The contradiction and tragedy of communist-anarchism Part III Share This:





REVOLUTION: THE ROAD TO FREEDOM?



"It's true that non-violence has been a dismal failure.

The only bigger failure has been violence."

- Joan Baez



There's an old story about a motorist who stopped a policeman in downtown Manhattan and asked him how he could get to the Brooklyn Bridge. The officer looked around, thought a minute, scratched his head and finally replied, "I'm sorry, but you can't get there from here." Some anarchists are now wondering if you can get to the free society from where we stand today. I must confess that I, too, harbour some doubts. But if there is a way, it is incumbent upon all who wish to find that way to carefully examine the important end-means problem.



"The end justifies the means." Few people would argue with this trite statement. Certainly all apologists of government must ultimately fall back on such reasoning to justify their large police forces and standing armies. Revolutionary anarchists must also rely on this argument to justify their authoritarian methods "just one more time", the revolution being for them "the unfreedom to end unfreedom." It seems that the only people who reject outright this article of faith are a handful of (mostly religious) pacifists. The question I'd like to consider here is not whether the end JUSTIFIES the means (because I, too, tend to feel that it does), but rather whether the end is AFFECTED by the means and, if so, to what extent.



That the end is affected by the means should be obvious. Whether I obtain your watch by swindling you, buying it from you, stealing it from you, or soliciting it as a gift from you makes the same watch "graft", "my property", "booty", or "a donation." The same can be said for social change. Even so strong an advocate of violent revolution as Herbert Marcuse, in one of his rare lapses into sanity, realised this fact:



But despite the truth of Marcuse's observation, we still find many anarchists looking for a shortcut to freedom by means of violent revolution. The idea that anarchism can be inaugurated by violence is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by violence. The best that can be said for violence is that it may, in rare circumstances, be used as an expedient to save us from extinction. But the individualist's rejection of violence (except in cases of self-defence) is not due to any lofty pacifist principles; it's a matter of pure pragmatism: we realise that violence just simply does not work.



The task of anarchism, as the individualist sees it, is not to destroy the state, but rather to destroy the MYTH of the state. Once people realise that they no longer need the state, it will - in the words of Frederick Engels - inevitably "wither away" ("Anti-Duehring", 1877) and be consigned to the "Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe" ("Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", 1884). But unless anarchists can create a general and well-grounded disbelief in the state as an INSTITUTION, the existing state might be destroyed by violent revolution or it might fall through its own rottenness, but another would inevitably rise in its place. And why shouldn't it? As long as people believe the state to be necessary (even a "necessary evil", as Thomas Paine said), the state will always exist.



We have already seen how Kropotkin would usher in the millennium by the complete expropriation of all property. "We must see clearly in private property what it really is, a conscious or unconscious robbery of the substance of all, and seize it joyfully for the common benefit." [57] He cheerfully goes on to say, "The instinct of destruction, so natural and so just...will find ample room for satisfaction." [58] Kropotkin's modern-day heirs are no different. Noam Chomsky, writing in the "New York Review of Books" and reprinted in a recent issue of "Anarchy", applauds the heroism of the Paris Commune of 1871, mentioning only in passing that "the Commune, of course [!], was drowned in blood." [59] Later in the same article he writes, "What is far more important is that these ideas [direct workers' control] have been realised in spontaneous revolutionary action, for example in Germany and Italy after World War I and in Spain (specifically, industrial Barcelona) in 1936." [60] What Chomsky apparently finds relatively UNimportant are the million-odd corpses which were the direct result of these "spontaneous revolutionary actions." He also somehow manages to ignore the fact that the three countries he mentions - Germany, Italy and Spain - were without exception victims of fascism within a few years of these glorious revolutions. One doesn't need a great deal of insight to be able to draw a parallel between these "spontaneous" actions with their reactionary aftermaths and the spontaneous "trashings" which are currently in fashion in the United States. But it seems the Weathermen really DO "need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." [61]



The question of how to attain the anarchist society has divided anarchists nearly as much as the question of what the anarchist society actually is. While Bakunin insisted on the necessity of "bloody revolutions" [62], Proudhon believed that violence was unnecessary - saying instead that "reason will serve us better." [63] The same discord was echoed on the other side of the Atlantic some decades later when, in the wake of the infamous Haymarket bombing, the issue of violence came to a head. Benjamin Tucker, writing in the columns of "Liberty", had this to say about accusations leveled against him by Johann Most, the communist-anarchist editor of "Freiheit":



"It makes very little difference to Herr Most what a man believes in economics. The test of fellowship with him lies in acceptance of dynamite as a cure-all. Though I should prove that my economic views, if realised, would turn our social system inside out, he would not therefore regard me as a revolutionist. He declares outright that I am no revolutionist, because the thought of the coming revolution (by dynamite, he means) makes my flesh creep. Well, I frankly confess that I take no pleasure in the thought of bloodshed and mutilation and death. At these things my feelings revolt. And if delight in them is a requisite of a revolutionist, then indeed I am no revolutionist. When revolutionist and cannibal become synonyms, count me out, if you please. But, though my feelings revolt, I am not mastered by them or made a coward by them. More than from dynamite and blood do I shrink from the thought of a permanent system of society involving the slow starvation of the most industrious and deserving of its members. If I should ever become convinced that the policy of bloodshed is necessary to end our social system, the loudest of today's shriekers for blood would not surpass me in the stoicism with which I would face the inevitable. Indeed, a plumb-liner to the last, I am confident that under such circumstances many who now think me chicken-hearted would condemn the stony-heartedness with which I should favour the utter sacrifice of every feeling of pity to the necessities of the terroristic policy. Neither fear nor sentimentalism, then, dictates my opposition to forcible methods. Such being the case, how stupid, how unfair, in Herr Most, to picture me as crossing myself at the mention of the word revolution simply because I steadfastly act on my well-known belief that force cannot substitute truth for a lie in political economy!" [64]



It is this issue of economics which generally sorts anarchists into the violent and non-violent wings of anarchism. Individualists, by and large, are pacifists in practice (if not in theory), whereas the communists tend toward violent revolution.* Why is this so? One reason I think is that individualists are more concerned with changing the conditions which directly affect their lives than they are with reforming the whole world "for the good of all." The communists, on the other hand, have a more evangelical spirit. Like all good missionaries, they are out to convert the unbeliever - whether he likes it or not. And inevitably this leads to violence. Another reason communists are more prone to violence than individualists can be found, I think, in looking at the nature of the force each is willing to use to secure and sustain his respective system. Individualists believe that the only justifiable force is force used in preventing invasion (i.e. defensive force). Communists, however, would compel the worker to pool his products with the products of others and forbid him to sell his labour or the products of his labour. To "compel" and "forbid" requires the use of offensive force. It is no wonder, then, that most communists advocate violence to achieve their objectives.



--------------------------------------

* There are exceptions of course. It is hard to imagine a more dedicated pacifist than Tolstoy, for example. On the other side of the coin is Stirner, who quotes with near relish the French Revolutionary slogan "the world will have no rest till the last king is hanged with the guts of the last priest." [65]

-------------------------------------



If freedom is really what we anarchists crack it up to be, it shouldn't be necessary to force it down the throat of anyone. What an absurdity! Even so superficial a writer as Agatha Christie recognised that "if it is not possible to go back [from freedom], or to choose to go back, then it is not freedom." [66] A. J. Muste used to say that "there is no way to peace - peace IS the way." The same thing is true about freedom: the only way to freedom is BY freedom. This statement is so nearly tautological that it should not need saying. The only way to realise anarchy is for a sufficient number of people to be convinced that their own interests demand it. Human society does not run on idealism - it runs on pragmatism. And unless people can be made to realise that anarchy actually works for THEIR benefit, it will remain what it is today: an idle pipe dream; "a nice theory, but unrealistic." It is the anarchist's job to convince people otherwise.



Herbert Spencer - the great evolutionist of whom Darwin said, "He is about a dozen times my superior" - observed the following fact of nature:



"Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified throughout the Heavens and on the Earth: especially throughout the organic world; and above all in the animal division of it. No creature, save the simplest and most minute, commences its existence in a form like that which it eventually assumes; and in most cases the unlikeness is great - so great that kinship between the first and the last forms would be incredible were it not daily demonstrated in every poultry-yard and every garden. More than this is true. The changes of form are often several: each of them being an apparently complete transformation - egg, larva, pupa, imago, for example ... No one of them ends as it begins; and the difference between its original structure and its ultimate structure is such that, at the outset change of the one into the other would have seemed incredible." [67]



This universal law of metamorphosis holds not only for biology, but for society as well. Modern-day Christianity resembles the early Christian church about as much as a butterfly resembles a caterpillar. Thomas Jefferson would have been horrified if he could have foreseen the "government by the consent of the governed" which today is the hereditary heir of his Declaration of Independence. French revolutionaries took turns beheading one another until that great believer in "les droits de l'homme", Napoleon Bonaparte, came upon the scene to secure "liberte, egalite, fraternite" for all. And wasn't it comrade Stalin who in 1906 so confidently forecast the nature of the coming revolution?: "The dictatorship of the proletariat will be a dictatorship of the entire proletariat as a class over the bourgeoisie and not the domination of a few individuals over the proletariat." [68] The examples of these ugly duckling stories in reverse are endless. For as Robert Burns wrote nearly two centuries ago:



"The best laid schemes o' mice and men

Gang aft a-gley;

An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain

For promis'd joy." 69



Why is it that Utopian dreams have a habit of turning into nightmares in practice? Very simply because people don't act the way the would-be architects of society would have them act. The mythical man never measures up to the real man. This point was brought home forcefully in a recent letter to "Freedom" by S. E. Parker who observed that our modern visionaries are bound for disappointment because they are "trying to deduce an 'is' from an 'ought'." [70] Paper constitutions might work all right in a society of paper dolls, but they can only bring smiles to those who have observed their results in the real world. The same is true of paper revolutions which invariably have to go back to the drawing board once the reign of terror sets in. And if communist-anarchists think that their paper social systems are exempt from this, how do they explain the presence of anarchist "leaders" in high government positions during the Spanish Civil War?



Hasn't everyone been surprised at sometime or other with the behaviour of people they thought they knew well? Perhaps a relative or a good friend does something "totally out of character." We can never completely know even those people closest to us, let alone total strangers. How are we, then, to comprehend and predict the behaviour of complex groups of people? To make assumptions about how people must and will act under a hypothetical social system is idle conjecture. We know from daily experience that men don't act as they "ought" to act or think as they "ought" to think. Why should things be any different after the revolution? Yet we still find an abundance of revolutionaries willing to kill and be killed for a cause which more likely than not, if realised, would bear no recognizable resemblance to what they were fighting for. This reason alone should be sufficient to give these people second thoughts about their methods. But apparently they are too carried away by the violence of their own rhetoric to be bothered with where it will lead them.*



----------------------------------

* I am reminded here of a Herblock cartoon which came out during the Johnson-Goldwater presidential campaign of1964. It pictures Goldwater standing in the rubble of a nuclear war and proclaiming, "But that's not what I meant!" I wonder if the Utopia which our idealists intend to usher in by violent revolution will be what they really "meant".

------------------------------------



There is but one effective way to rid ourselves of the oppressive power of the state. It is not to shoot it to death; it is not to vote it to death; it is not even to persuade it to death. It is rather to starve it to death.



Power feeds on its spoils, and dies when its victims refuse to be despoiled. There is much truth in the well- known pacifist slogan, "Wars will cease when people refuse to fight." This slogan can be generalised to say that "government will cease when people refuse to be governed." As Tucker put it, "There is not a tyrant in the civilised world today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights." [71]



A particularly effective weapon could be massive tax refusal. If (say) one-fifth of the population of the United States refused to pay their taxes, the government would be impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Should they ignore the problem, it would only get worse - for who is going to willingly contribute to the government's coffers when his neighbours are getting away scotfree? Or should they opt to prosecute, the burden just to feed and guard so many "parasites" - not to mention the lose of revenue - would be so great that the other four-fifths of the population would soon rebel. But in order to succeed, this type of action would require massive numbers. Isolated tax refusal - like isolated draft refusal - is a useless waste of resources. It is like trying to purify the salty ocean by dumping a cup of distilled water into it. The individualist-anarchist would no more advocate such sacrificial offerings than the violent revolutionary would advocate walking into his neighbourhood police station and "offing the pig." As he would tell you, "It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth." Tucker agrees. Replying to a critic who felt otherwise he said, "Placed in a situation where, from the choice of one or the other horn of a dilemma, it must follow either that fools will think a man a coward or that wise men will think him a fool, I can conceive of no possible ground for hesitancy in the selection." [72]



There is a tendency among anarchists these days - particularly in the United States - to talk about "alternatives" and "parallel institutions". This is a healthy sign which individualists very much encourage. The best argument one can possibly present against "the system" is to DEMONSTRATE a better one. Some communist-anarchists (let it be said to their credit) are now trying to do just that. Communal farms, schools, etc. have been sprouting up all over the States. Individualists, of course, welcome these experiments - especially where they fulfill the needs of those involved and contribute to their happiness. But we can't help questioning the over-all futility of such social landscape gardening. The vast majority of these experiments collapse in dismal failure within the first year or two, proving nothing but the difficulty of communal living. And should an isolated community manage to survive, their success could not be judged as conclusive since it would be said that their principles were applicable only to people well-nigh perfect. They might well be considered as the exceptions which proved the rule. If anarchy is to succeed to any appreciable extent, it has to be brought within the reach of everyone. I'm afraid that tepees in New Mexico don't satisfy that criterion.



The parallel institution I would like to see tried would be something called a "mutual bank."* The beauty of this proposal is that it can be carried out under the very nose of the man-in-the-street. I would hope that in this way people could see for themselves the practical advantages it has to offer them, and ultimately accept the plan as their own. I'm well aware that this scheme, like any other, is subject to the law of metamorphosis referred to earlier. But should this plan fail, unlike those plans which require bloody revolutions for their implementation, the only thing hurt would be the pride of a few hair-brained individualists.



----------------------------------------

* The reader can judge for himself the merits of this plan when I examine it in some detail later on in this article.

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"Unless the revolution itself progresses through freedom, the need for domination and repression would be carried over into the new society and the fateful separation between the 'immediate' and the 'true' interest of the individuals would be almost inevitable; the individuals would become the objects of their own liberation, and freedom would be a matter of administration and decree. Progress would be progressive repression, and the 'delay' in freedom would threaten to become self-propelling and self-perpetuating." [56]But despite the truth of Marcuse's observation, we still find many anarchists looking for a shortcut to freedom by means of violent revolution. The idea that anarchism can be inaugurated by violence is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by violence. The best that can be said for violence is that it may, in rare circumstances, be used as an expedient to save us from extinction. But the individualist's rejection of violence (except in cases of self-defence) is not due to any lofty pacifist principles; it's a matter of pure pragmatism: we realise that violence just simply does not work.The task of anarchism, as the individualist sees it, is not to destroy the state, but rather to destroy the MYTH of the state. Once people realise that they no longer need the state, it will - in the words of Frederick Engels - inevitably "wither away" ("Anti-Duehring", 1877) and be consigned to the "Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe" ("Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", 1884). But unless anarchists can create a general and well-grounded disbelief in the state as an INSTITUTION, the existing state might be destroyed by violent revolution or it might fall through its own rottenness, but another would inevitably rise in its place. And why shouldn't it? As long as people believe the state to be necessary (even a "necessary evil", as Thomas Paine said), the state will always exist.We have already seen how Kropotkin would usher in the millennium by the complete expropriation of all property. "We must see clearly in private property what it really is, a conscious or unconscious robbery of the substance of all, and seize it joyfully for the common benefit." [57] He cheerfully goes on to say, "The instinct of destruction, so natural and so just...will find ample room for satisfaction." [58] Kropotkin's modern-day heirs are no different. Noam Chomsky, writing in the "New York Review of Books" and reprinted in a recent issue of "Anarchy", applauds the heroism of the Paris Commune of 1871, mentioning only in passing that "the Commune, of course [!], was drowned in blood." [59] Later in the same article he writes, "What is far more important is that these ideas [direct workers' control] have been realised in spontaneous revolutionary action, for example in Germany and Italy after World War I and in Spain (specifically, industrial Barcelona) in 1936." [60] What Chomsky apparently finds relatively UNimportant are the million-odd corpses which were the direct result of these "spontaneous revolutionary actions." He also somehow manages to ignore the fact that the three countries he mentions - Germany, Italy and Spain - were without exception victims of fascism within a few years of these glorious revolutions. One doesn't need a great deal of insight to be able to draw a parallel between these "spontaneous" actions with their reactionary aftermaths and the spontaneous "trashings" which are currently in fashion in the United States. But it seems the Weathermen really DO "need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." [61]The question of how to attain the anarchist society has divided anarchists nearly as much as the question of what the anarchist society actually is. While Bakunin insisted on the necessity of "bloody revolutions" [62], Proudhon believed that violence was unnecessary - saying instead that "reason will serve us better." [63] The same discord was echoed on the other side of the Atlantic some decades later when, in the wake of the infamous Haymarket bombing, the issue of violence came to a head. Benjamin Tucker, writing in the columns of "Liberty", had this to say about accusations leveled against him by Johann Most, the communist-anarchist editor of "Freiheit":"It makes very little difference to Herr Most what a man believes in economics. The test of fellowship with him lies in acceptance of dynamite as a cure-all. Though I should prove that my economic views, if realised, would turn our social system inside out, he would not therefore regard me as a revolutionist. He declares outright that I am no revolutionist, because the thought of the coming revolution (by dynamite, he means) makes my flesh creep. Well, I frankly confess that I take no pleasure in the thought of bloodshed and mutilation and death. At these things my feelings revolt. And if delight in them is a requisite of a revolutionist, then indeed I am no revolutionist. When revolutionist and cannibal become synonyms, count me out, if you please. But, though my feelings revolt, I am not mastered by them or made a coward by them. More than from dynamite and blood do I shrink from the thought of a permanent system of society involving the slow starvation of the most industrious and deserving of its members. If I should ever become convinced that the policy of bloodshed is necessary to end our social system, the loudest of today's shriekers for blood would not surpass me in the stoicism with which I would face the inevitable. Indeed, a plumb-liner to the last, I am confident that under such circumstances many who now think me chicken-hearted would condemn the stony-heartedness with which I should favour the utter sacrifice of every feeling of pity to the necessities of the terroristic policy. Neither fear nor sentimentalism, then, dictates my opposition to forcible methods. Such being the case, how stupid, how unfair, in Herr Most, to picture me as crossing myself at the mention of the word revolution simply because I steadfastly act on my well-known belief that force cannot substitute truth for a lie in political economy!" [64]It is this issue of economics which generally sorts anarchists into the violent and non-violent wings of anarchism. Individualists, by and large, are pacifists in practice (if not in theory), whereas the communists tend toward violent revolution.* Why is this so? One reason I think is that individualists are more concerned with changing the conditions which directly affect their lives than they are with reforming the whole world "for the good of all." The communists, on the other hand, have a more evangelical spirit. Like all good missionaries, they are out to convert the unbeliever - whether he likes it or not. And inevitably this leads to violence. Another reason communists are more prone to violence than individualists can be found, I think, in looking at the nature of the force each is willing to use to secure and sustain his respective system. Individualists believe that the only justifiable force is force used in preventing invasion (i.e. defensive force). Communists, however, would compel the worker to pool his products with the products of others and forbid him to sell his labour or the products of his labour. To "compel" and "forbid" requires the use of offensive force. It is no wonder, then, that most communists advocate violence to achieve their objectives.--------------------------------------* There are exceptions of course. It is hard to imagine a more dedicated pacifist than Tolstoy, for example. On the other side of the coin is Stirner, who quotes with near relish the French Revolutionary slogan "the world will have no rest till the last king is hanged with the guts of the last priest." [65]-------------------------------------If freedom is really what we anarchists crack it up to be, it shouldn't be necessary to force it down the throat of anyone. What an absurdity! Even so superficial a writer as Agatha Christie recognised that "if it is not possible to go back [from freedom], or to choose to go back, then it is not freedom." [66] A. J. Muste used to say that "there is no way to peace - peace IS the way." The same thing is true about freedom: the only way to freedom is BY freedom. This statement is so nearly tautological that it should not need saying. The only way to realise anarchy is for a sufficient number of people to be convinced that their own interests demand it. Human society does not run on idealism - it runs on pragmatism. And unless people can be made to realise that anarchy actually works for THEIR benefit, it will remain what it is today: an idle pipe dream; "a nice theory, but unrealistic." It is the anarchist's job to convince people otherwise.Herbert Spencer - the great evolutionist of whom Darwin said, "He is about a dozen times my superior" - observed the following fact of nature:"Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified throughout the Heavens and on the Earth: especially throughout the organic world; and above all in the animal division of it. No creature, save the simplest and most minute, commences its existence in a form like that which it eventually assumes; and in most cases the unlikeness is great - so great that kinship between the first and the last forms would be incredible were it not daily demonstrated in every poultry-yard and every garden. More than this is true. The changes of form are often several: each of them being an apparently complete transformation - egg, larva, pupa, imago, for example ... No one of them ends as it begins; and the difference between its original structure and its ultimate structure is such that, at the outset change of the one into the other would have seemed incredible." [67]This universal law of metamorphosis holds not only for biology, but for society as well. Modern-day Christianity resembles the early Christian church about as much as a butterfly resembles a caterpillar. Thomas Jefferson would have been horrified if he could have foreseen the "government by the consent of the governed" which today is the hereditary heir of his Declaration of Independence. French revolutionaries took turns beheading one another until that great believer in "les droits de l'homme", Napoleon Bonaparte, came upon the scene to secure "liberte, egalite, fraternite" for all. And wasn't it comrade Stalin who in 1906 so confidently forecast the nature of the coming revolution?: "The dictatorship of the proletariat will be a dictatorship of the entire proletariat as a class over the bourgeoisie and not the domination of a few individuals over the proletariat." [68] The examples of these ugly duckling stories in reverse are endless. For as Robert Burns wrote nearly two centuries ago:Why is it that Utopian dreams have a habit of turning into nightmares in practice? Very simply because people don't act the way the would-be architects of society would have them act. The mythical man never measures up to the real man. This point was brought home forcefully in a recent letter to "Freedom" by S. E. Parker who observed that our modern visionaries are bound for disappointment because they are "trying to deduce an 'is' from an 'ought'." [70] Paper constitutions might work all right in a society of paper dolls, but they can only bring smiles to those who have observed their results in the real world. The same is true of paper revolutions which invariably have to go back to the drawing board once the reign of terror sets in. And if communist-anarchists think that their paper social systems are exempt from this, how do they explain the presence of anarchist "leaders" in high government positions during the Spanish Civil War?Hasn't everyone been surprised at sometime or other with the behaviour of people they thought they knew well? Perhaps a relative or a good friend does something "totally out of character." We can never completely know even those people closest to us, let alone total strangers. How are we, then, to comprehend and predict the behaviour of complex groups of people? To make assumptions about how people must and will act under a hypothetical social system is idle conjecture. We know from daily experience that men don't act as they "ought" to act or think as they "ought" to think. Why should things be any different after the revolution? Yet we still find an abundance of revolutionaries willing to kill and be killed for a cause which more likely than not, if realised, would bear no recognizable resemblance to what they were fighting for. This reason alone should be sufficient to give these people second thoughts about their methods. But apparently they are too carried away by the violence of their own rhetoric to be bothered with where it will lead them.*----------------------------------* I am reminded here of a Herblock cartoon which came out during the Johnson-Goldwater presidential campaign of1964. It pictures Goldwater standing in the rubble of a nuclear war and proclaiming, "But that's not what I meant!" I wonder if the Utopia which our idealists intend to usher in by violent revolution will be what they really "meant".------------------------------------There is but one effective way to rid ourselves of the oppressive power of the state. It is not to shoot it to death; it is not to vote it to death; it is not even to persuade it to death. It is rather to starve it to death.Power feeds on its spoils, and dies when its victims refuse to be despoiled. There is much truth in the well- known pacifist slogan, "Wars will cease when people refuse to fight." This slogan can be generalised to say that "government will cease when people refuse to be governed." As Tucker put it, "There is not a tyrant in the civilised world today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights." [71]A particularly effective weapon could be massive tax refusal. If (say) one-fifth of the population of the United States refused to pay their taxes, the government would be impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Should they ignore the problem, it would only get worse - for who is going to willingly contribute to the government's coffers when his neighbours are getting away scotfree? Or should they opt to prosecute, the burden just to feed and guard so many "parasites" - not to mention the lose of revenue - would be so great that the other four-fifths of the population would soon rebel. But in order to succeed, this type of action would require massive numbers. Isolated tax refusal - like isolated draft refusal - is a useless waste of resources. It is like trying to purify the salty ocean by dumping a cup of distilled water into it. The individualist-anarchist would no more advocate such sacrificial offerings than the violent revolutionary would advocate walking into his neighbourhood police station and "offing the pig." As he would tell you, "It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth." Tucker agrees. Replying to a critic who felt otherwise he said, "Placed in a situation where, from the choice of one or the other horn of a dilemma, it must follow either that fools will think a man a coward or that wise men will think him a fool, I can conceive of no possible ground for hesitancy in the selection." [72]There is a tendency among anarchists these days - particularly in the United States - to talk about "alternatives" and "parallel institutions". This is a healthy sign which individualists very much encourage. The best argument one can possibly present against "the system" is to DEMONSTRATE a better one. Some communist-anarchists (let it be said to their credit) are now trying to do just that. Communal farms, schools, etc. have been sprouting up all over the States. Individualists, of course, welcome these experiments - especially where they fulfill the needs of those involved and contribute to their happiness. But we can't help questioning the over-all futility of such social landscape gardening. The vast majority of these experiments collapse in dismal failure within the first year or two, proving nothing but the difficulty of communal living. And should an isolated community manage to survive, their success could not be judged as conclusive since it would be said that their principles were applicable only to people well-nigh perfect. They might well be considered as the exceptions which proved the rule. If anarchy is to succeed to any appreciable extent, it has to be brought within the reach of everyone. I'm afraid that tepees in New Mexico don't satisfy that criterion.The parallel institution I would like to see tried would be something called a "mutual bank."* The beauty of this proposal is that it can be carried out under the very nose of the man-in-the-street. I would hope that in this way people could see for themselves the practical advantages it has to offer them, and ultimately accept the plan as their own. I'm well aware that this scheme, like any other, is subject to the law of metamorphosis referred to earlier. But should this plan fail, unlike those plans which require bloody revolutions for their implementation, the only thing hurt would be the pride of a few hair-brained individualists.----------------------------------------* The reader can judge for himself the merits of this plan when I examine it in some detail later on in this article.---------------------------------------- Printer Friendly Wendy McElroy - Friday 26 June 2009 - 06:00:00 - Permalink I am delighted to publish an original essay by friend and Voluntaryist Ken Knudson on the intellectual contradiction that is "communist-anarchism" and the tragic debacle of trying to translate the contradiction into reality. Wendymcelroy.com blog should be cited with a link back if the essay is quoted or reprinted. Click on Part I ; click on Part II . The author invites comments and feedback menckenfan©gmail.com REVOLUTION: THE ROAD TO FREEDOM?There's an old story about a motorist who stopped a policeman in downtown Manhattan and asked him how he could get to the Brooklyn Bridge. The officer looked around, thought a minute, scratched his head and finally replied, "I'm sorry, but you can't get there from here." Some anarchists are now wondering if you can get to the free society from where we stand today. I must confess that I, too, harbour some doubts. But if there is a way, it is incumbent upon all who wish to find that way to carefully examine the important end-means problem."The end justifies the means." Few people would argue with this trite statement. Certainly all apologists of government must ultimately fall back on such reasoning to justify their large police forces and standing armies. Revolutionary anarchists must also rely on this argument to justify their authoritarian methods "just one more time", the revolution being for them "the unfreedom to end unfreedom." It seems that the only people who reject outright this article of faith are a handful of (mostly religious) pacifists. The question I'd like to consider here is not whether the end JUSTIFIES the means (because I, too, tend to feel that it does), but rather whether the end is AFFECTED by the means and, if so, to what extent.That the end is affected by the means should be obvious. Whether I obtain your watch by swindling you, buying it from you, stealing it from you, or soliciting it as a gift from you makes the same watch "graft", "my property", "booty", or "a donation." The same can be said for social change. Even so strong an advocate of violent revolution as Herbert Marcuse, in one of his rare lapses into sanity, realised this fact: