Anarchists are not to be deceived by such sonorous phrases, as they know that these phrases only serve to cover, either ignorance — that is to say, incomplete investigation — or, which is far worse, superstition — the fear before the unkno\vn. Therefore, when they are addressed in this language, they pass on without paying attention to it, and continue their study of social conceptions and institutions, past and present, always following the method of the naturalist.
And they find that the development of the life of societies is 40 Modern Science and Anarehigm.
in reality infinitely more complex (and far more interesting) than we should be led to believe if we judged by metaphysical formulas.
We have heard of late very much about the dialectic method, recommended to us by Social Democrats in order to elaborate the Socialist ideal. But we no more admit this method than would natural science. The dialectic method reminds the modern naturalist of something very antiquated that has had its day and is forgotten, happily long since forgotten by science. No discovery of the nineteenth century, in mechanics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, or anthropology, has been made by the dialectic method. All the immense acquisitions of the century are due to the use of the inductive-deductive method — the only scientific method. And as man is a part of Nature, as his personal and social life is a natural phenomenon, just as the growth of a flower, or the evolution of life in societies of ants or bees — there is no reason why we should, when we pass from the flower to man, or from a village of beavers to a human city, abandon the method which till then has been so useful, and look for another method in the realms of metaphysics.
The inductive-deductive method which we employ in natural 1 sciences has so well proved its efficacy that the nineteenth century /• has been able to advance science in a hundred years more than it had progressed before during two thousand years. And when j men of science began, in the second half of the century, to apply! j the same method to the study of human societies, never did they ' stumble upon an obstacle which rendered its rejection necessary, or made advisable a return to the mediaeval scholasticism resusci-, tated by Hegel. Besides, when some naturalists, doing honour to j their bourgeois education, and pretending to be followers of the scientific method of Darwin, told us: " Crush whoever is weaker than yourself: such is the law of Nature! " it was easy for us to prove, first, that this was not Darwin's conclusion, and, using the same scientific method, to show that these scientists were on the wrong path: that such a law does not exist, that Nature teaches us a very different lesson, and that their conclusions were in nowise scientific.
The same is true as regards the assertion which economists tried to make us believe: namely, that the inequality of fortunes is " a law of Nature," and that capitalistic exploitation i epreseuts the most advantageous form of social organisation. By applyin)^ Modem Science and Anarchism. 41 the method of natural sciences, we are enabled to prove that the so-called " laws " of bourgeois social science, including present political economy, are not at all laws, but simple suppositions or affirmations that nobody has ever attempted to verify. In fact, s tme of their most essential would-be laws crumbled to pieces as soon as they were submitted to the test of numeric data, taken from a study of real life.
One word more. Scientific research is only fruitful on con- dition that it has a definite aim — that it was undertaken with the intention of finding an answer to a plain question well put. And every inquiry is the more fruitful the clearer we see the relation existing between the question and the fundamental lines of our general conception of the Universe. The better it fits in with this general conception, the easier is its solution.
Well then. The question put by Anarchism might be expressed in the following way: " Which social forvis best guarantee in such and such gocieties, and in humanity at large, the greatest sum of happiness, and therefore the greatest sum of vitality? " " Which forms of society are most likely to allow this sum of happiness to increase and develop in quantity and quality — that is to say, will enable this happiness to become more complete and more varied 1 " (which, by the way, gives us the formula of progress).
The desire to help evolution in this direction determines the social, scientific, and artistic activity of the Anarchist. And this activity, in its turn, precisely on account of its falling in with the development of society in this direction, becomes a source of increased vitality, vigour, sense of oneness with mankind and its best vital forces.
It therefore becomes a source of increased vitality and happiness for the individual.
IX.
THE ANARCHIST IDEAL AND THE PRECEDING REVOLUTIONS.
Anarchism, as we have already said, arises from the course taken by practical life.
Godwin, contemporary of the Great Revolution of 1789-93, had seen with his own eyes how the authority of the Government, created during the Revolution and by the Revolution itself, had in its turn become an obstacle to the development of the revolu- tionary movement. He was also aware of what went on in England under cover of Parliament: the pillage of communal lands, the sale of advantageous posts, the hunting of the children of the poor and their removal from workhouses, by agents who travelled all over England for the purpose, to the factories of Lancashire, where masses of them soon perished. And Godwin soon understood that a Government, were it even that of the Jacobin *' One and Indivisible Republic," would never be able to accomplish the necessary Social, Communistic Revolution; that a Revolutionary Government, by virtue of its being a guardian of the State, and of the privileges every State has to defend, soon becomes a hindrance to the Revolution. He understood and openly proclaimed the idea that for the triumph of the Revolu- tion men must first get rid of their faith in Law, Authority, Unity, Order, Property, and other institutions inherited from past times when their forefathers were slaves.
The second Anarchist theorist, Proudhon, who came after Godwin, lived through the Revolution of 1848. He was able to see with his own eyes the crimes committed by the Republican Government, and at the same time convince himself of the impotence of Louis Blanc's State Socialism. Under the recent impression of what he had seen during the Revolution of 1848, he wrote his powerful work, " General Idea on the Revolution," in which he boldly proclaimed Anarchism and the abolition of the State.
And lastly, in the International Working Men's Association the Anarchist conception also asserted itself after a Revolution — Modern Science and Anarchism, 43 that is, after the Paris Commune of 1871. The complete revolu- tionary impotence of the Council of the Commune, although it contained, in a very just proportion, representatives of all the revolutionary parties of that time: Jacobins, Blanquists, and Internationalists; and the incapacity of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, which was sitting in London, and its silly, harmful pretensions to govern the Parisian movement by orders issued from England; both these lessons opened the eyes of a great number. They led several Federations of the International, and several of its prominent members, including Bakunin, to meditate on the harmfulness of every kiiad of authority, even when it is elected with as much freedom as that of the Commune or that of the Workers' International.
Some months later, the decision taken by the General Council of the International at a private meeting convened in London in 1871, instead of an annual Congress, made the dangers of a Government in the International still more evident. By this baneful resolution the forces of the Association, which up till then gathered together for an economic, revolutionary struggle, for the direct action of the Labour Unions against the Capitalism of employers, were to engage in an electoral, political, and Parlia- mentary movement, which could but waste and destroy their real forces.
This resolution brought about open rebellion among the Latin Federations of the Association — Spanish, Italian, Jurassic, and partly Belgian — against the General Council; and from this rebellion dates the Anarchist movement which we see going on.
We thus see that the Anarchist movement was renewed each time it received an impression from some great practical lesson: it derived its origin from the teachings of life itself. But no sooner had it sprung up than it began to work out a general expression of its principles, and the theoretical and scientific basis of its teachings. Scientific — not in the sense of adopting an incomprehensible slang, or clinging to ancient metaphysics, but in the sense of finding a basis for its principles in the natural sciences of the time, and of becoming one of their departments, At the same time it worked out its own ideal.
No struggle can be successful if it is unconscious, if it has no definite and concrete aim. No destruction of existing things is possible if men have not already settled for themselves, during the struggles leading to the destruction, and during the period 44 Modern Science and Anarchism.
of destruction itself, what is going to take the place of that which is to be destroyed. Even a theoretical criticism of what exists is not possible without one picturing to oneself a more or less exact image of that which he desires to see in its place. Consciously or unconsciously, the ideal, the conception of some" thing better, always grows in the mind of whoever criticises existing institutions.
It is the more so with men of action. To tell men: " Let us first destroy Capitalism and Autocracy, and then we shall see what we shall put in their stead," is but to deceive oneself and to deceive others. Never has a real force been created by deception. In fact, even the one who deprecates ideals and sneers at them always has, nevertheless, some conception of what he would like to see in lieu of what he is attacking. For example, while working to destroy Autocracy, some imagine an English or a German Constitution in the near future; others dream of a Republic, subject perhaps to a powerful dictatorship of their party, or a Monarchical Republic as in France, or a Federative Republic as in the United States; while there is now a third party which conceives a still greater limitation of State power, a still greater liberty for the cities, for the Communes, for the workers' Unions, and for all sorts of groups united among them- selves by free, temporary federation, than can be obtained in any Republic.
And when people attack Capitalism, they always have a certain conception, a vague or definite idea, of what they hope to see in the place of Capitalism: State Capitalism, or some sort of State Communism, or a federation of free Communist associations for the production, the exchange, and the consumption of commodities.
Each party has thus its own conception of the future — its ideal which enables it to pronounce its own judgment on all facts occurring in the political and economic life of nations, and inspires it in its search for suitable means of action, in order the better to march towards its aim. It is, therefore, natural that Anarchism, although it has originated in every-day struggles, has also worked to elaborate its ideal. And this ideal, this aim, these plans, soon separated the Anarchists, in their means of action, from all political parties, as also, in a very great measure, from the Socialist parties which have thought it possible to keep the ancient Roman and Canonical idea of the State and to transport it into the future society of their dreams.
X.
ANARCHISM.
X.
ANARCHISM.
It is seen from the foregoing that a variety of considera- tions, liistox'ical, ethnological, and economical, have brought the Anarchists to conceive a society, very different from what is considered as its ideal by the authoritarian political parties. The Anarchists conceive a society in which all the mutual^ relations of its members are regulated, not by laws, not by authorities, whether self-imposed or elected, but by mutual agree- ments between the members of that society, and by a sum of social customs and habits — not petrified by law, routine, or super- stition, but continually developing and continually readjusted, in accordance with the ever-growing requirements of a free life, stimulated by the progress of science, invention, and the steady p " 'No ruling authorities, then. No government of man by man.; V no crystallisation and immobility^ but a continual evolution — j such as we see in Nature. Free play for the individual, for the full development of his individual gifts — for his individualisation. In other words, no actions are imposed upon the individual by a*" fear of punishment; none is required from him by society, but those which receive his free acceptance. In a society of equals this would be quite sufficient for preventing those unsociable actions that might be harmful to other individuals and to society itself, and for favouring the steady moral growth of that society.
This is the conception developed and advocated by the Anarchists.
/^ Of course, up till now no society has existed which would A I have realised these principles in full, although the striving "./'n towards a partial realisation of such principles has always been "j I at work in mankind^^ We may say, therefore, that Anarchism, is- i a certain idedt of society, and that this ideal is different from the ideal of society which has hitherto been advocated by most philosophers, scientists, and leaders of political parties, who pretended to rule mankind and to govern men.
46 Modern Science and Anarchism.
But it would not be fair to describe such a conception as a Utopia, because the word " Utopia " in our current language conveys the idea of something that cannot be realised.
Taken in its usual current sense, therefore, the word " Utopia" ought to be limited to those conceptions only which are based on merely theoretical reasonings as to what is desirable from the writer's point of view, but not on what is already developiicr/ in human agglomerations. Such wei'e, for instance, the Utopias of the Catholic Empire of the Popes, the Napoleonic Empire, the Messianism of Mickiewicz, and so on. But it cannot be applied to a conception of society which is based, as Anarchism is, on an analysis of tendeticies of an evolution that is already going on in society, and on inductions therefrom as to the future — those tendencies which have been, as we saw, for thousands of years the mainspring for the growth of sociable habits and customs, known in science under the name of Customary Law, and which affirm themselves more and more definitely in modern society.
With regard to what is very often said as to the necessary slowness of every new step that is made by evolution, let us remember that not further than at the end of the eiguteenth century — at the very time when the United States had started in life — a society of a somewhat larger size without a monarch was considered a foolish Utopia. But the North and the South American Republics, the Swiss Republic and France have proved since, as we know, that the " Utopians " were not the Republicans but the admii-ers of monarchy. It was the latter, who, guided by their desires only, did not take into account the tendencies of societies developing far from the yoke of monarchist traditions; the latter, and not the Republicans, who attributed too much importance and stability to the monarchist institutions — without noticing that they were not an outcome of human nature, but an outcome of temporary historical conditions.
When we look into the origin of the Anarchist conception of society, we see that it has had a double origin: the criticism, on the one side, of the hierarchical organisations and the authori- tarian conceptions of society; and on the other side, the analysis of the tendencies that are seen in the progressive movements of mankind, both in the past, and still more so at the present time.
From the remotest, Stone-age antiquity, men must have realised the evils that resulted from letting some of them acquire personal authority — even if they were the most intelligent, the bravest, or the wisest. Consequently, they developed, in the Modern Science and Anarchism. 47 primitive clan, the village community, the mediaeval guild (neighbours' guilds, arts and crafts' guilds, traders', hunters', and so on), and finally in the free mediaeval city, such institu- tions as enabled them to resist the encroachments upon their Hfe and fortunes both of those strangers who conquered them, and those clansmen of their own who endeavoured to establish their personal authority. The same popular tendency was self-evident in the religious movements of the masses in Europe during the earlier portions of the Reform movement and its Hussite and Anabaptist forerunners. At a much later period, namely, in 1793, the same current of thought and of action found its expression in the strikingly independent, freely federated activity of the "Sections" of Paris and all great cities and many small "Communes" during the French Revolution.* And later still, the Labour combinations which developed in England and France, notwithstanding Draconic laws, as soon as the factory system began to grow up, were an outcome of the same popular resistance to the growing power of the few — the capitalists in this case.
These were the main popular Anarchist currents which "we know of in history, and it is self-evident that these movements could not but find their expression in literature. So they did, beginning with Lao-tse in China, and some of the earliest Greek philosophers (Aristippus and the Cynics; Zeno and some of the .Stoics). However, being born in the masses, and not in any centres of learning, these popular movements, both when they were revolutionary and when they were deeply constructive, found little sympathy among the learned men — far less than the authoritarian hierarchical tendencies.
The Greek Stoic, Zeno, already advocated a free community, without any government, which he opposed to the State Utopia of Plato. He already brought into evidence the instinct of sociability, which Nature had developed in opposition to the egotism of the self-preservation instinct. He foresaw a time when men would unite across the frontiers and constitute the Cosmos, and would have no need of laws, law-courts, or temples — and no need either of money for their exchanges of mutual services. His very wording seems to have been strikingly similar to that now in use amongst Anarchists.!
The Bishop of Alba, Marco Girolamo Vida, developed, in * See "The Great French Revolution" (London: Heinemann, 1909). t See article, "Anarchism," iu the forthcoming (eleventh) edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica."
D 48 Mode7'n Science and Anarchism.
1553, similar ideas against the State, its laws, and its "supreme iniustice"; as also did the early precursors of Rationalism m. Armenia (in the ninth century), the Hussites (especially Chojecki, i in the fifteenth century), and the early Anabaptists.
Rabelais in the first half of the sixteenth century F^ndlon at the end of it, and especially the Encyclopaedist Diderot at the end of the eighteenth century, developed the same ideas, which found, as has just been mentioned, some practical expressioDi during the French Revolution.. -r.Ti.-i sSt it was Godwin, in his "Enquiry Concerning Politica Justice," who stated in 1793 in a quite definite form the political and economic principles of Anarchism. He did not use the word "Anarchy "itself, but he very forcibly laid down its principles, boldly attacking the laws, proving the uselessness of the btate, and maintaining that only with the abolition of Courts true Justice— the only real foundation of all society-would become possible. As regards property, he openly advocated Communism.
Proudhon was the first to use the word "An-archy (-No- Government) and to submit to a powerful criticism the fruitless efforts of men to give themselves such a Government as would prevent the rich ones from dominating the poor, and at the same time always remain under the control of the governed ones, ihe repeated attempts of France, since 1793, at giving herself such a Constitution, and the failure of the Revolution of 1848, gave him rich material for his criticism.,. v ^i.
Being an enemy of all forms of State Socialism, of which the Communists of those years (the "forties" and "fifties of the nineteenth century) represented a mere sub-division, Proudhon fiercely attacked all such attempts; and taking Robert Owen s system of labour cheques representing hours of labour, he developed a conception of Mutualism, in which any sort ot political Government would be useless. j i ^u The values of all the commodities being measured by the amount of labour necessary to produce them, all the exchanges between the producers could be carried on by means of a national bank, which would accept payment in labour cheques— a Clearing House establishing the daily balance of exchanges between the thousands of branches of this bank.
The services exchanged by different men would thus be • It is all in the first edition of 1793, made in two quarto volumes In the second edition, published in two octavo ^"l"]^^^^ ^". ^ ' "f ' '"" the prosecution of his Republican friends, he withdrew his views on Communism, and mitigated his views on government.
Modem Science and Anarchism. 49 equivalent; and as the bank -would be able to lend the labour cheques' money without interest, and every association would be able to borrow it on payment of only 1 per cent, or less to cover the administration costs, capital would lose its pernicious power; it could be used no more as an instrument of exploitation.
Proudhon gave to the system of Mutualism a very full development in connection with his anti-Government and anti- State ideas; but it must be said that the Mutualist portion of his , programme had been developed in England already by William ^ Thompson (he was a Mutualist prior to his becoming a Communist) and the English followers of Thompson — John Gray (1825, 1831) and J. F. Bray (1839).
In the United States, the same direction was represented by Josiah Warren, who, after having taken part in Robert Owen's colony, "New Harmony," turned against Communism, and in ,1827 founded, in Cincinnatti, a "store" in which goods were I exdianged on the principle of time- value and labour cheques. Such- institutions remained in existence up till 1865 under the names of "Equity Stores," "Equity Village," and "House of Equity."
The same ideas of labour-value and exchange at labour-cost were advocated in Germany, in 1843 and 1845, by Moses Hess and Karl Griin; and in Switzerland by Wilhelm Marr, who { opposed the authoritarian Communist teachings of Weitling.
On the other side, in opposition to the strongly authoritarian Communism of Weitling, which had found a great number of adherents among working men in Germany, there appeared in 1845 the work of a German Hegelian, Max Stirjier (Johann Kaspar Schmidt was his real name), "The Ego and His Own," which was lately rediscovered, so to say, by J. H. Mackay, and very much spoken of in Anarchist circles as a sort of manifesto of the Individualist Anarchists.* Stirner's work is a revolt against both the State and the new tyranny which would have been imposed upon man if authori- tarian Communism were introduced. Reasoning on Hegelian metaphysical lines, Stirner preaches therefore the rehabilitation of the " I " and the supremacy of the individual; and he comes in this way to advocate complete " a-moralism " (no morality) and an "association of egoists."
• A French translation of it was published at Paris in 1900, and an English translation, under the above title, was published by 13. R. Tucker »t New York in 1907.
50 Modem Science and. Anarchism.
It is easy to see, however — as has been indicated more than once by Anarchist writers, and lately by the French professor, V. Basch, in an interesting work, "Axiarchist Individualism: Max Stirner" (1904, in French) — that this sort of Individualism, aiming as it does at the "full development," not of all members of society, but of those only who would be considered as the most gifted ones, without caring for the right of full development for all — is merely a disguised return towards the now-existing education-monopoly of the few. It simply means a " right to their full development" for the privileged minorities. But, as such monopolies cannot be maintained otherwise than under the protection of a monopolist legislation and an organised coercion by the State, the claims of these Individualists necessarily end in a return to the State idea and to that same coercion which they so fiercely attack themselves. Their position is thus the same as that of Spencer, and of all the so-called "Manchester school" of economists, who also begin by a severe criticism of the State and end in its full recognition in order to maintain the property monopolies, of which the State is the necessary stronghold.
Such was the growth of Anarchist ideas, from the French Revolution and Godwin to Proudhon. The next step was made "■^within the great " Internationa]^ "Working Men's Association," which so much insplred'the working classes with hope, and tke middle classes with terror, in the years 1868-1870 — just before the Franco-German War.
fThat this Association was not founded by Marx, or any other personality, as the hero- worshippers would like us to believe, is self-evident. It was the outcome of the meeting, at London, in 1862, of a delegation of French working men, who had come to visit the Second International Exhibition, with representatives of British Trade Unions and Radicals, who received that delegation.
Already in 1830 Robert Owen had made an attempt at organising, beside his " Great National Trades' Union," an "International Union of All Trades"; but the idea had soon to be abandoned, in consequence of the wild prosecutions that the British Government directed against the National Trades' Union. However, the idea was not lost. It smouldered in England; it found followers in France; and after the defeat of the Revolution of 1848, it was taken by some French refugees across the Atlantic, and propagated in the United States, in a paper, L' Internationale.
Modern, Science and Anarchism. 51 Now, the French working men who came to London in 1862 being mostly Proudhonian " Mutualists," and the British Trada Unionists being mainly followers of Robert Owen, British "Owenism" thus joined hands with French "Mutualism," with the result of giving birth to a powerful international Labour organisation. In Marx and several others this union of the two leading Socialist currents of the time found the intellectual support of the secret political organisation of the " j^Iaterialist Communists " (Communistes Jlaterialistes J, an organisation which represented what was still living of the secret societies, once so powerful in the " thirties " and " forties " under Blanqui and Barbes, these societies themselves having originated in the conspiracy of the authoritarian Communists, organised by Babeuf in 1794-1795.