Anarchism
(from the Gr. an and archos, contrary to authority), the
name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society
is conceived without government
Selected Links, Essays and Quotations.
'Either the State forever, crushing individual and local
life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars
and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace
one tyrant with another.....Or the destruction of all states and new life
starting again in thousands of centres on the principle that the lively initiative
of the individual and groups of that Free Arrangement The choice lies with
you'.. Kropotkin, 'Conquest of Bread' (1892).
On the Communist form of Anarchism and the future Anarchist Society.
'I am an Anarchist and am trying to work out the ideal society, which I
believe will be Communist in Economics, but will leave full and free scope
for the development of the Individual.'
Interview 1897., Kropotkin cited in Peter Marshall's comprehensive history
of Anarchism, 'Demanding the Impossible: A history of Anarchism,' 1993,
Harper Collins.
"Anarchism",
from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910.
By Peter Kropotkin (aka 'The Prince')
ANARCHISM (from the Gr. an and archos, contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent - for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary - as is seen in organic life at large - harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.
If, it is contended, society were organized on these principles, man would not be limited in the free exercise of his powers in productive work by a capitalist monopoly, maintained by the state; nor would he be limited in the exercise of his will by a fear of punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical entities, which both lead to depression of initiative and servility of mind. He would be guided in his actions by his own understanding, which necessarily would bear the impression of a free action and reaction between his own self and the ethical conceptions of his surroundings. Man would thus be enabled to obtain the full development of all his faculties, intellectual, artistic and moral, without being hampered by overwork for the monopolists, or by the servility and inertia of mind of the great number. He would thus be able to reach full individualization, which is not possible either under the present system of individualism, or under any system of state socialism in the so-called Volkstaat (popular state).
The
anarchist writers consider, moreover, that their conception is not a utopia,
constructed on the a priori method, after a few desiderata have been
taken as postulates. It is derived, they maintain, from an analysis of
tendencies that are at work already, even though state socialism may find
a temporary favour with the reformers. The progress of modern technics, which
wonderfully simplifies the production of all the necessaries of life; the
growing spirit of independence, and the rapid spread of free initiative and
free understanding in all branches of activity - including those which formerly
were considered as the proper attribution of church and state - are steadily
reinforcing the no-government tendency.
As to their economical conceptions, the anarchists, in common with all socialists,
of whom they constitute the left wing, maintain that the now prevailing system
of private ownership in land, and our capitalist production for the sake of
profits, represent a monopoly which runs against both the principles of justice
and the dictates of utility. They are the main obstacle which prevents the
successes of modern technics from being brought into the service of all, so
as to produce general well-being. The anarchists consider the wage-system
and capitalist production altogether as an obstacle to progress. But they
point out also that the state was, and continues to be, the chief instrument
for permitting the few to monopolize the land, and the capitalists to appropriate
for themselves a quite disproportionate share of the yearly accumulated surplus
of production. Consequently, while combating the present monopolization of
land, and capitalism altogether, the anarchists combat with the same energy
the state, as the main support of that system. Not this or that special form,
but the state altogether, whether it be a monarchy or even a republic governed
by means of the referendum.
The state organization, having always been, both in ancient and modern history (Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire, modern European states grown up on the ruins of the autonomous cities), the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities, cannot be made to work for the destruction of these monopolies. The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to the state all the main sources of economical life - the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on - as also the management of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all the functions already accumulated in its hands (education, state-supported religions, defence of the territory, etc.), would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism. True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery.
In common with most socialists, the anarchists recognize that, like all evolution in nature, the slow evolution of society is followed from time to time by periods of accelerated evolution which are called revolutions; and they think that the era of revolutions is not yet closed. Periods of rapid changes will follow the periods of slow evolution, and these periods must be taken advantage of - not for increasing and widening the powers of the state, but for reducing them, through the organization in every township or commune of the local groups of producers and consumers, as also the regional, and eventually the international, federations of these groups.
In
virtue of the above principles the anarchists refuse to be party to the present
state organization and to support it by infusing fresh blood into it. They
do not seek to constitute, and invite the working men not to constitute, political
parties in the parliaments. Accordingly, since the foundation of the International
Working Men's Association in 1864-1866, they have endeavoured to promote their
ideas directly amongst the labour organizations and to induce those unions
to a direct struggle against capital, without placing their faith in parliamentary
legislation.
The historical development of anarchism
The conception of society just sketched, and the tendency which is its dynamic expression, have always existed in mankind, in opposition to the governing hierarchic conception and tendency - now the one and now the other taking the upper hand at different periods of history. To the former tendency we owe the evolution, by the masses themselves, of those institutions - the clan, the village community, the guild, the free medieval city - by means of which the masses resisted the encroachments of the conquerors and the power-seeking minorities. The same tendency asserted itself with great energy in the great religious movements of medieval times, especially in the early movements of the reform and its forerunners. At the same time it evidently found its expression in the writings of some thinkers, since the times of Lao-tsze, although, owing to its non-scholastic and popular origin, it obviously found less sympathy among the scholars than the opposed tendency.
As has been pointed out by Prof. Adler in his Geschichte des Sozialismus und Kommunismus, Aristippus (b. c. 430 BC), one of the founders of the Cyrenaic school, already taught that the wise must not give up their liberty to the state, and in reply to a question by Socrates he said that he did not desire to belong either to the governing or the governed class. Such an attitude, however, seems to have been dictated merely by an Epicurean attitude towards the life of the masses.
The best exponent of anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was Zeno (342-267 or 270 BC), from Crete, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, who distinctly opposed his conception of a free community without government to the state-utopia of Plato. He repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual - remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct - that of sociability. When men are reasonable enough to follow their natural instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute the cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public worship, and use no money - free gifts taking the place of the exchanges. Unfortunately, the writings of Zeno have not reached us and are only known through fragmentary quotations. However, the fact that his very wording is similar to the wording now in use, shows how deeply is laid the tendency of human nature of which he was the mouthpiece.
In medieval times we find the same views on the state expressed by the illustrious bishop of Alba, Marco Girolamo Vida, in his first dialogue De dignitate reipublicae (Ferd. Cavalli, in Mem. dell'Istituto Veneto, xiii.; Dr E. Nys, Researches in the History of Economics). But it is especially in several early Christian movements, beginning with the ninth century in Armenia, and in the preachings of the early Hussites, particularly Chojecki, and the early Anabaptists, especially Hans Denk (cf. Keller, Ein Apostel der Wiedertaufer), that one finds the same ideas forcibly expressed - special stress being laid of course on their moral aspects.
Rabelais and Fenelon, in their utopias, have also expressed similar ideas, and they were also current in the eighteenth century amongst the French Encyclopaedists, as may be concluded from separate expressions occasionally met with in the writings of Rousseau, from Diderot's Preface to the Voyage of Bougainville, and so on. However, in all probability such ideas could not be developed then, owing to the rigorous censorship of the Roman Catholic Church.
These
ideas found their expression later during the great French Revolution. While
the Jacobins did all in their power to centralize everything in the hands
of the government, it appears now, from recently published documents, that
the masses of the people, in their municipalities and 'sections', accomplished
a considerable constructive work. They appropriated for themselves the election
of the judges, the organization of supplies and equipment for the army, as
also for the large cities, work for the unemployed, the management of charities,
and so on. They even tried to establish a direct correspondence between the
36,000 communes of France through the intermediary of a special board, outside
the National Assembly (cf. Sigismund Lacroix, Actes de la commune de Paris).
It
was Godwin, in his Enquiry concerning Political Justice (2 vols., 1793),
who was the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of
anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in
his remarkable work. Laws, he wrote, are not a product of the wisdom of our
ancestors: they are the product of their passions, their timidity, their jealousies
and their ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend
to cure. If and only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the decisions
in the arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen for that purpose,
real justice would gradually be evolved. As to the state, Godwin frankly claimed
its abolition. A society, he wrote, can perfectly well exist without any government:
only the communities should be small and perfectly autonomous. Speaking of
property, he stated that the rights of every one 'to every substance capable
of contributing to the benefit of a human being' must be regulated by justice
alone: the substance must go 'to him who most wants it'. His conclusion was
communism. Godwin, however, had not the courage to maintain his opinions.
He entirely rewrote later on his chapter on property and mitigated his communist
views in the second edition of Political Justice (8vo, 1796).
Joseph Proudhon
Proudhon was the first to use, in 1840 (Qu'est-ce que la propriete? first memoir), the name of anarchy with application to the no government state of society. The name of 'anarchists' had been freely applied during the French Revolution by the Girondists to those revolutionaries who did not consider that the task of the Revolution was accomplished with the overthrow of Louis XVI, and insisted upon a series of economical measures being taken (the abolition of feudal rights without redemption, the return to the village communities of the communal lands enclosed since 1669, the limitation of landed property to 120 acres, progressive income-tax, the national organization of exchanges on a just value basis, which already received a beginning of practical realization, and so on).
Now Proudhon advocated a society without government, and used the word anarchy to describe it. Proudhon repudiated, as is known, all schemes of communism, according to which mankind would be driven into communistic monasteries or barracks, as also all the schemes of state or state-aided socialism which were advocated by Louis Blanc and the collectivists. When he proclaimed in his first memoir on property that 'Property is theft', he meant only property in its present, Roman-law, sense of 'right of use and abuse'; in property-rights, on the other hand, understood in the limited sense of possession, he saw the best protection against the encroachments of the state. At the same time he did not want violently to dispossess the present owners of land, dwelling-houses, mines, factories and so on. He preferred to attain the same end by rendering capital incapable of earning interest; and this he proposed to obtain by means of a national bank, based on the mutual confidence of all those who are engaged in production, who would agree to exchange among themselves their produces at cost-value, by means of labour cheques representing the hours of labour required to produce every given commodity. Under such a system, which Proudhon described as 'Mutuellisme', all the exchanges of services would be strictly equivalent. Besides, such a bank would be enabled to lend money without interest, levying only something like I per cent, or even less, for covering the cost of administration. Everyone being thus enabled to borrow the money that would be required to buy a house, nobody would agree to pay any more a yearly rent for the use of it. A general 'social liquidation' would thus be rendered easy, without violent expropriation. The same applied to mines, railways, factories and so on.
In
a society of this type the state would be useless. The chief relations between
citizens would be based on free agreement and regulated by mere account keeping.
The contests might be settled by arbitration. A penetrating criticism of the
state and all possible forms of government, and a deep insight into all economic
problems, were well-known characteristics of Proudhon's work.
It is worth noticing that French mutualism had its precursor in England, in William Thompson, who began by mutualism before he became a communist, and in his followers John Gray (A Lecture on Human Happiness, 1825; The Social System, 1831) and J. F. Bray (Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy, 1839). It had also its precursor in America. Josiah Warren, who was born in 1798 (cf. W. Bailie, Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist, Boston, 1900), and belonged to Owen's 'New Harmony', considered that the failure of this enterprise was chiefly due to the suppression of individuality and the lack of initiative and responsibility. These defects, he taught, were inherent to every scheme based upon authority and the community of goods. He advocated, therefore, complete individual liberty. In 1827 he opened in Cincinnati a little country store which was the first 'equity store', and which the people called 'time store', because it was based on labour being exchanged hour for hour in all sorts of produce. 'Cost - the limit of price', and consequently 'no interest', was the motto of his store, and later on of his 'equity village', near New York, which was still in existence in 1865. Mr Keith's 'House of Equity' at Boston, founded in 1855, is also worthy of notice.
While the economical, and especially the mutual-banking, ideas of Proudhon found supporters and even a practical application in the United States, his political conception of anarchy found but little echo in France, where the Christian socialism of Lamennais and the Fourierists, and the state socialism of Louis Blanc and the followers of Saint-Simon, were dominating. These ideas found, however, some temporary support among the left-wing Hegelians in Germany, Moses Hess in 1843, and Karl Grün in 1845, who advocated anarchism. Besides, the authoritarian communism of Wilhelm Weitling having given origin to opposition amongst the Swiss working men, Wilhelm Marr gave expression to it in the forties.
On the other side, individualist anarchism found, also in Germany, its fullest expression in Max Stirner (Kaspar Schmidt), whose remarkable works (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum and articles contributed to the Rheinische Zeitung) remained quite overlooked until they were brought into prominence by John Henry Mackay.
Prof.
V. Basch, in a very able introduction to his interesting book, L'lndividualisme
anarchiste: Max Stirner (1904), has shown how the development of the German
philosophy from Kant to Hegel, and 'the absolute' of Schelling and the Geist
of Hegel, necessarily provoked, when the anti-Hegelian revolt began, the preaching
of the same 'absolute' in the camp of the rebels. This was done by Stirner,
who advocated, not only a complete revolt against the state and against the
servitude which authoritarian communism would impose upon men, but also the
full liberation of the individual from all social and moral bonds - the rehabilitation
of the 'I', the supremacy of the individual, complete 'amoralism', and the
'association of the egotists'. The final conclusion of that sort of individual
anarchism has been indicated by Prof. Basch. It maintains that the aim of
all superior civilization is, not to permit all members of the community
to develop in a normal way, but to permit certain better endowed individuals
'fully to develop', even at the cost of the happiness and the very existence
of the mass of mankind. It is thus a return towards the most common individual
ism, advocated by all the would-be superior minorities, to which indeed man
owes in his history precisely the state and the rest, which these individualists
combat. Their individualism goes so far as to end in a negation of their own
starting-point - to say nothing of the impossibility for the individual to
attain a really full development in the conditions of oppression of the masses
by the 'beautiful aristocracies'. His development would remain unilateral.
This is why this direction of thought, notwithstanding its undoubtedly correct
and useful advocacy of the full development of each individuality, finds a
hearing only in limited artistic and literary circles.
Anarchism in the International Working Men's Association
A general depression in the propaganda of all fractions of socialism followed, as is known, after the defeat of the uprising of the Paris working men in June 1848 and the fall of the Republic. All the socialist press was gagged during the reaction period, which lasted fully twenty years. Nevertheless, even anarchist thought began to make some progress, namely in the writings of Bellegarrique (Caeurderoy), and especially Joseph Déjacque (Les Lazareacute'ennes, L 'Humanisphère, an anarchist-communist utopia, lately discovered and reprinted). The socialist movement revived only after 1864, when some French working men, all 'mutualists', meeting in London during the Universal Exhibition with English followers of Robert Owen, founded the International Working Men's Association. This association developed very rapidly and adopted a policy of direct economical struggle against capitalism, without interfering in the political parliamentary agitation, and this policy was followed until 1871. However, after the Franco-German War, when the International Association was prohibited in France after the uprising of the Commune, the German working men, who had received manhood suffrage for elections to the newly constituted imperial parliament, insisted upon modifying the tactics of the International, and began to build up a Social Democratic political party. This soon led to a division in the Working Men's Association, and the Latin federations, Spanish, Italian, Belgian and Jurassic (France could not be represented), constituted among themselves a Federal union which broke entirely with the Marxist general council of the International. Within these federations developed now what may be described as modern anarchism. After the names of 'Federalists' and 'Anti-authoritarians' had been used for some time by these federations the name of 'anarchists', which their adversaries insisted upon applying to them, prevailed, and finally it was revindicated.
Michael Bakunin
Bakunin (q.v.) soon became the leading spirit among these Latin federations for the development of the principles of anarchism, which he did in a number of writings, pamphlets and letters. He demanded the complete abolition of the state, which -- he wrote -- is a product of religion, belongs to a lower state of civilization, represents the negation of liberty, and spoils even that which it undertakes to do for the sake of general well-being. The state was an historically necessary evil, but its complete extinction will be, sooner or later, equally necessary. Repudiating all legislation, even when issuing from universal suffrage, Bakunin claimed for each nation, each region and each commune, full autonomy, so long as it is not a menace to its neighbours, and full independence for the individual, adding that one becomes really free only when, and in proportion as, all others are free. Free federations of the communes would constitute free nations.
As to his economical conceptions, Bakunin described himself, in common with his Federalist comrades of the International (César De Paepe, James Guillaume, Schwitzguébel), a 'collectivist anarchist' - not in the sense of Vidal and Pecqueur in the 1840s, or of their modern Social Democratic followers, but to express a state of things in which all necessaries for production are owned in common by the labour groups and the free communes, while the ways of retribution of labour, communist or otherwise, would be settled by each group for itself. Social revolution, the near approach of which was foretold at that time by all socialists, would be the means of bringing into life the new conditions.
The Jurassic, the Spanish and the Italian federations and sections of the International Working Men's Association, as also the French, the German and the American anarchist groups, were for the next years the chief centres of anarchist thought and propaganda. They refrained from any participation in parliamentary politics, and always kept in close contact with the labour organizations. However, in the second half of the 'eighties and the early 'nineties of the nineteenth century, when the influence of the anarchists began to be felt in strikes, in the 1st of May demonstrations, where they promoted the idea of a general strike for an eight hours' day, and in the anti-militarist propaganda in the army, violent prosecutions were directed against them, especially in the Latin countries (including physical torture in the Barcelona Castle) and the United States (the execution of five Chicago anarchists in 1887). Against these prosecutions the anarchists retaliated by acts of violence which in their turn were followed by more executions from above, and new acts of revenge from below. This created in the general public the impression that violence is the substance of anarchism, a view repudiated by its supporters, who hold that in reality violence is resorted to by all parties in proportion as their open action is obstructed by repression, and exceptional laws render them outlaws. (Cf. Anarchism and Outrage, by C. M. Wilson, and Report of the Spanish Atrocities Committee, in 'Freedom Pamphlets'; A Concise History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists, by Dyer Lum (New York, 1886); The Chicago Martyrs: Speeches, etc.).
Anarchism continued to develop, partly in the direction of Proudhonian 'mutuellisme', but chiefly as communist-anarchism, to which a third direction, Christian-anarchism, was added by Leo Tolstoy, and a fourth, which might be ascribed as literary-anarchism, began amongst some prominent modern writers.
The
ideas of Proudhon, especially as regards mutual banking, corresponding with
those of Josiah Warren, found a considerable following in the United States,
creating quite a school, of which the main writers are Stephen Pearl Andrews,
William Grene, Lysander Spooner (who began to write in 1850, and whose unfinished
work, Natural Law, was full of promise), and several others, whose
names will be found in Dr Nettlau's Bibliographie de l'anarchie.
A prominent position among the individualist anarchists in America has been occupied by Benjamin R. Tucker, whose journal Liberty was started in 1881 and whose conceptions are a combination of those of Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer. Starting from the statement that anarchists are egotists, strictly speaking, and that every group of individuals, be it a secret league of a few persons, or the Congress of the United States, has the right to oppress all mankind, provided it has the power to do so, that equal liberty for all and absolute equality ought to be the law, and 'mind every one your own business' is the unique moral law of anarchism, Tucker goes on to prove that a general and thorough application of these principles would be beneficial and would offer no danger, because the powers of every individual would be limited by the exercise of the equal rights of all others. He further indicated (following H. Spencer) the difference which exists between the encroachment on somebody's rights and resistance to such an encroachment; between domination and defence: the former being equally condemnable, whether it be encroachment of a criminal upon an individual, or the encroachment of one upon all others, or of all others upon one; while resistance to encroachment is defensible and necessary. For their self-defence, both the citizen and the group have the right to any violence, including capital punishment. Violence is also justified for enforcing the duty of keeping an agreement. Tucker thus follows Spencer, and, like him, opens (in the present writer's opinion) the way for reconstituting under the heading of 'defence' all the functions of the state. His criticism of the present state is very searching, and his defence of the rights of the individual very powerful. As regards his economical views B. R. Tucker follows Proudhon.
The individualist anarchism of the American Proudhonians finds, however, but little sympathy amongst the working masses. Those who profess it - they are chiefly 'intellectuals' - soon realize that the individualization they so highly praise is not attainable by individual efforts, and either abandon the ranks of the anarchists, and are driven into the liberal individualism of the classical economist or they retire into a sort of Epicurean amoralism, or superman theory, similar to that of Stirner and Nietzsche. The great bulk of the anarchist working men prefer the anarchist-communist ideas which have gradually evolved out of the anarchist collectivism of the International Working Men's Association. To this direction belong - to name only the better known exponents of anarchism Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave, Sebastien Faure, Emile Pouget in France; Errico Malatesta and Covelli in Italy; R. Mella, A. Lorenzo, and the mostly unknown authors of many excellent manifestos in Spain; John Most amongst the Germans; Spies, Parsons and their followers in the United States, and so on; while Domela Nieuwenhuis occupies an intermediate position in Holland. The chief anarchist papers which have been published since 1880 also belong to that direction; while a number of anarchists of this direction have joined the so-called syndicalist movement- the French name for the non-political labour movement, devoted to direct struggle with capitalism, which has lately become so prominent in Europe.
As
one of the anarchist-communist direction, the present writer for many years
endeavoured to develop the following ideas: to show the intimate, logical
connection which exists between the modern philosophy of natural sciences
and anarchism; to put anarchism on a scientific basis by the study of the
tendencies that are apparent now in society and may indicate its further evolution;
and to work out the basis of anarchist ethics. As regards the substance of
anarchism itself, it was Kropotkin's aim to prove that communism at least
partial - has more chances of being established than collectivism, especially
in communes taking the lead, and that free, or anarchist-communism is the
only form of communism that has any chance of being accepted in civilized
societies; communism and anarchy are therefore two terms of evolution which
complete each other, the one rendering the other possible and acceptable.
He has tried, moreover, to indicate how, during a revolutionary period, a
large city - if its inhabitants have accepted the idea could organize itself
on the lines of free communism; the city guaranteeing to every inhabitant
dwelling, food and clothing to an extent corresponding to the comfort now
available to the middle classes only, in exchange for a half-day's, or five-hours'
work; and how all those things which would be considered as luxuries might
be obtained by everyone if he joins for the other half of the day all sorts
of free associations pursuing all possible aims - educational, literary, scientific,
artistic, sports and so on. In order to prove the first of these assertions
he has analysed the possibilities of agriculture and industrial work, both
being combined with brain work. And in order to elucidate the main factors
of human evolution, he has analysed the part played in history by the popular
constructive agencies of mutual aid and the historical role of the state.
Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of the Christ and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God in Yourselves) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of the Christ he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike.
It would be impossible to represent here, in a short sketch, the penetration, on the one hand, of anarchist ideas into modern literature, and the influence, on the other hand, which the libertarian ideas of the best contemporary writers have exercised upon the development of anarchism. One ought to consult the ten big volumes of the Supplément Littéraire to the paper La Révolte and later the Temps Nouveaux, which contain reproductions from the works of hundreds of modern authors expressing anarchist ideas, in order to realize how closely anarchism is connected with all the intellectual movement of our own times. J. S. Mill's Liberty, Spencer's Individual versus the State, Marc Guyau's Morality without Obligation or Sanction, and Fouillée's La Morale, I'art et la religion, the works of Multatuli (E. Douwes Dekker), Richard Wagner's Art and Revolution, the works of Nietzsche, Emerson, W. Lloyd Garrison, Thoreau, Alexander Herzen, Edward Carpenter and so on; and in the domain of fiction, the dramas of Ibsen, the poetry of Walt Whitman, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Zola's Paris and Le Travail, the latest works of Merezhkovsky, and an infinity of works of less known authors, are full of ideas which show how closely anarchism is interwoven with the work that is going on in modern thought in the same direction of enfranchisement of man from the bonds of the state as well as from those of capitalism.
Originally found at the Anarchy Archives.
Essays by
Kropotkin - Anarchist
Library
For a fuller history of Anarchism, see Peter Marshall's unaptly titled 'Demanding
the Impossible: A history of Anarchism,' 1993, Harper Collins, London.
I Demand 'only'
the possible
======================
``Notes on Anarchism''
in
For Reasons of State
======================
Noam Chomsky, 1970
======================
From:
Noam Chomsky
- Anarchist Library
Transcribed by rael@ll.mit.edu (Bill Lear)
A French writer, sympathetic to anarchism, wrote in the 1890s that ``anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything''---including, he noted those whose acts are such that ``a mortal enemy of anarchism could not have done better.''[1] There have been many styles of thought and action that have been referred to as ``anarchist.'' It would be hopeless to try to encompass all of these conflicting tendencies in some general theory or ideology. And even if we proceed to extract from the history of libertarian thought a living, evolving tradition, as Daniel Guerin does in Anarchism, it remains difficult to formulate its doctrines as a specific and determinate theory of society and social change. The anarchist historian Rudolph Rocker, who presents a systematic conception of the development of anarchist thought towards anarchosyndicalism, along lines that bear comparison to Guerins work, puts the matter well when he writes that anarchism is not
a fixed, self-enclosed social system but rather a definite trend in the historic development of mankind, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions, strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life. Even freedom is only a relative, not an absolute concept, since it tends constantly to become broader and to affect wider circles in more manifold ways. For the anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn them to social account. The less this natural development of man is influenced by ecclesiastical or political guardianship, the more efficient and harmonious will human personality become, the more will it become the measure of the intellectual culture of the society in which it has grown.[2]One might ask what value there is in studying a ``definite trend in the historic development of mankind'' that does not articulate a specific and detailed social theory. Indeed, many commentators dismiss anarchism as utopian, formless, primitive, or otherwise incompatible with the realities of a complex society. One might, however, argue rather differently: that at every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or economic development, but that now contribute to---rather than alleviate---material and cultural deficit. If so, there will be no doctrine of social change fixed for the present and future, nor even, necessarily, a specific and unchanging concept of the goals towards which social change should tend. Surely our understanding of the nature of man or of the range of viable social forms is so rudimentary that any far-reaching doctrine must be treated with great skepticism, just as skepticism is in order when we hear that ``human nature'' or ``the demands of efficiency'' or ``the complexity of modern life'' requires this or that form of oppression and autocratic rule.
Nevertheless,
at a particular time there is every reason to develop, insofar as our understanding
permits, a specific realization of this definite trend in the historic development
of mankind, appropriate to the tasks of the moment. For Rocker, ``the
problem that is set for our time is that of freeing man from the curse of
economic exploitation and political and social enslavement''; and
the method is not the conquest and exercise of state power, nor stultifying
parliamentarianism, but rather ``to reconstruct the economic life of the peoples
from the ground up and build it up in the spirit of Socialism.''
But only the producers themselves are fitted for this task, since they are
the only value-creating element in society out of which a new future can arise.
Theirs must be the task of freeing labor from all the fetters which economic
exploitation has fastened on it, of freeing society from all the institutions
and procedure of political power, and of opening the way to an alliance of
free groups of men and women based on co-operative labor and a planned administration
of things in the interest of the community. To prepare the toiling masses
in the city and country for this great goal and to bind them together as a
militant force is the objective of modern Anarcho-syndicalism, and in this
its whole purpose is exhausted. [P. 108] As a socialist, Rocker would take
for granted ``that the serious, final, complete liberation of the workers
is possible only upon one condition: that of the appropriation of capital,
that is, of raw material and all the tools of labor, including land, by the
whole body of the workers.''[3] As an anarchosyndicalist, he insists,
further, that the workers' organizations create ``not only the ideas, but
also the facts of the future itself'' in the prerevolutionary period,
that they embody in themselves the structure of the future society---and he
looks forward to a social revolution that will dismantle the state apparatus
as well as expropriate the expropriators. ``What we put in place of the
government is industrial organization.''
Anarcho-syndicalists are convinced that a Socialist economic order cannot be created by the decrees and statutes of a government, but only by the solidaric collaboration of the workers with hand and brain in each special branch of production; that is, through the taking over of the management of all plants by the producers themselves under such form that the separate groups, plants, and branches of industry are independent members of the general economic organism and systematically carry on production and the distribution of the products in the interest of the community on the basis of free mutual agreements. [p. 94]Rocker was writing at a moment when such ideas had been put into practice in a dramatic way in the Spanish Revolution. Just prior to the outbreak of the revolution, the anarchosyndicalist economist Diego Abad de Santillan had written:
...in facing the problem of social transformation, the Revolution cannot consider the state as a medium, but must depend on the organization of producers.Engels, in a letter of 1883, expressed his disagreement with this conception as follows:
We have followed this norm and we find no need for the hypothesis of a superior power to organized labor, in order to establish a new order of things. We would thank anyone to point out to us what function, if any, the State can have in an economic organization, where private property has been abolished and in which parasitism and special privilege have no place. The suppression of the State cannot be a languid affair; it must be the task of the Revolution to finish with the State. Either the Revolution gives social wealth to the producers in which case the producers organize themselves for due collective distribution and the State has nothing to do; or the Revolution does not give social wealth to the producers, in which case the Revolution has been a lie and the State would continue.
Our federal council of economy is not a political power but an economic and administrative regulating power. It receives its orientation from below and operates in accordance with the resolutions of the regional and national assemblies. It is a liaison corps and nothing else.[4]
The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state....But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune.[5]
In contrast, the
anarchists---most eloquently Bakunin---warned of the dangers of the
``red bureaucracy,'' which would prove to be ``the most
vile and terrible lie that our century has created.''[6] The anarchosyndicalist
Fernand Pelloutier asked: ``Must even the transitory state to which
we have to submit necessarily and fatally be a collectivist jail? Can't it
consist in a free organization limited exclusively by the needs of production
and consumption, all political institutions having disappeared?''[7]
I do not pretend to know the answers to this question. But it seems clear that unless there is, in some form, a positive answer, the chances for a truly democratic revolution that will achieve the humanistic ideals of the left are not great. Martin Buber put the problem succinctly when he wrote: ``One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves.''[8] The question of conquest or destruction of state power is what Bakunin regarded as the primary issue dividing him from Marx.[9] In one form or another, the problem has arisen repeatedly in the century since, dividing ``libertarian'' from ``authoritarian'' socialists.
Despite Bakunin's warnings about the red bureaucracy, and their fulfillment under Stalin's dictatorship, it would obviously be a gross error in interpreting the debates of a century ago to rely on the claims of contemporary social movements as to their historical origins. In particular, it is perverse to regard Bolshevism as ``Marxism in practice.'' Rather, the left-wing critique of Bolshevism, taking account of the historical circumstances surrounding the Russian Revolution, is far more to the point.[10]
The anti-Bolshevik, left-wing labor movement opposed the Leninists because they did not go far enough in exploiting the Russian upheavals for strictly proletarian ends. They became prisoners of their environment and used the international radical movement to satisfy specifically Russian needs, which soon became synonymous with the needs of the Bolshevik Party-State. The ``bourgeois'' aspects of the Russian Revolution were now discovered in Bolshevism itself: Leninism was adjudged a part of international social-democracy, differing from the latter only on tactical issues.[11]If one were to seek a single leading idea within the anarchist tradition, it should, I believe, be that expressed by Bakunin when, in writing on the Paris Commune, he identified himself as follows:
These ideas grew out of the Enlightenment; their roots are in Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, Humboldt's Limits of State Action, Kant's insistence, in his defense of the French Revolution, that freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved. With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order. In fact, on the very same assumptions that led classical liberalism to oppose the intervention of the state in social life, capitalist social relations are also intolerable. This is clear, for example, from the classic work of Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, which anticipated and perhaps inspired Mill. This classic of liberal thought, completed in 1792, is in its essence profoundly, though prematurely, anticapitalist. Its ideas must be attenuated beyond recognition to be transmuted into an ideology of industrial capitalism.
Humboldt's vision of a society in which social fetters are replaced by social bonds and labor is freely undertaken suggests the early Marx., with his discussion of the ``alienation of labor when work is external to the worker...not part of his nature...[so that] he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself...[and is] physically exhausted and mentally debased,'' alienated labor that ``casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines,'' thus depriving man of his ``species character'' of ``free conscious activity'' and ``productive life.'' Similarly, Marx conceives of ``a new type of human being who needs his fellow men....[The workers' association becomes] the real constructive effort to create the social texture of future human relations.''[13] It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association. On the same assumptions, capitalist relations of production, wage labor, competitiveness, the ideology of ``possessive individualism''---all must be regarded as fundamentally antihuman. Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.
Rudolf Rocker describes modern anarchism as ``the confluence of the two great currents which during and since the French revolution have found such characteristic expression in the intellectual life of Europe: Socialism and Liberalism.'' The classical liberal ideals, he argues, were wrecked on the realities of capitalist economic forms. Anarchism is necessarily anticapitalist in that it ``opposes the exploitation of man by man.'' But anarchism also opposes ``the dominion of man over man.'' It insists that ``socialism will be free or it will not be at all. In its recognition of this lies the genuine and profound justification for the existence of anarchism.''[14] From this point of view, anarchism may be regarded as the libertarian wing of socialism. It is in this spirit that Daniel Guérin has approached the study of anarchism in Anarchism and other works.[15] Guérin quotes Adolph Fischer, who said that ``every anarchist is a socialist but not every socialist is necessarily an anarchist.'' Similarly Bakunin, in his ``anarchist manifesto'' of 1865, the program of his projected international revolutionary fraternity, laid down the principle that each member must be, to begin with, a socialist.
A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer. As Marx put it, socialists look forward to a society in which labor will ``become not only a means of life, but also the highest want in life,''[16] an impossibility when the worker is driven by external authority or need rather than inner impulse: ``no form of wage-labor, even though one may be less obnoxious that another, can do away with the misery of wage-labor itself.''[17] A consistent anarchist must oppose not only alienated labor but also the stupefying specialization of labor that takes place when the means for developing production mutilate the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrade him to become a mere appurtenance of the machine, make his work such a torment that its essential meaning is destroyed; estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in very proportion to the extent to which science is incorporated into it as an independent power...[18]
Marx saw this not as an inevitable concomitant of industrialization, but rather as a feature of capitalist relations of production. The society of the future must be concerned to ``replace the detail-worker of today...reduced to a mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours...to whom the different social functions...are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural powers.''[19] The prerequisite is the abolition of capital and wage labor as social categories (not to speak of the industrial armies of the ``labor state'' or the various modern forms of totalitarianism since capitalism). The reduction of man to an appurtenance of the machine, a specialized tool of production, might in principle be overcome, rather than enhanced, with the proper development and use of technology, but not under the conditions of autocratic control of production by those who make man an instrument to serve their ends, overlooking his individual purposes, in Humboldt's phrase.
Anarchosyndicalists sought, even under capitalism, to create ``free associations of free producers'' that would engage in militant struggle and prepare to take over the organization of production on a democratic basis. These associations would serve as ``a practical school of anarchism.''[20] If private ownership of the means of production is, in Proudhon's often quoted phrase, merely a form of ``theft''---``the exploitation of the weak by the strong''[21]---control of production by a state bureaucracy, no matter how benevolent its intentions, also does not create the conditions under which labor, manual and intellectual, can become the highest want in life. Both, then, must be overcome.
In his attack on the right of private or bureaucratic control over the means of production,, the anarchist takes his stand with those who struggle to bring about ``the third and last emancipatory phase of history,'' the first having made serfs out of slaves, the second having made wage earners out of serfs, and the third which abolishes the proletariat in a final act of liberation that places control over the economy in the hands of free and voluntary associations of producers (Fourier, 1848).[22] The imminent danger to ``civilization'' was noted by de Tocqueville, also in 1848:
As long as the right of property was the origin and groundwork of many other rights, it was easily defended---or rather it was not attacked; it was then the citadel of society while all the other rights were its outworks; it did not bear the brunt of attack and, indeed, there was no serious attempt to assail it. but today, when the right of property is regarded as the last undestroyed remnant of the aristocratic world, when it alone is left standing, the sole privilege in an equalized society, it is a different matter. Consider what is happening in the hearts of the working-classes, although I admit they are quiet as yet. It is true that they are less inflamed than formerly by political passions properly speaking; but do you not see that their passions, far from being political, have become social? Do you not see that, little by little, ideas and opinions are spreading amongst them which aim not merely at removing such and such laws, such a ministry or such a government, but at breaking up the very foundations of society itself?[23]The workers of Paris, in 1871, broke the silence, and proceeded to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated labor.[24] The Commune, of course, was drowned in blood. The nature of the ``civilization'' that the workers of Paris sought to overcome in their attack on ``the very foundations of society itself'' was revealed, once again, when the troops of the Versailles government reconquered Paris from its population. As Marx wrote, bitterly but accurately:
The civilization and justice of bourgeois order comes out in its lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against their masters. Then this civilization and justice stand forth as undisguised savagery and lawless revenge...the infernal deeds of the soldiery reflect the innate spirit of that civilization of which they are the mercenary vindicators....The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the destruction of brick and mortar. [Ibid., pp. 74, 77]
Despite the violent destruction of the Commune, Bakunin wrote that Paris opens a new era, ``that of the definitive and complete emancipation of the popular masses and their future true solidarity, across and despite state boundaries...the next revolution of man, international in solidarity, will be the resurrection of Paris''---a revolution that the world still awaits.
The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat. He will, in short, oppose the organization of production by the Government. It means State-socialism, the command of the State officials over production and the command of managers, scientists, shop-officials in the shop....The goal of the working class is liberation from exploitation. This goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie. It is only realized by the workers themselves being master over production. These remarks are taken from ``Five Theses on the Class Struggle'' by the left-wing Marxist Anton Pannekoek, one of the outstanding left theorists of the council communist movement. And in fact, radical Marxism merges with anarchist currents.
As a further illustration, consider the following characterization of ``revolutionary Socialism'':
The revolutionary Socialist denies that State ownership can end in anything other than a bureaucratic despotism. We have seen why the State cannot democratically control industry. Industry can only be democratically owned and controlled by the workers electing directly from their own ranks industrial administrative committees. Socialism will be fundamentally an industrial system; its constituencies will be of an industrial character. Thus those carrying on the social activities and industries of society will be directly represented in the local and central councils of social administration. In this way the powers of such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and conversant with the needs of the community. When the central administrative industrial committee meets it will represent every phase of social activity. Hence the capitalist political or geographical state will be replaced by the industrial administrative committee of Socialism. The transition from the one social system to the other will be the social revolution. The political State throughout history has meant the government of men by ruling classes; the Republic of Socialism will be the government of industry administered on behalf of the whole community. The former meant the economic and political subjection of the many; the latter will mean the economic freedom of all---it will be, therefore, a true democracy.
This programmatic statement appears in William Paul's The State, its Origins and Functions, written in early 1917---shortly before Lenin's State and Revolution, perhaps his most libertarian work (see note 9). Paul was a member of the Marxist-De Leonist Socialist Labor Party and later one of the founders of the British Communist Party.[25] His critique of state socialism resembles the libertarian doctrine of the anarchists in its principle that since state ownership and management will lead to bureaucratic despotism, the social revolution must replace it by the industrial organization of society with direct workers' control. Many similar statements can be cited.
What is far more important is that these ideas have been realized in spontaneous revolutionary action, for example in Germany and Italy after World War I and in Spain (not only in the agricultural countryside, but also in industrial Barcelona) in 1936. One might argue that some form of council communism is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive understanding that democracy is severely limited when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers and technocrats, a ``vanguard'' party, or a state bureaucracy. Under these conditions of authoritarian domination the classical libertarian ideals developed further by Marx and Bakunin and all true revolutionaries cannot be realized; man will not be free to develop his own potentialities to their fullest, and the producer will remain ``a fragment of a human being,'' degraded, a tool in the productive process directed from above.
The phrase ``spontaneous revolutionary action'' can be misleading. The anarchosyndicalists, at least, took very seriously Bakunin's remark that the workers' organizations must create ``not only the ideas but also the facts of the future itself'' in the prerevolutionary period. The accomplishments of the popular revolution in Spain, in particular, were based on the patient work of many years of organization and education, one component of a long tradition of commitment and militancy. The resolutions of the Madrid Congress of June 1931 and the Saragossa Congress in May 1936 foreshadowed in many ways the acts of the revolution, as did the somewhat different ideas sketched by Santillan (see note 4) in his fairly specific account of the social and economic organization to be instituted by the revolution. Guérin writes ``The Spanish revolution was relatively mature in the minds of libertarian thinkers, as in the popular consciousness.'' And workers' organizations existed with the structure, the experience, and the understanding to undertake the task of social reconstruction when, with the Franco coup, the turmoil of early 1936 exploded into social revolution. In his introduction to a collection of documents on collectivization in Spain, the anarchist Augustin Souchy writes:
For many years, the anarchists and the syndicalists of Spain considered their supreme task to be the social transformation of the society. In their assemblies of Syndicates and groups, in their journals, their brochures and books, the problem of the social revolution was discussed incessantly and in a systematic fashion.[26]
All of this lies behind the spontaneous achievements, the constructive work of the Spanish Revolution.
The ideas of libertarian socialism, in the sense described, have been submerged in the industrial societies of the past half-century. The dominant ideologies have been those of state socialism or state capitalism (of increasingly militarized character in the United States, for reasons that are not obscure).[27] But there has been a rekindling of interest in the past few years. The theses I quoted by Anton Pannekoek were taken from a recent pamphlet of a radical French workers' group (Informations Correspondance Ouvrière). The remarks by William Paul on revolutionary socialism are cited in a paper by Walter Kendall given at the National Conference on Workers' Control in Sheffield, England, in March 1969. The workers' control movement has become a significant force in England in the past few years. It has organized several conferences and has produced a substantial pamphlet literature, and counts among its active adherents representatives of some of the most important trade unions. The Amalgamated Engineering and Foundryworkers' Union, for example, has adopted, as official policy, the program of nationalization of basic industries under ``workers' control at all levels.''[28] On the Continent, there are similar developments. May 1968 of course accelerated the growing interest in council communism and related ideas in France and Germany, as it did in England.
Given the highly conservative cast of our highly ideological society, it is not too surprising that the United States has been relatively untouched by these developments. But that too may change. The erosion of cold-war mythology at least makes it possible to raise these questions in fairly broad circles. If the present wave of repression can be beaten back, if the left can overcome its more suicidal tendencies and build upon what has been accomplished in the past decade, then the problem of how to organize industrial society on truly democratic lines, with democratic control in the workplace and in the community, should become a dominant intellectual issue for those who are alive to the problems of contemporary society, and, as a mass movement for libertarian socialism develops, speculation should proceed to action.
In his manifesto of 1865, Bakunin predicted that one element in the social revolution will be ``that intelligent and truly noble part of youth which, though belonging by birth to the privileged classes, in its generous convictions and ardent aspirations, adopts the cause of the people.'' Perhaps in the rise of the student movement of the 1960s one sees steps towards a fulfillment of this prophecy.
Daniel Guérin has undertaken what he has described as a ``process of rehabilitation'' of anarchism. He argues, convincingly I believe, that ``the constructive ideas of anarchism retain their vitality, that they may, when re-examined and sifted, assist contemporary socialist thought to undertake a new departure...[and] contribute to enriching Marxism.''[29] >From the ``broad back'' of anarchism he has selected for more intensive scrutiny those ideas and actions that can be described as libertarian socialist. This is natural and proper. This framework accommodates the major anarchist spokesmen as well as the mass actions that have been animated by anarchist sentiments and ideals. Guérin is concerned not only with anarchist thought but also with the spontaneous actions of popular revolutionary struggle. He is concerned with social as well as intellectual creativity. Furthermore, he attempts to draw from the constructive achievements of the past lessons that will enrich the theory of social liberation. For those who wish not only to understand the world, but also to change it, this is the proper way to study the history of anarchism.
Guérin describes the anarchism of the nineteenth century as essentially doctrinal, while the twentieth century, for the anarchists, has been a time of ``revolutionary practice.''[30] Anarchism reflects that judgment. His interpretation of anarchism consciously points toward the future. Arthur Rosenberg once pointed out that popular revolutions characteristically seek to replace ``a feudal or centralized authority ruling by force'' with some form of communal system which ``implies the destruction and disappearance of the old form of State.'' Such a system will be either socialist or an ``extreme form of democracy...[which is] the preliminary condition for Socialism inasmuch as Socialism can only be realized in a world enjoying the highest possible measure of individual freedom.'' This ideal, he notes, was common to Marx and the anarchists.[31] This natural struggle for liberation runs counter to the prevailing tendency towards centralization in economic and political life.
A century ago Marx wrote that the workers of Paris ``felt there was but one alternative---the Commune, or the empire---under whatever name it might reappear.''
The empire had ruined them economically by the havoc it made of public wealth, by the wholesale financial swindling it fostered, by the props it lent to the artificially accelerated centralization of capital, and the concomitant expropriation of their own ranks. It had suppressed them politically, it had shocked them morally by its orgies, it had insulted their Voltairianism by handing over the education of their children to the frères Ignorantins, it had revolted their national feeling as Frenchmen by precipitating them headlong into a war which left only one equivalent for the ruins it made---the disappearance of the empire.[32]The miserable Second Empire ``was the only form of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation.''
It
is not very difficult to rephrase these remarks so that they become appropriate
to the imperial systems of 1970. The problem of ``freeing man from the
curse of economic exploitation and political and social enslavement''
remains the problem of our time. As long as this is so, the doctrines
and the revolutionary practice of libertarian socialism will serve as an inspiration
and guide.
**********************************NOTES************************************
This essay is a revised version of the introduction to Daniel
Guérin's Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. In a slightly
different version, it appeared in the New York Review of Books, May
21, 1970.
[1] Octave Mirbeau, quoted in James Joll, The Anarchists, pp.
145--6.
[2] Rudolf Rocker, Anarchosyndicalism, p. 31.
[3] Cited by Rocker, ibid., p. 77. This quotation and that in the
next sentence are from Michael Bakunin, ``The Program of the
Alliance,'' in Sam Dolgoff, ed. and trans., Bakunin on Anarchy, p.
255.
[4] Diego Abad de Santillan, After the Revolution, p. 86. In the
last chapter, written several months after the revolution had begun,
he expresses his dissatisfaction with what had so far been achieved
along these lines. On the accomplishments of the social revolution in
Spain, see my American Power and the New Mandarins, chap. 1, and
references cited there; the important study by Broué and Témime
has since been translated into English. Several other important
studies have appeared since, in particular: Frank Mintz,
L'Autogestion dans l'Espagne révolutionaire (Paris: Editions
Bélibaste, 1971); César M. Lorenzo, Les Anarchistes espagnols et
le pouvoir, 1868--1969 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969); Gaston
Leval, Espagne libertaire, 1936--1939: L'Oeuvre constructive de la
Révolution espagnole (Paris: Editions du Cercle, 1971). See also
Vernon Richards, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, enlarged 1972
edition.
[5] Cited by Robert C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea, in
his discussion of Marxism and anarchism.
[6] Bakunin, in a letter to Herzen and Ogareff, 1866. Cited by Daniel
Guérin, Jeunesse du socialisme libertaire, p. 119.
[7] Fernand Pelloutier, cited in Joll, Anarchists. The source is
``L'Anarchisme et les syndicats ouvriers,'' Les Temps nouveaux,
1895. The full text appears in Daniel Guérin, ed., Ni Dieu, ni
Maître, an excellent historical anthology of anarchism.
[8] Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, p. 127.
[9] ``No state, however democratic,'' Bakunin wrote, ``not even the
reddest republic---can ever give the people what they really want,
i.e., the free self-organization and administration of their own
affairs from the bottom upward, without any interference or violence
from above, because every state, even the pseudo-People's State
concocted by Mr. Marx, is in essence only a machine ruling the masses
from above, from a privileged minority of conceited intellectuals,
who imagine that they know what the people need and want better than
do the people themselves....'' ``But the people will feel no better
if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled `the
people's stick' '' (Statism and Anarchy [1873], in Dolgoff,
Bakunin on Anarchy, p. 338)---``the people's stick'' being the
democratic Republic.
Marx, of course, saw the matter differently.
For discussion of the impact of the Paris Commune on this
dispute, see Daniel Guérin's comments in Ni Dieu, ni Maître;
these also appear, slightly extended, in his Pour un marxisme
libertaire. See also note 24.
[10] On Lenin's ``intellectual deviation'' to the left during 1917,
see Robert Vincent Daniels, ``The State and Revolution: a Case Study
in the Genesis and Transformation of Communist Ideology,'' American
Slavic and East European Review, vol. 12, no. 1 (1953).
[11] Paul Mattick, Marx and Keynes, p. 295.
[12] Michael Bakunin, ``La Commune de Paris et la notion de
l'état,'' reprinted in Guérin, Ni Dieu, ni Maître. Bakunin's
final remark on the laws of individual nature as the condition of
freedom can be compared to the creative thought developed in the
rationalist and romantic traditions. See my Cartesian Linguistics
and Language and Mind.
[13] Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx,
p. 142, referring to comments in The Holy Family. Avineri states
that within the socialist movement only the Israeli kibbutzim
``have perceived that the modes and forms of present social
organization will determine the structure of future society.'' This,
however, was a characteristic position of anarchosyndicalism, as
noted earlier.
[14] Rocker, Anarchosyndicalism, p. 28.
[15] See Guérin's works cited earlier.
[16] Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme.
[17] Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie,
cited by Mattick, Marx and Keynes, p. 306. In this connection, see
also Mattick's essay ``Workers' Control,'' in Priscilla Long, ed.,
The New Left; and Avineri, Social and Political Thought of Marx.
[18] Karl Marx, Capital, quoted by Robert Tucker, who rightly
emphasizes that Marx sees the revolutionary more as a ``frustrated
producer'' than a ``dissatisfied consumer'' (The Marxian
Revolutionary Idea). This more radical critique of capitalist
relations of production is a direct outgrowth of the libertarian
thought of the Enlightenment.
[19] Marx, Capital, cited by Avineri, Social and Political Thought
of Marx, p. 83.
[20] Pelloutier, ``L'Anarchisme.''
[21] ``Qu'est-ce que la propriété?'' The phrase ``property is
theft'' displeased Marx, who saw in its use a logical problem, theft
presupposing the legitimate existence of property. See Avineri,
Social and Political Thought of Marx.
[22] Cited in Buber's Paths in Utopia, p. 19.
[23] Cited in J. Hampden Jackson, Marx, Proudhon and European
Socialism, p. 60.
[24] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, p. 24. Avineri observes
that this and other comments of Marx about the Commune refer
pointedly to intentions and plans. As Marx made plain elsewhere, his
considered assessment was more critical than in this address.
[25] For some background, see Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary
Movement in Britain.
[26] Collectivisations: L'Oeuvre constructive de la Révolution
espagnole, p. 8.
[27] For discussion, see Mattick, Marx and Keynes, and Michael
Kidron, Western Capitalism Since the War. See also discussion and
references cited in my At War With Asia, chap. 1, pp. 23--6.
[28] See Hugh Scanlon, The Way Forward for Workers' Control.
Scanlon is the president of the AEF, one of Britain's largest trade
unions.
The institute was established as a result of the sixth
Conference on Workers' Control, March 1968, and serves as a center
for disseminating information and encouraging research.
[29] Guérin, Ni Dieu, ni Maître, introduction.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Arthur Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism, p. 88.
[32] Marx, Civil War in France, pp. 62--3.
*******************************BIBLIOGRAPHY********************************
Avineri, Shlomo. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx.
London: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
Bakunin, Michael. Bakunin on Anarchy. Edited and translated by Sam
Dolgoff. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
Buber, Martin. Paths in Utopia. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.
Chomsky, Noam. Cartesian Linguistics. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
------. American Power and the New Mandarins. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1969.
------. At War with Asia. New York: Pantheon Books, 1970.
Collectivisations: L'Oeuvre constructive de la Révolution
espagnole. 2nd ed. Toulouse: Editions C.N.T., 1965. First edition,
Barcelona, 1937.
Daniels, Robert Vincent. ``The State and Revolution: a Case Study in
the Genesis and Transformation of Communist Ideology.'' American
Slavic and East European Review, vol. 12, no. 1 (1953).
Guérin, Daniel. Jeunesse du socialisme libertaire. Paris:
Librairie Marcel Rivière, 1959.
------. Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, translated by Mary
Klopper. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970.
------. Pour un marxisme libertaire. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1969.
------, ed. Ni Dieu, ni Maître. Lausanne: La Cité Editeur, n.d.
Jackson, J. Hampden. Marx, Proudhon and European Socialism. New
York: Collier Books, 1962.
Joll, James. The Anarchists. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1964.
Kendall, Walter. The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900--1921.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969.
Kidron, Michael Western Capitalism Since the War. London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968.
Mattick, Paul. Marx and Keynes: The Limits of Mixed Economy.
Extending Horizons Series. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1969.
------. ``Workers' Control.'' In The New Left: A Collection of
Essays, edited by Priscilla Long. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1969.
Marx, Karl. The Civil War in France, 1871. New York: International
Publishers, 1941.
Pelloutier, Fernand. ``L'Anarchisme et les syndicats ouvriers.'' Les
Temps nouveaux, 1895. Reprinted in Ni Dieu, ni Maître, edited by
Daniel Guérin. Lausanne: La Cité Editeur, n.d.
Richards, Vernon. Lessons of the Spanish Revolution (1936--1939).
Enlarged ed. London: Freedom Press, 1972.
Rocker, Rudolf. Anarchosyndicalism. London: Secker & Warburg, 1938.
Rosenberg, Arthur. A History of Bolshevism from Marx to the First
Five Years' Plan. Translated by Ian F. Morrow. New York: Russell &
Russell, 1965.
Santillan, Diego Abad de. After the Revolution. New York: Greenberg
Publishers, 1937.
Scanlon, Hugh. The Way Forward for Workers' Control. Institute for
Workers' Control Pamphlet Series, no. 1, Nottingham, England, 1968.
Tucker, Robert C. The Marxian Revolutionary Idea. New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1969.
Noam Chomsky
- Anarchist Library
Jacques Ellul, Non-violent Christian Anarchist
An introduction from:
http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/ellul/aac.html
Jacques Ellul, is primarily known as a Theologian. However, in 1988 he published a book entitled Anarchie et Christianisme, made available in the U.S. in 1991 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In this book, Ellul lays out his definition and understanding of Anarchism, and explains why he admires the likes of Bakunin and the 1880-1900 Anarcho-Syndicalists. While stating that he does not believe Anarchism to be a realistically attainable goal, Ellul considers Anarchism among the most admirable of goals.
Disclaimer:
On
the Evil of Ellul's Pacifist Self-Contradictory Paternalist Anarchism
A militant Pagan Perspective.
As a pagan, I disagree with the anti-theists, but better a world of good (i.e. Anarchist Communist) anti-theists than a world of theists whose god is evil. The parable of the Good Samaritan applies to may anti-theists. Religionists are hypocrites and their god is evil. If theism implied goodness, why is it that among the 95% who are theists, that many are collaborators with the Religionists, Capitalists, Private Propertyists and Governmetnalists and refuse to wage War against them and eradicate them? This is because their god is a Capitalist, Private Propertyist and Govermentalist; i.e., they have merely redefined Satan as 'God' and they use the term 'God' to refer to what is evil. As Proudhon, who was not an atheist, correctly pointed out, their god is evil.
While
I find Ellul's pacifist position abhorrent, naive and utopian (impractical
idealism) in the face of the ultra-violence of the New World Order and the
Crown/CIA narco-terrorists and their plans for Final Holocaust, as outlined
by Coleman, Icke and others, and while I wish to distance myself from the
pacifism of Ellul 'and' the atheism of some Anarchists, I reproduce here
one of Ellul's texts from the http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/ellul/index.html
site as an example of impractical pacifist Christian evolutionary Anarchism
and faithless imbecilic Anarchism. By faithless I refer to Ellul's belief
that human beings are essentially corrupt (evil) and his claims that 'As
I see it, then, an ideal anarchist society can never be achieved,' and
'In sum, I have no faith in a pure anarchist society' and he then
goes on to define himself as an Anarchist, and this is a totally self contradictory
faithless imbecilic Anarchism. Ellul holds that (quote) The mistake of
centuries of Christianity has been to regard sin (i.e., evil) as
a moral (i.e. the question of 'What is good and evil?' or 'Ethics')
fault. Biblically this is not the case. Sin is a break with God and all
that this entails. When I say that people are not good, I am not adopting
a Christian or a moral standpoint. I am saying that their two great characteristics,
no matter what their society or education, are covetousness and the desire
for power. We find these traits always and everywhere.'
If we leave a grandmother and 100 of her children and grandchildren
on an Island, covetousness and the desire for power is not in her nature,
rather selflessness, self sacrifice and the love for her children and essential
to her nature. 'Covetness and the desire for power' is a definition of evil
that would be all that the Grandmother would seek to defend her good children
against and would fight against and chastise her children for, and this
evil could be pinpointed to the nature of a few evil males who would 'have'
to be eradicated for the safety of the other children. This is precisely
what Governmentless propertyless collectivist Anarchists seek to eradicate.
What does it profit a man to describe himself as an Anarchist and to advocate
Anarchism if he has no faith in Anarchism; such a person is a fool and a
liar and a hypocrite and a better profession for him would be that of a
circus clown than a theologian.
Governmentless and 'Lawlessness.'
The
Devil's definition of Anarchism, is to raise the issue of Lawlessness, to
ignore Kropotkin's definition and in True Orwellian fashion to write a dictionary
definition of Anarchism as 'Lawlessness' instead of 'Governmentless.' This
is the manifestation of Orwell's prediction of the control of the definition
of language by the enemies of Anarchism. Since when do Anarchists accept
Capitalist definitions of Anarchism?. Such Scribes who seek to pervert the
human language should be shot and their bodies burned using their dictionaries
as fuel. A grandmother on an island without a government can still get together
with 100 of her children and they can discuss their economic survival. If
one of the children is selfish and seeks more resources than others in a
time of scarcity, the grandmother will chastise the selfish child. A mother
will always chastise a child who seeks to harm the other children and who
seeks to enslave them and that a minority shall have power over the majority.
'Lawlessness' is a definition of 'Capitalism' not Anarchism, for it is the
Lawlessness of the rich that prevails. In Capitalism today a person many
be imprisoned for a long period for possession of even a few kilos of heroin
or cocaine, and yet the CIA/Crown narco-terrorists and their drug money
laundering bankers have total immunity from prosecution, though the evidence
against them of being the world's foremost narco-terrorists and drug money
launderers is overwhelming and indisputible at the bar of human reason,
even if the corrupt judiciary of Capitalism refuse to entertain charges
against the financial Mafia of the New World Order; that is true Lawlessness,
but it is Capitalism and 'Leader-ism' (tyranny) not Anarchism. Yes, there
would be no government, no courts, no police, no military in an Anarchist
region, and 'all' persons would be mobilised and armed for the Final Revolutionary
War, and if there was a murder, for example, 'ALL' citizens would be responsible
to find the culprit and to impose Judgment in the collective. There would
be no police to fear reprisals from; there would only be the Judgment of
the majority.
A mother will never cease to make demand from her children such as 'Do not
murder' and 'Do not covet' and 'Do not be selfish' and 'share what you have
equally' and the 'strong must look after the weak' and so forth, for that
is in her nature and that will never ever change. A Feminist Anarchist world
would be a world where the mothers and the children would prevail and where
the minority of males who seek to use their intelligence and strength to
prevail over the weak and such parasties would be utterly eradicated and
would have no place to Hide.
Ellul is a 'Paternalist,' he worships the male form, and he holds that God
is a transcendent male, and as such he holds that the more evil of the two
genders (the males) is the superior, and he rejects the One Immanent Mother
God. This is good example of why all Paternalists (male gender supremacists)
and all who consider God to be a transcendent male must be eradicated brutally,
utterly and without mercy, no matter how great their numbers. Elle is a
theological homosexual; his highest love relationship is with an invisible
transcendent male. While I am not homophobic (homosexual hatred), such homosexual
theologians who propagate the myth of the transcendent Male god seek to
corrupt all females and children with their homosexual paternalist theology
and this has to opposed. There is only One immanent Mother God.
Better to submit to Proudhon's 'God is Evil' than to this kind of evil theology,
for in Proudhon's day it was the theists who propagated evil (Capitalism
and Paternalism) in the name of God and the atheists who were good (i.e.
Communist).
Property is Theft
Anarchy is Order
Only an evil God is evil.
There is only One immanent Pagan Mother God.
The Religionists are the enemy of God and the children of God.
Religion cannot exist without the Religionists.
For the Final Holocaust of all Religionists.
Jesus was an anti-propertyist, anti-Capitalist and 'especially' all those
hypocrites and corrupters of the youth who propagate propertyism, Capitalism
and submission to evil in the name of Jesus or in anyone's name shall be
cast into the fires of the Final Holocaust as the Chaff.
Pacifists are dangerous fools and cowards who offend the memory of those
who were martyred in War against evil, and who seek to corrupt the youth
and to convince them not to fight. Such dangerous foolishness will not work,
for example against the CIA backed death squads in Columbia who fighting
and killing the Communists in their attempt to turn Columbia in its entirety
into a CIA narco-terrorist state. Such militant evil that is willing to
kill, be killed and to face Death and Hell for the sake of militant evangelical
World Capitalist Revolution cannot be fought by pacifists any more than
Hitler could be fought by pacifists.
While many Anarchists object to my call for solidarity with Osama Bin Laden, they are less objectionable out allying themselves with Utopian pacifist Christians who are pseudo Anarchists. like Ellul. The New World Order has to be fought. Osama is not an Anarchist, but he and they who love him are totally committed to violent apocalyptic militant revolution against the New World Order. They are willing to martyr themselves in War against evil and that must be defended and praised while pacifism must be opposed and ridiculed. We cannot ignore a billion Muslims who believe that the Great Day of Judgment on all who collaborate with the New World Order is a militant campaign long predicted in Islamic prophecy. Mao and Stalin, for all their faults, did not call for solidarity with Christian pacifists who opposed all forms of Warfare; on the contrary they called for temporary solidarity even with overt Aryan Racists such as Churchill, and all who sought to raise War against Hitler. There is no question that in 1945, Churchill wanted to keep his tanks going and to take out Stalin, and there is no question that the American Imperialists wanted to overthrow Mao with nuclear weapons.
This is not the time for Muslims and the Anticapitalist militia to fight
each other; that time will come soon enough after every last collaborator
with the New World order is hunted down and eradicated. Then and only then
will the Islamic problem have to be dealt with by the anti-Capitalists just
as the Muslims will seek to deal with the 'Anticapitalists and Antireligionists
This is a two way problem. My enemy's enemy may be my ad hoc ally, but he
is not necessarily my friend. The Muslims will have to eventually abandon
their evangelical governmentalism and their temporary Islamic Law, but War
has already been declared 'by' the New World Order, and the Muslims and
the various Anticapitalists and the armies of Africa will have to fight
World Capitalist Revolution or face their genocide. Mohammad 'Was' a 7th
century Anticapitalist and his revolutionary armies liberated the women
of Mecca from a fate worse than that of the brothels of Amsterdam, but he
was not an Antigovernmentalist and that is not the Final Solution of World
Collectivist Revolution, but then neither were many other saints of history
Antigovernmentalist such as Mao and Ho Chi.
There is no question that the Muslims are Paternalists (gender supremacists)
who consider God to be male, and the world is too small for the Pagans and
the Muslims to share, however first the New World Order must be eradicated
utterly.
Kill
or be killed.
Submit the Capitalsits and religionists to total Holocaust or the children
of the future will be submitted to the Capitalist's New World Order Holocaust.
No surrender, no mercy, no quarter, no negotiation.
Better
to die fighting the Econoimic Slavemasters than to live in submission and
slavery.
Victory or Death.
Victory in Death.
The martys can only be avenged by War agaisnt the slavemasters.
No forgivness without Penance.
Zero tolerance on CIA/New World Order narco-terrorism.
Mars 2003.
The 1000 Year Revolution of Horus.
Anarchy from a Christian Standpoint
1. What is Anarchy?
by Jacques Ellul
There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anarchists who choose violence as a means of action. I certainly understand the resort to aggression, to violence. I recall passing the Paris Bourse some twenty years ago and saying to myself that a bomb ought to be placed under that building. It would not destroy capitalism but it would serve as a symbol and a warning. Not knowing anyone who could make a bomb, I took no action!
The resort to violence is explicable, I think, in three situations. First, we have the doctrine of the Russian nihilists that if action is taken systematically to kill those who hold power - the ministers, generals, and police chiefs - in the long run people will be so afraid to take office that the state will be decapitated and easy to pull down. We find something of the same orientation among modern terrorists. But this line of thinking greatly underestimates the ability of powerful organisms, as well as society, to resist and react.
Then there is despair when the solidity of the system is seen, when impotence is felt face-to-face with an increasingly conformist society, or an increasingly powerful administration, or an invinvible economic system (who can arrest multinationals?), and violence is a kind of cry of despair, an ultimate act by which an effort is made to give public expression to one's disagreement and hatred of the oppression. It is our present despair which is crying aloud (J. Rictus). But it is also the confession that there is no other course of action and no reason to hope.
Finally, there
is the offering of a symbol and a sign, to which I have alluded already.
A warning is given that society is more fragile than is supposed and that
secret forces are at work to undermine it.
No matter what the motivation, however, I am against violence and aggression. I am against it on two levels. The first is simply tactical. We have begun to see that movements of nonviolence, when they are well managed (and this demands strong discipline and good strategy), are much more effective than violent movements (except when a true revolution is unleashed). We not only recall the success of Gandhi but nearer home it is also evident that Martin Luther King did much to advance the cause of American Blacks, whereas later movements, for example, the Black Muslims and Black Pantehrs, which wanted to make quicker headway by using all kinds of violence, not only gained nothing but even lost some of the gains made by King. Similarly, the violent movements in Berlin in 1956, then in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, all failed, but Lech Walesa, by imposing a strict discipline of nonviolence on his union, held his own against the Polish government. One of the sayings of the great union leaders of the years 1900-1910 was this: Strikes, yes, but violence, never. Finally, though this is debatable, the great Zulu chieftain in South Africa, Buthelezi, supports a strategy of total nonviolence as opposed to Mandela (of the Xhosa tribe), and by all accounts he could do infinitely more to end apartheid than will be achieved by the erratic violence (often between blacks) of the African National Congress. An authoritarian government can respond to violence only with violence.
My second reason is obviously a Christian one. Biblically, love is the way, not violence (in spite of the wars recounted in the Hebrew Bible [1], which I frankly confess to be most embarrassing). [2] Not using violence against those in power does not mean doing nothing. I will have to show that Christianity means a rejection of power and a fight against it. This was completely forgotten during the centuries of the alliance of throne and altar, the more so as the pope became a head of state, and often acted more as such than as head of the church. [3]
If I rule out
violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, antinationalist, anticapitalist,
moral, and antidemocratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the
falsified democracy of bourgeois states). There remains the anarchism which
acts by means of persuasion, by the creation of small groups and networks,
denouncing falsehood and oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities
of all kinds as people at the bottom speak and organize themselves. All
this is very close to Bakunin.
But there is still the delicate point of participation in elections. Should anarchists vote? If so, should they form a party? For my part, like many anarchists, I think not. To vote is to take part in the organization of the false democracy that has been set up forcefully by the middle class. No matter whether one votes for the left or the right, the situation is the same. Again, to organize a party is necessarily to adopt a hierarchical structure and to wish to have a share in the exercise of power. We must never forget to what degree the holding of political power corrupts. When the older socialists and unionists achieved power in France in 1900-1910, one might argue that they became the worst enemies of unionism. We have only to recall Clemenceau and Briand. This is why, in a movement that is very close to anarchy, that of ecologists, I am always opposed to political participation. I am totally hostile to the Greens movement, and in France we have seen very well what are the results of the political participation of the Ecolos (environmentalists) in elections. The movement has been split into several rival groups, three leaders have declared their hostility publicly, debates about false issues (e.g., of tactics) have clouded the true aims, money has been spent on electoral campaigns, and nothing has been gained. Indeed, the participation in elections has greatly reduced the influence of the movement. The political game can produce no important changes in our society and we must radically refuse to take part in it. Society is far too complex. Interests and structures are far too closely integrated into one another. We cannot hope to modify them by the political path. The example of multinationals is enough to show this. In view of global economic solidarity the left cannot change the economy of a country when it is in power. Those who say that a global revolution is needed if we are not simply to change the government are right.
But does that mean that we are not to act at all? This is what we constantly hear when we advance a radical thesis. As if the only mode of action were political! I believe that anarchy first implies conscientious objection - to everything that constitutes our capitalist (or degenerate socialist) and imperialistic society (whether it be bourgeois, communist, white, yellow, or black). Conscientious objection is objection not merely to military service but to all the demands and obligations imposed by our society: to taxes, to vaccination, to compulsory schooling, etc.
Naturally, I am in favor of education, but only if it is adapted to children and not obligatory when children are obviously not equipped to learn intellectual data. We ought to shape education according to the children's gifts.
As regards vaccination, I have in mind a remarkable instance. A friend of mine, a doctor of law, a licentiate in mathematics, and an anarchist (or very nearly so), decided on a real return to the land. In the harsh country of the Haut-Loire he bred cattle for ten years on the high plateau. But he objected - and this is the point of the story - to the compulsory vaccination of his cattle against hoof-and-mouth disease, reckoning that if he raised them carefully, and at a distance from any other herd, there was no danger of contracting the disease. This was when matters became interesting. Veterinary officers went after him and imposed a fine. He took the case to court, giving proof of the incompetence and accidents connected with vaccination. He lost at first, but on appeal, with the help of reports from biologists and eminent veterinarians, he was triumphantly acquitted. This is a very good example of the way in which we can find a little free space in the tangle of regulations. But we have to want to do it, not dispersing our energies but attacking at a single point and winning by repulsing the administration and its rules.
We had a similar
experience in our fight against the Aquitaine Coastal Commission. By enormous
efforts we were able to block certain projects which would have been disastrous
for the local people, but only after many court cases even at the highest
levels. [4] Naturally, these are very small actions, but if we take on enough
of them and are vigilant, we can check the omnipresence of the state, even
though the "decentralization" noisily promoted by Defferre has made the
defense of freedom much harder. For the enemy today is not the central state
[5] but the omnipotence and omnipresence of administration. It is essential
that we lodge objections to everything, and especially to the police and
the deregulation of the judicial process. We must unmask the ideological
falsehoods of the many powers, and especially we must show that the famous
theory of the rule of law which lulls the democracies is a lie from beginning
to end. The state does not respect its own rules. We must distrust all its
offerings. We must always remember that when it pays, it calls the tune.
I recall the prevention clubs we founded in 1956 to deal with the maladjustment of young people. Our premise was that it was not the young people who were maladjusted but society itself. [6] So long as the clubs were financed in many different ways, including a subsidy, they went well and enjoyed great success, not adjusting young people to society but helping them to shape their own personalities and to replace destructive activities (drugs, etc.) with constructive and positive activities. But all that changed when the state took over the full financing, thinking under Mauroy, the minister, that it had itself invented the idea of prevention, and creating a National Council of Prevention, which was a disaster.
An important point which I must emphasize is that there have to be many efforts along the lines suggested. I have in mind one that is most important, namely, the objection to taxes. Naturally, if individual taxpayers decide not to pay their taxes, or not to pay the proportion that is devoted to military expenditures, this is no problem for the state. They are arrested and sentenced. In a matter of this kind, many people have to act together. if six thousand or twenty thousand taxpayers decide upon this type of action, the state is put in an awkward position, especially if the media are brought in. But to make this possible there has to be lengthy preparation: campaigns, conferences, tracts, etc.
More immediately practicable, though again requiring many participants, is the organizing of a school by parents on the margin of public education, though also of official private education. I have in mind a school which the parents themselves decide to organize, giving instruction in fields in which they are equipped and have authorization to teach. At the very least they might set up an alternative school like the Lycee de Saint-Nazaire started by the brother of Cohn Bendit. The most effective type is one that is run by true representatives of the interested parties: the students, the parents, and the teachers.
Whenever such ventures are made, they need to be organized apart from the political, financial, administrative, and legal authorities and on a purely individual basis. An amusing personal example comes from the war days when we were refugees in a rural area. After two years we had gained the confidence and friendship of the villagers. A strange development then took place. The inhabitants knew that I had studied law and they came to consult me and to ask me to solve disputes. I thus came to play the part of an advocate, a justice of the peace, and a notary. Of course, these unpaid services had no validity in the eyes of the law, but they had validity for the parties concerned. When I had people sign an agreement settling a dispute or solving a problem, they all regarded the signatures as no less binding and authoritative than if they were official.
Naturally, these
modest examples of marginal actions which repudiate authority should not
cause us to neglect the need for an ideological diffusion of anarchist thinking.
I believe that our own age is favorable from this standpoint in view of
the absolute vacuum in relevant political thinking. The liberals still think
they are in the 19th century. The socialists have no real type of socialism
to offer. The communists are merely ridiculous and have hardly yet emerged
from post-Stalinism. The unions are interested only in defending their position.
[7] In this vacuum anarchist thinking has its opportunity if it will modernize
itself and draw support from existing embryonic groups such as the ecologists.
I am thus very close to one of the forms of anarchism, and I believe that the anarchist fight is a good one. What separates me, then, from the true anarchist? Apart from the religious problem, which we shall take up again at length, I think that the point of division is as follows. The true anarchist thinks that an anarchist society - with no state, no organization, no hierarchy, and no authorities - is possible, livable, and practicable. But I do not. In other words, I believe that the anarchist fight, the struggle for an anarchist society, is essential, but I also think that the realizing of such a society is impossible. Both these points need explanation. I will begin with the second.
In truth the vision or hope of a society with neither authorities nor institutions rests on the twofold conviction that people are by nature good and that society alone is corrupt. At the extreme we find such statements as this: The police provoke robbery; abolish the police and robbery will stop. That society does in fact play a big part in perverting, individuals seems sure enough to me. When there is excessive strictness, constraint, and repression, in one way or another people have to let off steam, often by violence and aggression. Today perversion in the West takes another form as well, namely, that of advertising, which promotes consumption (and robbery when people cannot afford things), also that of open pornography and violence in the media. The role of the media in the growth of delinquency and hatred of others is considerable. Nevertheless, society is not wholly responsible.
The drug policy in Holland offers an important illustration. Face-to-face with increasing drug traffic and drug use, the Dutch government opted in 1970 for a different policy from that found in other countries. To avoid the temptation of the forbidden fruit, drug use was legalized, and to check the sale of drugs the government opened centers where addicts could receive for nothing, and under medical supervision, the doses the needed. It was believe that this would halt the trade and all its evils (the bondage to dealers, the exorbitant prices, and crimes of violence to get the money). It was also believed that the craving for drugs would decline. But none of this happened. Amsterdam became the drug capital, and the center of the city holds a horrible concentration of addicts. Ending repression does not check human cravings. In spite of beliefs to the contrary, it is not a good thing.
My statement to this effect has no connection with the Christian idea of sin. Sin in effect exists only in relation to God. The mistake of centuries of Christianity has been to regard sin as a moral fault. Biblically this is not the case. Sin is a break with God and all that this entails. When I say that people are not good, I am not adopting a Christian or a moral standpoint. I am saying that their two great characteristics, no matter what their society or education, are covetousness and the desire for power. We find these traits always and everywhere. If, then, we give people complete freedom to choose, they will inevitably seek to dominate someone or something and they will inevitably covet what belongs to others, and a strange feature of covetousness is that it can never be assuaged or satisfied, for once one thing is acquired it directs its attention to something else. Rene' Girard has fully shown what the implications of covetousness are. No society is possible among people who compete for power or who covet and find themselves coveting the same thing. As I see it, then, an ideal anarchist society can never be achieved.
It might be
objected that people were originally good and that what we now see is the
result of centuries of declension. My answer is that in this case we will
have to allow for a transitional period, because tendencies which are so
firmly rooted will not be eradicated in one generation. For how long, then,
are we to retain the structures and the necessary authorities, hoping that
they will adopt policies that are just and liberating and firm enough to
direct us in the right path? Is our hope to be a withering away of the state?
We already have experience of how this theory works out. Above all we have
to remember that all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This has been the experience of all millenarians and "cities of God," etc.
For my part, what seems to me to be just and possible is the creation of new institutions from the grass-roots level. The people can set up proper institutions (such as those indicated above) which will in fact replace the authorities and powers that have to be destroyed. As regards realization, then, my view is in effect close to that of the AnarchoSyndicalists of 1880-1900. Their belief was that working class organisms such as unions and labor halls should replace the institutions of the middle-class state. These were never to function in an authoritarian and hierarchical way but in a strictly democratic manner, and they would lead to federations, the federal bond being the only national bond.
We know, of course, what happened. At the beginning of the 1914 war the deliberate policy was to remove the better Anarcho-Syndicalists, and the union movement underwent a radical change with the appointment of permanent officials. That was the great mistake. At the same time the labor halls lost completely their original character as breeding grounds of a proletarian elite.
In sum, I have no faith in a pure anarchist society, but I do believe in the possibility of creating a new social model. The only thing is that we now have to begin afresh. The unions, the labor halls, decentralization, the federative system - all are gone. The perverse use that has been made of them has destroyed them. The matter is all the more urgent because all our political forms are exhausted and practically nonexistent. Our parliamentary and electoral system and our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable. Nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, and omnipresent. Our experience today is the strange one of empty political institutions in which no one has any confidence any more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of a political class, and at the same time of the almost infinite growth of power, authority, and social control which makes any one of our democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state.
This is the result of techniques. We cannot speak of a technocracy, for technicians are not formally in charge. Nevertheless, all the power of government derives from techniques, and behind the scenes technicians provide the inspiration and make things possible. There is no point here in discussing what everybody knows, namely, the growth of the state, of bureaucracy, of propaganda (disguised under the name of publicity or information), of conformity of an express policy of making us all producers and consumers, etc. To this development there is strictly no reply. No one even puts questions. [8] The churches have once again betrayed their mission. The parties play outdated games. It is in these circumstances that I regard anarchy as the only serious challenge, as the only means of achieving awareness, as the first active step.
When I talk of a serious challenge, the point is that in anarchy there is no possibility of a rerouting into a reinforcement of power. This took place in Marxism. The very idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat presupposed power over the rest of society. Nor is it simply a matter of the power of the majority over the minority instead of the reverse. The real question is that of the power of some people over others. Unfortunately, as I have said, I do not think that we can truly prevent this. But we can struggle against it. We can organize on the fringe. We can denounce not merely the abuses of power but power itself. But only anarchy says this and wants it.
In my view, then, it is more necessary than ever to promote and extend the anarchist movement. Contrary to what is thought, it can gain a broader hearing than before. Most people, living heedlessly, tanning themselves, engaging in terrorism, or becoming TV slaves, ridicule political chatter and politics. They see that there is nothing to hope for from them. They are also exasperated by bureaucratic structures and administrative bickering. If we denounce such things, we gain the ear of a large public. In a word, the more the power of the state and bureaucracy grows, the more the affirmation of anarchy is necessary as the sole and last defense of the individual, that is, of humanity. Anarchy must regain its pungency and courage. It has a bright future before it. This is why I adopt it.
Footnotes:
1. I prefer this title to "Old Testament" so as to avoid the charge that Christians have annexed these books and deprived the Jewish people of what really belongs to them.
2. Cf. my Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective (New York: Seabury, 1969).
3. We see the perversity of power from the fact that the pope was given a vast domain in order to free him from the political pressure exerted by kings, emperors, barons, etc., i.e., to ensure his independence, but the exact opposite was the result.
4. An interesting point here is that we forced the administration itself to act illegally. The method was simple. The administration began work outside the rules and had to justify itself by orders and decrees. Biasini, the director of the Commission, advanced the theory that once work has begun, even though irregularly and without a proper inquiry, etc., there is nothing more to be done. In other words, once the bulldozers set to work, there is no further recourse. This means a total regulation of citizens and an official authorization of illegality. Another example of the same kind is the building of the Ile de Re' bridge, which an administrative tribunal rejected but which is going on as if nothing had happened.
5. Disastrous though its role is! For an illuminating study cf. 1. J. Ledos, J. P. Jezequel, and P. Regnier, Le gachis audiovisual (Ed. Ouvrieres, 1987).
6. Cf. Y. Charrier and J. Ellul, Jeunesse delinquante: Une experience en province (Paris: Mercure de France, 1971).
7. We should not forget that on the plea of safeguarding employment they supported the folly of the Concorde and still justify the manufacture and export of armaments.
8. Except for a few scientists who see the dangers of science, and a few isolated figures like C. Castoriadis.
Emma Goldman
For Violent Revolutionary Feminist Anarchism
.
Emma Goldman
1869
- 1940
Anarchism:
What it really Stands For
The
Individual, Society and the State
Link to essay on http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/emma/emma1.html
Living
My Life
Link to essay on:
http://www.pitzer.edu/~dward/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/living/livingtoc.html
Pictures
of Emma and her grave in Chicago from:
. http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/emma/emmapics.html
When arrested in 1893 for urging
the unemployed to take bread by force and given one year in prision, at
her trial she was questioned about her beliefs:
'Do you believe in the Supreme Being, Miss Goldman?
No sir, I do not.
Is there any government on earth whose laws you approve?
No Sir, they are all agaisnt the people.
Why don't you leave this country if you don't like its laws?
Where shall I go? Everywhere on earth the laws are against the poor, and
they tell me I cannotgo to Heaven, nor do I want to go there.
Goldman, Kropotkin, Bakunin and other Personalists (i.e. the 'Person'
is the most sacred) are the evidence that many atheists are good (i.e.
Anarchist Communists), whereas many theists are as evil as their god is
evil.
If theists who are evil define their god as evil like they are, and claim
that 'God is good,' this is just the lie of language.
Only and evil God is evil.
Hitler, Crowley, and the Luciferians of the Templar New World Order and
are or were all Paternalist Pagan Theists.
The most evil people in the world today are all spiritualists (i.e. non
atheists).
____________________________
For
further Essays on Anarchism, link to
Anarchist Library on
http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/index.html
The Final Pagan Revolution.
The Final Global Holocaust of all Christians and Kabbalists.
Mars
luciferia.tv
In the City of Babyon 2003
The 1000 Year Agricultural Revolution of Horus
No mercy on they who deserve none.
Let them hate us as long as they fear us
War of Armageddon against all Governmentalists and all who collaborate with
them
