Der Platz des Individuums in der Gesellschaft

be sure. In practice, they still prefer the few liberties in their own respective countries. They go to Russia for a short visit or as salesmen of the “revolution,” but they feel safer and more comfortable at home. Perhaps it is not only lack of courage which keeps these good Britishers and Americans in their native lands rather than in the millenium come. Subconsciously there may lurk the feeling that individuality remains the most fundamental fact of all human association, suppressed and persecuted yet never defeated, and in the long run the victor. The “genius of man,” which is but another name for personality and individuality, bores its way through all the caverns of dogma, through the thick walls of tradition and custom, defying all taboos, setting authority at naught, facing contumely and the scaffold--ultimately to be blessed as prophet and martyr by succeeding generations. But for the “genius of man,” that inherent, persistent quality of individuality, we would be still roaming the primeval forests. Peter Kropotkin has shown what wonderful results this unique force of man’s individuality has achieved when strengthened by =co-operation= with other individualities. The one-sided and entirely inadequate Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence received its biological and sociological completion from the great Anarchist scientist and thinker. In his profound work, _Mutual Aid_, Kropotkin shows that in the animal kingdom, as well as in human society, co-operation--as opposed to internecine strife and struggle--has worked for the survival and evolution of the species. He demonstrated that only mutual aid and voluntary co-operation--=not= the omnipotent, all-devastating State--can create the basis for a free individual and associational life. At present the individual is the pawn of the zealots of dictatorship and the equally obsessed zealots of “rugged individualism.” The excuse of the former is its claim of a new objective.…