conditions, everything will necessarily be performed in compliance
with the needs of all, according to the knowledge and possibilities
of the moment. And everything will improve with the increase of
knowledge and power.
In fact, a program which would touch the basis of the new social
constitution could not do more, after all, than indicate a
method. And method, more than anything else, defines parties
and determines their importance in history. Method apart, every one
says he wishes for the good of mankind; and many do truly wish for
it. As parties disappear, every organized action directed to a
definite end disappears likewise. It is therefore necessary to
consider Anarchy as, above all, a method.
There are two methods by which the different parties, not
Anarchistic, expect, or say they expect, to bring about the
greatest good of each and all. These are the authoritarian or
State Socialist and the individualist methods. The former entrusts
the direction of social life to a few; and it would result in
the exploitation and oppression of the masses by that few. The
second party trusts to the free initiative of individuals, and
proclaims, if not the abolition, the reduction of government.
However, as it respects private property, and is founded on the
principle of each for himself, and therefore on competition, its
liberty is only the liberty of the strong, the license of those who
have, to oppress and exploit the weak who have nothing. Far from
producing harmony, it would tend always to augment the distance
between the rich and the poor, and end also through exploitation
and domination in authority. This second method, Individualism, is
in theory a kind of Anarchy without Socialism. It is therefore no
better than a lie, because liberty is not possible without equality,
and true Anarchy cannot be without Solidarity, without Socialism.
The criticism which Individualists pass on government is merely the
wish to deprive it of certain functions, to virtually hand them over
to the capitalist. But it cannot attack those repressive functions
which form the essence of government; for without an armed force the
proprietary system could not be upheld. Nay, even more, under
Individualism, the repressive power of government must always
increase, in proportion to the increase, by means of free
competition, of the want of equality and harmony.
Anarchists present a new method; the free initiative of all
and free agreement; then, after the revolutionary abolition of
private property, every one will have equal power to dispose of
social wealth. This method, not admitting the re-establishment
of private property, must lead, by means of free association, to
the complete triumph of the principles of solidarity.
Thus we see that all the problems put forward to combat the
Anarchistic idea are on the contrary arguments in favor of Anarchy;
because it alone indicates the way in which, by experience,
those solutions which correspond to the dicta of science, and to the
needs and wishes of all, can best be found.
How will children be educated? We do not know. What then? The
parents, teachers and all who are interested in the progress of the
rising generation, will meet, discuss, agree and differ, and then
divide according to their various opinions, putting into practice
the methods which they respectively hold to be best. That method
which, when tried, produces the best results, will triumph in the
end.
And so for all the problems that may arise.
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According to what we have so far said, it is evident that Anarchy,
as the Anarchists conceive it, and as alone it can be comprehended,
is based on Socialism. Furthermore, were it not for that school of
Socialists who artificially divide the natural unity of the social
question, considering only some detached points, and were it not
also for the equivocations with which they strive to hinder the
social revolution, we might say right away that Anarchy is
synonymous with Socialism. Because both signify the abolition of
exploitation and of the domination of man over man, whether
maintained by the force of arms or by the monopolization of the
means of life.
Anarchy, like Socialism, has for its basis and necessary point
of departure _equality of conditions_. Its aim is _solidarity_, and
its method _liberty_. It is not perfection, nor is it the absolute
ideal, which, like the horizon, always recedes as we advance towards
it. But it is the open road to all progress and to all improvement,
made in the interest of all humanity.
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There are authoritarians who grant that Anarchy is the mode
of social life which alone opens the way to the attainment of the
highest possible good for mankind, because it alone can put an
end to every class interested in keeping the masses oppressed
and miserable. They also grant that Anarchy is possible, because it
does nothing more than release humanity from an
obstacle--government--against which it has always had to fight
its painful way towards progress. Nevertheless, these
authoritarians, reinforced by many warm lovers of liberty and justice
in theory, retire into their last entrenchments, because they are
afraid of liberty, and cannot be persuaded that mankind could
live and prosper without teachers and pastors; still, hard pressed
by the truth, they pitifully demand to have the reign of liberty
put off for a while, indeed for as long as possible.
Such is the substance of the arguments that meet us at this
stage.
A society without a government, which would act by free, voluntary
co-operation, trusting entirely to the spontaneous action of those
interested, and founded altogether on solidarity and sympathy, is
certainly, they say, a very beautiful ideal, but, like all ideals,
it is a castle in the air. We find ourselves placed in a human
society, which has always been divided into oppressors and
oppressed; and if the former are full of the spirit of domination,
and have all the vices of tyrants, the latter are corrupted
by servility, and have those still worse vices, which are the result
of enslavement. The sentiment of solidarity is far from being
dominant in man at the present day; and if it is true that the
different classes of men are becoming more and more unanimous among
themselves, it is none the less true that that which is most
conspicuous and impresses itself most on human character today is
the struggle for existence. It is a fact that each fights daily
against every one else, and competition presses upon all, workmen
and masters, causing every man to become a wolf towards every other
man. How can these men, educated in a society based upon antagonism
between individuals as well as classes, be transformed in a moment
and become capable of living in a society in which each shall do as
he likes, and as he should, without external coercion, caring for
the good of others, simply by the impulse of their own nature? And
with what heart or what common sense can you trust to a revolution
on the part of an ignorant, turbulent mass, weakened by misery,
stupefied by priestcraft, who are today blindly sanguinary and
tomorrow will let themselves be humbugged by any knave, who dares
to call himself their master? Would it not be more prudent to
advance gradually towards the Anarchistic ideal, passing through
Republican, Democratic and Socialistic stages? Will not an
educative government, composed of the best men, be necessary
to prepare the advancing generations for their future destiny?
These objections also ought not to appear valid if we have
succeeded in making our readers understand what we have already
said, and in convincing them of it. But in any case, even at the
risk of repetition, it may be as well to answer them.
We find ourselves continually met by the false notion that
government is in itself a new force, sprung up one knows not
whence, which of itself adds something to the sum of the force
and capability of those whom it is composed and of those who
obey it. While, on the contrary, all that is done is done by
individual men. The government, as a government, adds nothing
save the tendency to monopolize for the advantage of certain
parties or classes, and to repress all initiative from beyond its
own circle.
To abolish authority or government does not mean to destroy
the individual or collective forces, which are at work in society,
nor the influence men exert over one another. That would be
to reduce humanity to an aggregate of inert and separate atoms;
an impossibility which, if it could be performed, would be the
destruction of any society, the death blow to mankind. To abolish
authority, means to abolish the monopoly of force and of influence.
It means to abolish that state of things by which social force, that
is, the collective force of all in a society, is made the instrument
of the thought, will and interests of a small number of individuals.
These, by means of the collective force, suppress the liberty of
every one else, to the advantage of their own ideas. In other words,
it means to destroy a mode of organization by means of which the
future is exploited, between one revolution and another, to the
profit of those who have been the victors of the moment.
Michael Bakunin, in an article published in 1872, asserts that the
great means of action of the International were the propagating
of their ideas, and the organization of the spontaneous action of
its members in regard to the masses. He then adds:
"To whoever might pretend that action so organized would be an
outrage on the liberty of the masses, or an attempt to create
a new authoritative power, we would reply that he is a sophist
and a fool. So much the worse for those who ignore the natural,
social law of human solidarity, to the extent of imagining
that an absolute mutual independence of individuals and of
masses is a possible or even desirable thing. To desire it, would
be to wish for the destruction of society; for all social life is
nothing else than this mutual and incessant interdependence among
individuals and masses. All individuals, even the most gifted
and strongest, indeed most of all the most gifted and strongest,
are at every moment of their lives, at the same time, producers
and products. Equal liberty for every individual is only the
resultant, continually reproduced, of this mass of material,
intellectual and moral influence exercised on him by all the
individuals around him, belonging to the society in which he was
born, has developed and dies. To wish to escape this influence in
the name of a transcendental liberty, divine, absolutely egoistic
and sufficient to itself, is the tendency to annihilation. To
refrain from influencing others, would mean to refrain from all
social action, indeed to abstain from all expression of one's
thoughts and sentiments, and simply to become non-existent.
This independence, so much extolled by idealists and metaphysicians,
individual liberty conceived in this sense would amount to
self-annihilation.
"In nature, as in human society, which is also a part of this
same nature, all that exists lives only by complying with the
supreme conditions of interaction, which is more or less positive
and potent with regard to the lives of other beings, according to
the nature of the individual. And when we vindicate the liberty
of the masses, we do not pretend to abolish anything of the natural
influences that individuals or groups of individuals exert upon one
another. What we wish for is the abolition of artificial influences,
which are privileged, legal and official."
Certainly, in the present state of mankind, oppressed by misery,
stupefied by superstition and sunk in degradation, the human lot
depends upon a relatively small number of individuals. Of course,
all men will not be able to rise in a moment to the height of
perceiving their duty, or even the enjoyment of so regulating their
own action that others also will derive the greatest possible
benefit from it. But because nowadays the thoughtful and guiding
forces at work in society are few, that is no reason for paralyzing
them still more, and for the subjection of many individuals to the
direction of a few. It is no reason for constituting society in such
a manner that the most active forces, the highest capacities are, in
the end, found outside the government, and almost deprived of
influence on social life. All this now happens owing to the inertia
that secured positions foster, to heredity, to protectionism, to
party spirit and to all the mechanism of government. For those in
government office, taken out of their former social position,
primarily concerned in retaining power, lose all power to act
spontaneously, and become only an obstacle to the free action of
others.
With the abolition of this negative potency constituting government,
society will become that which it can be, with the given forces and
capabilities of the moment. If there are educated men desirous of
spreading education, they will organize the schools, and will be
constrained to make the use and enjoyment to be derived from
education felt. And if there are no such men, or only a few of them,
a government cannot create them. All it can do, as in fact it does
nowadays, is to take these few away from practical, fruitful work in
the sphere of education, and put them to direct from above what has
to be imposed by the help of a police system. So they make out of
intelligent and impassionate teachers mere politicians, who become
useless parasites, entirely absorbed in imposing their own hobbies,
and in maintaining themselves in power.
If there are doctors and teachers of hygiene, they will organize
themselves for the service of health. And if there are none,
a government cannot create them; all that it can do is to discredit
them in the eyes of the people, who are inclined to entertain
suspicions, sometimes only too well founded, with regard to
everything which is imposed upon them.
If there are engineers and mechanics, they will organize the
railways, etc; and if there are none, a government cannot create
them.
The revolution, by abolishing government and private property,
will not create force which does not exist; but it will leave
a free field for the exercise of all available force and of all
existent capacity. While it will destroy every class interested in
keeping the masses degraded, it will act in such a way that every
one will be free to work and make his influence felt, in proportion
to his own capacity, and in conformity with his sentiments and
interests. And it is only thus that the elevation of the masses is
possible; for it is only with liberty that one can learn to be free,
as it is only by working that one can learn to work. A government,
even had it no other advantages, must always have that of
habituating the governed to subjection, and must also tend to become
more oppressive and more necessary, in proportion as its subjects
are more obedient and docile.
But suppose government were the direction of affairs by the
best people. Who are the best? And how shall we recognize their
superiority. The majority are generally attached to old prejudices,
and have ideas and instincts already outgrown by the more favored
minority. But of the various minorities, who all believe themselves
in the right, as no doubt many of them are in part, which shall be
chosen to rule? And by whom? And by what criterion? Seeing that the
future alone can prove which among them is the must superior. If you
choose a hundred partisans of dictatorship, you will discover that
each one of the hundred believes himself capable of being, if not
sole dictator, at least of assisting very materially in the
dictatorial government. The dictators would be those who, by one
means or another, succeeded in imposing themselves on society. And,
in course of time, all their energy would inevitably be employed
in defending themselves against the attacks of their adversaries,
totally oblivious of their desire, if ever they had had it, to be
merely an educative power.
Should government be, on the other hand, elected by universal
suffrage, and so be the emanation, more or less sincere, of
the wish of the majority? But if you consider these worthy
electors as incapable of providing for their own interests, how
can they ever be capable of themselves choosing directors to
guide them wisely? How solve this problem of social alchemy:
To elect a government of geniuses by the votes of a mass of fools?
And what will be the lot of the minority, who are the most
intelligent, most active and most advanced in society?
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To solve the social problem to the advantage of all, there is
only one way. To expel the government by revolutionary means, to
expropriate the holders of social wealth, putting everything
at the disposition of all, and to leave all existing force,
capacity and good-will among men free to provide for the needs
of all.
We fight for Anarchy and for Socialism; because we believe
that Anarchy and Socialism ought to be brought into operation
as soon as possible. Which means that the revolution must drive
away the government, abolish private property, and entrust all
public service, which will then embrace all social life, to the
spontaneous, free, unofficial and unauthorized operation of all
those interested and all those willing volunteers.
There will certainly be difficulties and inconveniences; but
the people will be resolute; and they alone can solve all
difficulties Anarchically, that is, by direct action of those
interested and by free agreement.
We cannot say whether Anarchy and Socialism will triumph after the
next revolutionary attempt; but this is certain, that if any of the
so-called transition programs triumph, it will be because we have
been temporarily beaten, and never because we have thought it wise
to leave in existence any one part of that evil system under which
humanity groans.
Whatever happens, we shall have some influence on events, by our
numbers, our energy, our intelligence and our steadfastness.
Also, even if we are now conquered, our work will not have been in
vain; for the more decided we shall have been in aiming at the
realization of all our demands, the less there will be of government
and of private property in the new society. And we shall have done a
great work; for human progress is measured by the degree in which
government and private property are administered.
If today we fall without lowering our colors, our cause is certain
of victory tomorrow.
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