We saw in a previous chapter that the years 1856-1862 were years of a wonderful revival in science and philosophy. They were also years of a general political revival of Radicalism in Europe and America. And this was stirring everywhere the working men, who began to see that they themselves must prepare the proletarian revolution. The International Exhibi- tion of 1862 was described as a great Fete of the World's Industry, which would mark a new departure in the struggle of Labour for its emancipation; and now the creation of an International Working Men's Association, which boldly announced its rupture with the old political parties, and the firm resolution of the working men to take the work of I their liberation into their own hands, made a very deep limpressibn. " ~" The Association began to spread rapidly in the Latin countries. Its fighting power soon became menacing, while at the same time its Federations and its yearly Congresses offered to the working men the opportunity of discussing and bringing into shape the ideas of a Social Revolution.
The near approach of such a Revolution was generally expected at that time, but no definite ideas as to its possible form and its immediate steps were forthcoming. On the contrary, several conflicting currents of Socialist thought met together in the International.
The main idea of the Association was a direct struggle of Labour against Capital in the economic field — i.e., the emancipa- tion of Ijabour, not by middle-class legislation, but by the working men themselves.
62 ^fodern Science and Anarchism.
But hovo the liberation of Labour from the capitalist yoke would be accomplished, what form the new organisation of pro- jduction and exchange would take — in this respect the opinions lof the Socialists were divided quite as much in 1864-1868 as they were twenty years before, when the represSKtffEives of the different SociaUst schools met together in the Republican Constituent Assembly sitting at Paris in 1848.
Like their French predecessors, whose aspirations were so admirably summed up in 1848 by Consid^rant, in his "Socialism Before the Old World," the Socialists of the International Vjj[_^ Working Men's Association did not rally under the banner of ' ]L one singlo^doctrine. They oscillated between several different was, first, the direct legacy of the Great French Revolution — the Babeuf conspiracy of 1795 — that is, the secret societies of the French " Materialist Communists " and the German Communists, followers of Weitling. Both lived upon the traditions of the stem Jacobinism of 1793. In 1S48 they still dreamed of some day seizing the political power in the State — perhaps with the preliminary aid of a dictator — and of instituting, on the model of the terrorism of the Jacobinist societies of 1793 (but this time in favour of the workers), a "dictatorship of the proletariat." This dictatorship would introduce Communism by means of stem legislation.
Property-owning would be rendered so unbearable by means of a thousand laws, restrictions, taxation, and so on, that the property-owners would be happy to surrender their properties to the State. Then, " armies of labourers " would be sent out to cultivate the fields, and industrial production for the State would be organised in the same semi-military fashion.* This school continued to cherish the same ideals at the time of the foundation of the International Association, and had later on a great following in France among the Blanquists.
Diametrically opposed to this Jacobinist Communism was the Co-operative idea of Robert Owen, which refused to resort to the coercive action of the State, and reHed^Eiefly, both for realising the Revolution and mamtaining the new Socialistic life, on the power of the organised and federated Labour Unions. The British Owenites repudiated Communism; but, in common with ♦ It is interesting to note that similar ideas about State agriculture, carried ou by " armies of labourers," had been expressed by Napoleon III., while he was yet a pretender to the Presidency of the Republic, in a pamphlet, "The Extinction of the Proletariate."
Modem Science and Anarchism. 65 the French followers of Fourier, they attached a great importance 'f to the freely constituted and federate^ communities or groups, | wliich would own in common their land, their factories, and their stores; while remuneration for work, both within each industrial village, and in the exchange between the different groups, would be made by means of labour-cheques, representing the hours of labour that were spent by each person in the communal fields, workshops, or factories.
Tlie same idea of remuneration by labour-cheques was advo- cated, as we have already seen, by Proudhon and his Mutualist followers. They also repudiated the coercive interv'gTrtlbn ' of the State, both during the transitory period and the subsequent Socialist life. They considered that what now constitutes the functions of the State in economic matters could be accom- plished by the branches of the Bank of the People and the Clearing Houses; while education, sanitary arrangements, and so oirotlgBrto^e in the hands of entirely independent Communes.
Again, the same idea of labour-cheques taking the place of money in all exchanges, but with a State ownership of all the land, the mines, the railujays, and the factories, was advocated by two remarkable writers, Pecqueur and Yidal, who described their system as Collectivism. Pecqueur, who was a member of the Constituent Assembly in 1848, wrote a whole treatise on this matter, in which he developed his system in full — even in the shape of laws which the Assembly had only to vote to accomplish the Social Revolution. The names of Vidal and Pecqueur were quite forgotten by that time, but their ideas were widely spread, and they were soon revived among the Germans under the names of "Marxism," "scientific Socialism," or "Collectivism."
By the side of these different schools, the ideas of the Saint- Simonist school had a considerable hold upon many minds in the International "Working Men's Association, as they also had had among the revolutionists of 1848.
A great number of brilliant writers, poUticians, and indus- trialists, among whom suffice it to name the philosopher Auguste Comte, the historian Augustin Thierry, and the economist Sismondi, had developed under the inspiration of the teachings of Saint-Simon. And their work had deeply influenced most social reformers.
Human progress — they said — had hitherto consisted in trans- forming Slavery into Serfdom, and Serfdom into the Wage System. But the time had now come to abolish the Wage 54 Modern Science and Anarchism.
System in its turn. And with it, individual property had also to go. Private ownership and Authority were not immiitable institutions. Property had already undergone several modifica- tions in the course of history, and new changes, having become necessary, would have to be made.
The abolition of private property — they wrote — could be done gradually, by a series of measures (of which the Great P^evolution had already begun to take the initiative), enabling the State to appropriate, in the shape of inheritance duties, a steadily growing proportion of the estates transmitted by inheritance. Individual inheritance being thus more and more reduced, so as to be eventually abolished, and the rich people themselves seeing their own advantage in abandoning privileges which belong to a dying stage of civilisation, "the State would finally become the sole owner of all the lands and industrial concerns, as also the supreme regulator of all labour, the head and the absolute regulator of the three main functions of social life — Art, Science, and Industry," * Every one, being a worker in one of these branches, would thus be a functionary of the State. As to the Government, it would be composed of a hierarchy of the " best men " — the best men of science, the best artists, the best industrialists.
The distribution of the commodities produced would be made, umder this system, in virtue of the principle: To each one according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works.f The Saint-Simonist school, and still more so the Positivist philosophy to which it gave birth, produced a number of quite remarkable historical works, in which the origins of authority, of property, and of the State divided into classes were discussed in a really scientific way, and which up tiU now have retained their value. The Saint-Simonists severely criticised at the same time the so-called classical political economy of Adam Smith and Ricardo (which was known later on as the Manchester school of "non-intervention of the State"). But while combatting the principle of commercial and industrial individualism and com- petition, advocated by these economists, the Saint-Simonists fell into the error which they themselves had combatted at the outset, when they severely criticised the military State and the ♦ V. Consid^rant, "Le Socialisme devant le Vienx Monde," 1848, p. 36. I use here the very words of Consid^rant, to show how Saint-Simonism was understood by the Socialists in 1848, and how many of its ideas are still retained in the teachings of the Social Democrats.
t I translate verbally the Saint-Simonist fomtila.
Modern Science and, Anarchism. 55 State based upon a division of society into classes (" the Class- State"). They ended by recognising an all-powerful State. They based the structure of society upon inequality and authority, and they based order upon a hierarchy of administrators, proceeding from above to below.
From the Communists of 1848 the Saint^Simonists thus differed by allotting to the individual a purely individiial share in the riches produced by the whole community. Notwith- standing the valuable work which some of them had accom- plished in political economy, they did not yet reach the conception of all production being a social fact, and consequently of it being materially impossible to determine with justice the share which must be attributed to each separate individual out of the total mass of commodities produced.
Upon this point the Communists _wi'iely differed from the Saint-Simonists. But there was one point upon wHch both the atrtEoritarian Communists and the followers of Saint-Simon agreed. They both ignored the individual and his claims. All that the Communists did, was to concede to the individual the right of electing his administrators and rulers, which the earlier Saint-Simonists, before 1848, refused to admit. But under ComiQunism, as under Saint-Simonism and under Collectivism," the indjjidual was a mere fu nctionary ^gt-ike State. With Cabet, Jacbbinist Commlinism, The suppression of individuj reached its fullest expression.
And finally we must mention the followers of Louis Blanc, very numerous at that time both in France and Germany (where ^they were represented by a strong body of Lassalleans). They considered that the transfer of industrial property from Capital to Labour could be effected if a Government, bom of a revolution [and inspired by Socialist ideas, would aid the workers in organ- ising a wide system of productive Labour Associations, support them by loans, and join all of them in one large system of national production. Equal remuneration of all workers in these associations might be accepted as a transitory form — their final aim being to come later on to a division of produce according to the needs of each producer. It was thus, as Consid^rant remarked. Communistic Saint-Simonism under State management.
Supported by a large system of State credit, granted at a very low rate of interest, freely competing against capitalist production, and upheld by the commands of the State, such Labour Associations would soon oust the Capitalist from the 86 Modern Science and Anarchism.
industrial field, take his place everywhere, and gradually spread also on to the land, in agriculture. This economic, Socialist aim must be kept in view by the worker — not the merely political ideals of the bourgeois politicans.
With various modifications in the details, and with more or less vagueness or precision, these ideas, which had been spread by the Revolution of 1848, were widely difi'used in the Inter- national Association. They also, as we see, recognised as their basis a strong, powerful Government, holding in its hands the economic life of the nation; and they recognised in full the present hierarchic and centralised organisation of the State.
Happily enough, there circulated also in the International the ideas of the Fourierists, which counter-balanced to some extent the ideas of these Jacobinist admirers of the State.
XL AN AB,CmSM— (Continued).
Fourier — a contemporary of the Great French Revolution, from which he derived his chief ideas — was no longer living when the International was founded. But his views had been popularised so well by his followers — especially by Considerant, who had given them a scientific unity — that, consciously or not, the most enHghtened spirits of the Working Men's Association were very much under the influence of the ideas of Fourier.* Now, the leading idea ot Fourier was not so much the union between Capital, Labour, and Talent for the production of commodities, to which such a prominent place is usually given in most historical works on Socialism. His chief aim was to get rid of individual commerce for private profit, with all the v^eculations it necessarily provokes, and to call into existence a free national organisation of exchange of all the commodities.
To use Consid^rant's words, the remedy against all infamies )£ present exploitation Fourier saw in " bringing into direct delations the producer and the consumer, by organising inter- Jnediary communal agencies, which would be the depositaries I — not the owners — of all food produce, and would deliver this I produce directly to the consumers, adding only to its price the \ real cost of transport, storage, and administration, which always \is almost insignificant."
This is how Considerant understood Fourier (" Le Socialisme (fevant le Vieux Monde," p. 38); and one sees that Fourier, who at the age of seven took his Hannibal oath against Commerce, and who had lived through the Great French Revolution and seen the speculations begun during the Revolution by the sale of * It is known, from our friend TcherkesofF\s work, that it was from Considerant's " Principles of Socialism: Manifesto of the XlXth Century Democracy," published in 1843, that Marx and Engels borrowed the theoretical part of the economic principles which they eipresaed in the "Communist Manifesto." The borrowing, indeed, even of the form itself, is quite evident to any one who will consult both manifestoes. As to the practical programme of that Manifesto, it was, as Professor Audler has shown, that of the Communist, French and German secret organisa- tions, originating from the debris of the secret societies of Babeuf and Buonarroti.
« 58 Modem Science and Anarchism.
national estates, and the speculations in food during the war fully understood the dominating importance of that great attempt which was made by the sansculottes, in 1793 and 1794, to nationalise trade, by means of communal depots.
The Commune, the free municipality — Fourier called it a Phalanx — had thus, in Fourier's opinion, to offer the solution of the great problem of Exchange and Distribution of Produce. But this Commune would not be the owner of the stored produce: it would only be a depositary — an agency for storing the produce and distributing it, which realises no projit and levies no tribute upon the consumers.
Fourier gave a further extension to his idea. He supposed that all the families of a rural Commune constitute a Phalanx; they put together their land, their chattels, and their agricultural implements, and cultivate their land, or engage in industrial pursuits, as if the land, the chattels, the machines, etc., were their common property — a careful record, however, being kept of every inhabitant's contribution to the working capital.
Two main points had to be kept in view in such an association. There must be no disagreeable labour. All labour must be so organised, so distributed, and so diversified as always to be attractive. And no sort of coercion must be exercised. In a society organised on the principle of free association, no sort of coercion could be tolerated, and none would be needed. With some intelligent attention to the needs of every member of the Phalanx, and with its combination of agricultural, industrial, intellectual, and artistic work, the members of the Phalanx would soon recognise that even the passions of men, which under the present structure of society often become a nuisance and a danger, and are always an excuse for coercion — even the passions can be a source of progress, if their exercise be recognised, and a reasonable social outlet for them be given in the shape of new ventures, risky enterprises, social animation, diversity, and so on.
As to how the commodities produced would be distributed, Fourier — who, after the defeat of the Great French Revolution, and during the awful reaction that followed it, was naturally induced to advocate peaceful solutions only — insisted upon the necessity of recognising the principle of association between Capital, Labour, and Talent. Accordingly, the value of the commodities produced by each Phalanx ou<iht to be divided, in his opinion, into three parts, one of which would remunerate Capital, another would remunerate Labour, and the third would Modern Science and Anarchism. 59 be the share of Talent. However, most of the Internationalists saw in this part of Fourier's ideas a mere concession to the reaction that reigned during his lifetime; at any rate, they treated them as a point which did not affect the more essential portions of his scheme, which were the following: — 1. The Commune — i.e., a small territorial unit — is to be considered as the basis of the new Socialist society.
2. It is the depositary of all the commodities produced in the surrounding locality, and the intermediary for exchange. It represents also the association of consumers, and very probably in most cases it will also be the producing unit (which may, however, also be a professional, and not a t^ritorial group, or a federation of producing groups).
3. These Communes freely federate, in order to constitute the Federation, the Region, or the Nation.
4. Labour m,ust be rendered attractive. No solution what- ever of the Social question is possible, so long as this has not been achieved. And to attain this is quite possible.
5. To maintain harmony in such communities, no coercion is necessary. The influence of public opinion alone will do.
As to how distribution would take place in each Commune, the working men of the International considered that this must be settled by the Commune itself, which may introduce the Communist principle, "to each one according to his needs," or adopt some system of remuneration by results. This solution, which left to each Commune the choice of the system of remuneration, was the essence of what was known among the Latin nations as "Collectivism" — in opposition to the authori- tarian Communism of the Babeuf schools.
And finally, as to how the present society could pass over to a Socialist one, it was almost unanimously recognised by the workers that the time is soon coming when a new revolution, much deeper and more universal than that of 1848, would break out; and then the workers would do all in their power to dispossess Capital of its present monopolies.
This, then, was the ground upon which the Anarchist ideas were going to develop within the International.
One sees from the above sketch how the Jacobinist ideas — centralist and authoritarian — intermingled in the International with ideas of local independence and federation. Both were legacies of the Great French Revolution. If the centralist ideas were handed down directly from the Jacobinists of 1793 and the conspiracy of Babeuf, through the secret Communist organisations 60 Modern Science and Anarchism.
of the first half of the nineteenth century, the ideas of local I independent action were handed down, at least amonj; the French, from the powerful and truly revolutionary and con- structive action of the " Sections " of Paris and the Communes of 1793-94, which I have described lately in "The Great French Revolution."
It must be said, however, that the former, i.e., the Jacobinist current, undoubtedly was the more powerful of the two. The educated middle-class people who had joined the International were mostly Jacobinist.
And now came the terrible Franco-German War, into which Napoleon III. and his advisers madly rushed, in order to save the Empire from the rapidly advancing revolution; and with it came the crushing defeat of France, the Provisory Government of Gambetta and Thiers, and the Commune of Paris, followed by similar attempts at Saint Etienne in France, and at Barcelona and Carthagena in Spain. And these popular insurrections brought into evidence what the political aspect of a Social Revolution ought to be. \ Not a Democratic Republic, as was said in 1848, but the free, \ independent Communist Commune, Of course, the Paris Commune itself suffered from the confusion of ideas as to the economic and political steps to be taken by the Revolution, which prevailed, as we saw, in the International. Both the Jacobinists and the Communalists — i.e., the centralists and the federalists — were represented in the uprising, and neces- sarily they came into conflict with each other. The most warlike elements were the Jacobinists and the Blanquists, but the economic. Communist ideals of Babeuf had already faded among their middle-class leaders. They treated the economic question as a secondary one, which would be attended to later on, after the triumph of the Commune, and this idea prevailed. But the crushing defeat which soon followed, and the bloodthirsty revenge taken by the middle class, proved once more that the triumph of a popular Commune was materially impossible without a parallel triumph of the people in the economic field.
For the Latin nations, the Commune of Paris, followed by similar attempts at Carthagena and Barcelona, settled the ideas of the revolutionary proletariat.
This toas the form that the Social Revolution must take — the independent Commune. Let all the country and all the world be against it: but once its inhabitants have decided that they will 1 Modern Science a/nd Anarchism. 61 communalise the consumption of commodities, their exchange, and their production, they must realise it among themselves. And in so doing,* they will find such forces as never could be called into life and to the service of a great cause, if they attempted to take in the sway of the Revolution the whole country, including its most backward or indifferent regions. Better openly to fight such strongholds of reaction than to drag them as so many chains rivetted to the feet of the fighter.
More than that. We made one step more. "We understood that if no central Government was needed to rule the inde- pendent Communes, if the national Government is thrown over- board and national unity is obtained by free federation, then a central municipal Government becomes equally useless and noxious. The same federative principle would do within the Commune.
The uprising of the Paris Commune thus brought with it the \ solution of a question which tormented every true Revolutionist, i Twice had France tried to bring about some sort of a Socialist \ revolution, by imposing it through a Central Government, more or less disposed to accept it: in 1793-94, when she tried to introduce Vegalite de fait — real, economic equality — by means of strong Jacobinist measures; and in 1848, when she tried to, impose a "Democratic Socialist Republic." And each time she./" failed. But now a new solution was indicated: the free "" Commune must do it on its own territory, and with this grew up a new ideal — Akarchy.
"We understood then that at the bottom of Proudhon's " Idee Gen^rale sur la Revolution au Dix-neuvieme Siecle " (unfortu- nateiy, not yet translated into English) lay a deeply practical idea — that of Anarchy. And in the Latin countries the thought of the more advanced men began to work in this direction.
Alas! in Latin countries only: in France, in Spain, in Italy, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and the Wallonic part of Belgium. The Germans, on the contrary, drew from their victory over France quite another lesson and quite different ideals — the worship of the centralised St«.te.
The centralised State, hostile even to national tendencies ofji independence; the power of centralisation and a strong central! authority — these were the lessons they drew from the victories\ of the German Empire, and to tliese lessons they cling even now, ^ without understanding that tliis was only a victory of a military mass, of the universal obligatory military service of the Germans 62 Modern Science and Anarchism.
over the recruiting system of the French and over the rottenness of the second Napoleonic Empire approaching a revolution which ■would have benefitted mankind, if it were not hindered by the German invasion.
In the Latin countries, then, the lesson of the Paris and the Carthagena Communes laid the foundation for the development of Anarchy. And the authoritarian tendencies of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, which soon became evident and worked fatally against the unity of action of the great Association, still more reinforced the Anarchist current of thought. The more so as that Council, led by Marx, Engels, and some French Blanquist refugees — all pure Jacobinists — used its powers to make a coup d'etat in the International. It substituted in the programme of the Associa- tion Parliamentary political action in lieu of the economic struggle of Labour against Capital, which hitherto had been the essence of the International. And in this way it provoked an open revolt against its authority in the Spanish, Italian, Jurassic, and East Belgian Federations, and among a certain section of the English Internationalists.
In Mikhail IBakunin. the Anarchist tendency, now growing within the International, found a powerful, gifted, and inspired exponent; while round Bakunin and his Jura friends gathered a small circle of talented young Italians and Spaniards, who further developed his ideas. Largely drawing upon his wide knowledge of history and philosophy, Bakunin established in a series of powerful pamphlets and letters the leading principles of modern Anarchism.
The complete abolition of the State, with all its organisation and ideals, was the watchword he boldly proclaimed. The State has been in the past a historical necessity, which grew out of the authority won by the religious castes. But its complete extinction is now, in its turn, a historical necessity, because the State represents the negation of liberty, and spoils even what it undertakes to do for the sake of general well-being. All legis- I'ttion made within the State, even when it issues from the BO-called universal sufirage, has to be repudiated, because it always has been made with regard to the interests of the privileged classes. Every nation, every region, every commune must be absolutely free to organise itself, politically and economi- cally, as it likes, so long as it is not a menace to its neighbours. "Federalism " and "avtonou^y" are not enough. These are only Modem Science and Anarchism. 63 words, used to mask the State authority. Fall independence of the Communes, their free federation, and the Social Revolution within the Communes — this was, he proved, the ideal now i*isiiig before our civilisation from the mists of the past. The indi- vidual understands that he will be really free in proportion only as all the others round him become free.
As to his economic conceptions, EakunLn was at heart a Communist; but, in common with his Federalist comrades of tHe International, and as a concession to the antagonism to Communism that the authoritarian Communists had inspired in France, he described himself as a "Collectivist Anarchist." But, of course, he was not a "Collectivist" in the sense of Vidal or Pecqueur, or of their modem followers, who simply aim at "State Capitalism"; he understood it in the above-mentioned sense of not determining in advance what form of distribution the producers should adopt in their different groups — whether the Communist solution, or the labour cheques, or equal salaries, or any other method. And with these views, he was an ardent preacher of the Social Revolution, the near approach of which was foreseen then by all Socialists, and which he foretold in fiery words.* ♦ A number of Bakunin's co-workers and friends — namely, Varlin, Guillaume, and the Italians — had already in 1869 described themselves aa Communist Anarchists; but, forced to fight bitterly later on for the independence of their respective Federations, they gave only a Becondary attention to this question, leaving it to be decided in the future by tiu Communes and Labour orsanisations themselves.