MORIBUND SOCIETY AND ANARCHY

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF JEAN GRAVE

BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE

[With a Preface from the French edition by Octave Mirbeau]

[English translation published 1899]

—–

PREFACE.

“Moribund Society and Anarchy” first appeared in France about a decade since, published by P. V. Stock, printer of numerous works pertaining to Anarchy. The conscience (?) of the French army, which the Dreyfus affair has since revealed in all its delicate scrupulosity, was immediately incensed by the chapter entitled “Militarism,” and the author was speedily arrested, tried, and sentenced to two years imprisonment. The book was suppressed, and the French army, presumably, breathed more freely.

A mistake! When persecution begins the gospel spreads. Men were anxious to know what it was that had so frightened the “free government” of France as to call forth such severe punishment of a poor shoemaker. The work was circulated, translated in German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Jewish; only in English it remained untranslated. Several times announcements that we were about to have an English version appeared; still it was not forthcoming.

In 1897 the writer met Jean Grave at the residence of an exiled French comrade in London, and there engaged to undertake the work, the author concurring. Although originally prompted by the English comrades and their promise of a publisher, later developments have made it more expedient to get out an American edition. Among these the only one which really concerns the public is the gigantic stride toward militarism which this country has taken during the past year. Previous to that I was exceedingly dubious as to the effect of the famous prosecuted chapter, which was likely to fall flat on the unmilitary American public. But now that we have entered upon the “manifest destiny” of “civilized nations;” now that our government has resorted to the same tactics of colonization, protection, subjugation, and conquest; now that our standing army has been increased four-fold, and military place-hunting is the ambition of the hour; now that our workingmen are seizing the opportunity to barter their “free citizenship in the greatest country on earth” for the abject service of man-killing on foreign soils at the rate of $15.60 per month and keep, this proscribed Chapter XIII comes with its own note—a most discordant one indeed—into the war-chorus at present holding the public ear. And the translator devoutly prays that as in France the great sin was its distribution among the soldiery, the like offense may be repeated here, where the army is still in a nascent condition and the man not yet buried under the uniform. Look in the glass and see how you like the reflection, soldiers!

The P. V. Stock edition having been suppressed, E. Pouget, the daring publisher of Père Peinard, brought out another, ostensibly published in London. Though inelegant in appearance it contains an additional chapter; and it is from this Pouget edition that the present translation has been made. I have adhered as strictly as possible to the text, being unwilling to make either additions or subtractions, though it has sometimes seemed to me that Mr. Grave is unnecessarily diffuse.

As to the principal object of the work, that of furnishing an inclusive criticism of the institutions of our moribund society and the necessity of its speedy dissolution, I think any fair-minded reader will be convinced that it has been pretty thoroughly done. As to the “What next?” it is far less certain.

With this, however, Jean Grave,—sturdy, patient, indomitable Jean Grave, sitting today in his fifth-floor Parisian garret, untouched by his imprisonment, convinced as ever, steadily writing, writing to the workers of the world, casting forth images of the “Future Society,”—would not agree. He is sure of his remedy—Communism; I, of his criticism, Anarchy.

Voltairine de Cleyre.

June, 1899.

PREFACE

[From French edition]

I have a friend who shows a strong desire, a truly touching desire, to understand things. Naturally, he aspires to that which is simple, great and beautiful. But his education, fouled with the prejudices and lies inherent in all the education called “higher,” almost always stops him in his dash towards spiritual deliverance. He would like to free himself completely from traditional ideas, from the ancient routines where his mind is bogged down, despite himself, but he cannot. Often, he comes to see me and we have long talks. The doctrines of anarchism, so maligned by some, so misunderstood by others, greatly concern him; and his honesty is great enough, if not to embrace them all, at least to understand them. He does not believe, as so many people believe in his circles, that those doctrines consist solely in blowing up houses. He glimpses, on the contrary, in a fog that will perhaps dissipate, some beauties and harmonic forms; and he takes an interest in them as we do in a thing that we like, but which seems still a bit terrible to us, and which we dread because we do not understand it well.

My friend has read the admirable books of Kropotkin, and the eloquent, fervent and wise protestations of Elisée Reclus, against the impiety of governments and societies based on crime. Of Bakunin, he knows what the anarchist journals, here and there, have published. He has labored through the uneven Proudhon and the aristocratic Spencer. And recently, the declarations of Etiévant have moved him. All of that sweeps him along, for a moment, toward those heights where the intelligence is purified. But from those brief excursions through the realm of the ideal, he returns more troubled than ever. A thousand obstacles, purely subjective, detain him; he loses himself in an infinity of ifs, ands and buts, an inextricable forest, from which he sometimes asks me to extricate him.

Just yesterday, he confided in me the torment of his soul, and I said to him:

— Grave, whose judicious and manly spirit you know, is going to publish a book: Moribund Society and Anarchy. This book is a masterpiece of logic. It is full of light. This book is not the cry of a blind and narrow-minded sectarian; nor is it the tom-tom beat of an ambitious propagandist; it is the considered, reflective, reasoned work of one who is passionate, it is true, of one “who has faith,” but who knows, compares, questions, analyzes, and who, with a singular lucidity of critique, glides among the facts of social history, the lessons of science, the problems of philosophy, in order to reach those infrangible conclusions of which you are aware, and of which you can deny neither the greatness nor the justice.

My friend sharply interrupted me:

— I deny nothing… I understand, indeed, that Grave, whose ardent campaigns I have followed in La Révolte, dreams of the suppression of the State, for example. Myself, I do not have all his boldness, but I dream of it too. The State bears down on the individual with a weight that is greater, more intolerable each day. Of the man it unnerves and exhausts, it makes only a bundle of flesh to tax. His sole mission is to live for it, as a louse lives on the beast on which it has fixed its suckers. The State takes from the man his money, pitifully acquired in this prison: work; it filches from him at every minute his liberty, already shackled by the laws; from his birth, it kills his individual and administrative faculties, or it distorts them, which amounts to the same thing. Assassin and thief—yes, I am convinced that the State is indeed this sort of double criminal. As soon as a man walks, the State breaks his legs; as soon as he stretches out his arms, the State busts them; as soon as he dares think, the State takes his head, and tells him: “Walk, take, and think.”

— Well? said I.

My friend continued:

— Anarchy, on the contrary, is the winning back of the individual, it is liberty of development for the individual, in a normal and harmonic sense. We can define it, in short, as the spontaneous utilization of all the human energies, criminally squandered by the State! I know that… and understand why all sorts of young artists and thinkers, — the contemporary elite — look forward impatiently to rising to that long-awaited dawn, where they glimpse not only an ideal of justice, but an ideal of beauty.

— Well? said I anew.

— Well, one thing concerns and troubles me, the terrorist side of Anarchy. I detest violent means; I have a horror of blood and death, and I want anarchy to await its triumph from the coming justice alone.

— Do you believe then, I replied, that the anarchists are drinkers of blood? Don’t you feel, on the contrary, all the immense tenderness, the immense love of life, with which the heart of a Kropotkin swells. Alas! Those are struggles inseparable from all human struggles, and against which we can do nothing… So!… do you want me to give you a classical comparison? The earth is parched; all the little plants, all the little flowers are burned by a blazing, by a persistent, deadly sun; they blanch, wilt, and they will die… But then a single cloud darkens the horizon, it advances and covers the blazing sky. Lightning and thunder burst forth, and the waters stream over the shaken earth. What matter if the lightning has broken, here and there, an oak grown too tall, if the little plants that would have died, the little plants watered and refreshed, straighten their stems, and again raise their flowers in the newly calm air?… We should not, you see, be moved too much by the death of the ravenous oaks… Read Grave’s book… Grave has said, in this regard, some excellent things. And if, after having read this book, where so many ideas are turned over and clarified, if after having thought through it, as befits a work of such intellectual stature, you cannot manage to reach a stable and calm opinion, you would be better off, I warn you, to give up becoming the anarchist that you want to be, and remain the good bourgeois, the inveterate and hopeless bourgeois, the bourgeois “despite himself,” that perhaps you are. . .

Octave MIRBEAU.

[This section translated by Shawn P. Wilbur]

Moribund Society and Anarchy.

CHAPTER I.

THE ANARCHISTIC IDEA AND ITS DEVELOPMENT.

Anarchy signifies the negation of authority. Now, authority claims to justify its existence by the necessity of defending social institutions—the family, religion, property, etc.—and it has created a mass of tools to secure it in the exercise of its functions and its sanctioning privilege. Chief among these are the law, the magistracy, the army, the legislative and executive power, etc., so that, forced to reply to all these, the idea of Anarchy had to attack all social prejudices, go to the bottom of all human knowledge, in order to demonstrate that its conceptions were in conformity with the physiological and psychological nature of man and adequate to the observance of natural laws, whilst our present organization, established contrary to all logic and common sense, causes our societies to be unstable, overturned by revolutions, themselves occasioned by the accumulated hatred of those who are crushed under these arbitrary institutions.

In combating authority, then, the Anarchists had to attack every institution of which power had constituted itself the defender, and the necessity for which it seeks to demonstrate in order to justify its own existence. Thus the scope of Anarchistic ideas was widened. Starting out, with a simple political negation, the Anarchist has had to attack economic and social prejudices also, to find a formula which, while denying private property, the basis of our present economic order, should at the same time affirm our aspirations for a future organization. Hence the word Communism naturally came to be coupled with the word Anarchy.

Further on we shall see that certain lovers of the quintessence of abstraction have sought to claim that, from the moment Anarchy signified complete expansion of individuality, the words Anarchy and Communism protested against such a coupling. Against this insinuation we shall prove that individuality cannot develop except in the community; that the latter cannot exist unless the former evolves freely; and that they mutually complement each other.

It is this diversity of problems to attack and to solve which has made the success of Anarchistic ideas, and contributed to their rapid growth; so much so that, launched forth by a group of unknown persons without means of propaganda, they today more or less invade art, science, and literature. Hatred of authority, social demands, date far back; they arise as soon as man is able to recognize that he is oppressed. But through how many phases and systems was it necessary that the idea should pass, before it could assume its present form!

One of the first who formulated it in its intuitional stage was Rabelais, in describing the life of the Abbey of Thelemes. But how obscure it still was! How little he believed it applicable to society in its entirety, since entrance into the community was reserved to a minority of privileged persons attended by a train of domestics attached to their person!

In 1793 the Anarchists were much talked of. Jacques Roux and “the madmen” appear to us to have been the ones who, during the Revolution, saw most clearly, and sought the best means of turning it to the ‘benefit of the people. Hence the bourgeois historians have left them in the shade. Their history is still to be written; the documents buried in the archives and the libraries still await him who shall have the time and the courage to dig them up, bring them to light, and reveal the secret of things still very incomprehensible to us, in that tragic period of history. We can therefore scarcely form any appreciation of their program. One must come down to Proudhon before he sees Anarchy positing itself as the adversary of authority and power, and beginning to take definite shape. But as yet it is but a theoretical enemy; practically, Proudhon, in his social organization, leaves in existence, under different names, the administrative machinery which is the very essence of government. Up to the end of the empire Anarchy appears under the form of a vague mutualism, which, in France, during the first years that followed the Commune, foundered in the misled and misleading movement of co-operative associations for production and consumption. But before coming to this impotent solution, a sprout had detached itself from the springing tree. In Switzerland, the International had given birth to the “Jurassian Federation” in which Bakounine propagated the idea of Proudhon,—Anarchy the enemy of authority—but developing, enlarging, incarnating it in social demands. From this epoch dates the true dawn of the present Anarchist movement.

Certainly many prejudices still existed, many illogical notions appeared in the ideas promulgated. The propagandist organization still contained many of the germs of authoritarianism; many of the elements of the authoritarian conception still survived. But what of it? The movement was launched; the idea grew, purified itself, and became more and more defined. And when, not quite thirteen years ago, Anarchy was affirmed at the Congres du Centre, in France, though still very feeble, though the act of a very weak minority (having against it not only those satisfied with the present social order, but also those pseudo-revolutionaries who only see in popular demands a means of grasping at power) the idea contained sufficient expansive force to take root without any other means of propaganda than the fervor of its adherents. It had sufficient vigor to induce the supporters of the capitalistic regime to injure and persecute it, and men of good faith to discuss it,—a proof of strength and vitality. Hence, in spite of the crusade of those who could consider themselves, in some degree, leaders of any of the divers divisions of public opinion, in spite of calumnies, excommunications, condemnations, in spite of the prison, the idea of Anarchy has made headway. Groups have been founded, propagandist organs have been created in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, England, Norway, America, Australia, in the Slavic tongue, in German, Jewish, Tcheque, Armenian,—a little everywhere and in all idioms. But what is more important, from the little group of mal-contents by whom they were formulated, Anarchistic ideas have radiated through all classes of society. Wherever man displays his cerebral activity they have infiltrated. Art, science, literature, are impregnated with the new ideas and serve as vehicles for them. These ideas commenced at first in unconscious formulas, in illy-defined aspirations, more often caprices than real convictions. Today not only are Anarchistic ‘aspirations formulated, but men know that it is Anarchy they are spreading, and boldly place the label on it.

The Anarchists are not, then, the only ones to find that things are bad, and to desire a change. These complaints, these aspirations, are expressed by the very persons who believe themselves defenders of the capitalistic order. Still more, men begin to feel that they ought not to confine themselves to sterile desires, but should work for the realization of what they demand. They begin to understand and proclaim action, propaganda by deed; that is to say, that having made the comparison between the pleasure which the satisfaction of acting as one thinks is bound to bring, and the annoyances which one must endure for the violation of a social law, they try, more and more, to conform their life to their manner of conceiving things, according to the degree of resistance which the particular temperament may offer to the harassments of social prosecution.

That Anarchistic ideas have been able to develop with this energy and rapidity, is because, while running counter to accepted opinions and established prejudices, while frightening, at the first exposition, those to whom they were addressed, they were answers, on the other hand, to their secret sentiments, their undefined aspirations. They offered to humanity, in a concrete form, that ideal of well-being and liberty which it had scarcely dared to outline in its hopeful dreams. At first they frightened their opponents, because they preached hatred or contempt of a number of institutions believed to be necessary to the life of society; because they demonstrated, contrary to received ideas, that these institutions are bad in the very essence, and not because intrusted to the hands of weak or wicked individuals. They taught the people that not only must the latter not be contented with changing the persons in power, with partially modifying the institutions which govern them, but that, before all, the people must destroy that which makes men bad, which makes it possible for a minority to make use of social forces to oppress the majority; they taught that what until now has been taken for the cause of the evils from which humanity suffers, is but the effect of a still more profound evil, that it is the very basis of society which must be attacked. Now, we have observed in the beginning that the basis of society is private property. Authority has but one excuse for existence: the defense of capital. Bureaucracy, the family, the army, the magistracy, flow directly from private property. The work of the Anarchists, then, has been to demonstrate the iniquity of the monopoly of the soil and of the fruits of the labor of past generations, by an idle minority; to sap authority by showing it to be detrimental to human development, by exposing it in its role of protector to the privileged, by proving the emptiness of the principles under cover of which it justifies its institutions.

That which contributed to alienate the ambitious and intriguing from Anarchistic teachings was just that which led the thinker to study them, to question himself as to their message, viz., that they offered no place to personal preoccupations or paltry ambitions, and could in no way serve as a stepping-stone to those who see, in the demands of the workers, nothing but a means of carving themselves a position among the exploiters. The butterflies of politics have nothing to do in the ranks of the Anarchists. Little or no chance for petty personal vanities, no procession of candidatures opening a career to all kinds of hopes, and all sorts of recantations. In the political and authoritarian Socialist parties an ambitious person can bring about his “ conversion” by insensible degrees; no one perceives that he has changed till long after the conversion is accomplished. Among the Anarchists this is impossible, because he who would consent to accept any office whatever In the present society, after having demonstrated that all those who are in office cannot remain there except on condition that they become defenders of the existing system, would at the same moment incur the epithet of renegade, for he could have no semblance of a reason to justify “evolution.” Thus that which provoked the hatred of intriguers at the same time awakened the spirit-of investigation in honest men; and this explains the rapid progress of the Anarchistic idea.

What reply, indeed, can be made to those who prove to you that if you want a thing well done you must do it yourself, and delegate it to nobody? With what can you reproach those who make you see that if you wish to be free, you must commission no one to “direct” you? What answer is there to those who ‘ show you the causes of the ills from which you suffer, indicate the remedy to you, but do not make themselves the dispensers of it,—on the contrary, taking care to make people understand that the individual alone is able to comprehend his own needs, is the judge of what he should avoid?

Ideas strong enough to inspire men with a conviction which makes them fight and suffer for the propagation thereof, without expecting anything directly from those ideas, were, in the eyes of sincere men, worth being studied; and that is what has happened. Hence without heeding the clamors of some, the rancor of others, the attempts of governments, the idea grows and progresses without cessation, proving to the bourgeoisie that the truth can neither be suppressed nor silenced. Sooner or later it will be reckoned with.

Anarchy has its victims,—its dead, its imprisoned, its exiled; but it remains alive and strong, the number of its propagandists constantly increasing;—propagandists conscious of their acts, because they have understood all the beauty of the conception; accidental propagandists also, content with hurling their cries of hate against the institution which has clashed most with their secret sentiments and their instincts of justice and truth.

By its amplitude the Anarchistic idea shelters and draws to it all those who have the feeling of personal dignity, the thirst after the beautiful and true. Should not the ideal of man be released from all fetters, all constraint? Have not all the divers revolutions he has wrought, pursued this end? If he still submits to the authority of his exploiters, if the human mind still struggles under the pressure of the vulgarities of capitalistic society, it is because accepted ideas, routine, prejudice, and ignorance, have been till now stronger than its dreams and desires for emancipation, precipitating it, after it has driven away the reigning masters, into a fresh abandonment of them, at the very moment it expects to free itself. Anarchistic ideas have come to bring light into the minds not only of the workers, but also of thinkers of every category; helping them to analyze their own feelings, stripping bare the causes of misery and indicating the means of destroying them, showing to all the route to follow and the end to be attained, explaining why previous revolutions have been abortive. It is this close relation with the secret sentiments of individuals which explains their rapid extension, which gives them their strength and renders them irrepressible. Governmental fury, oppressive measures, the rage of frustrated ambition, may set themselves against the ideas and their propagators; today the opening is made; they can no longer be prevented from making headway, from becoming the ideal of the disinherited, the motors of their attempts at emancipation.

Capitalistic society is so paltry, so narrow; large aspirations find themselves so cramped in it; it annihilates so many good intents, so many hopes, crushing and killing so many individualities that cannot stoop to its narrow views, that, could it succeed in stifling the voice of every living Anarchist, its oppressions would raise up new ones, equally implacable.

CHAPTER II.

INDIVIDUALISM AND SOLIDARITY.

“Anarchy and Communism protest against being coupled together,” declared certain dishonest adversaries, little anxious to throw light upon the question. “Communism is an organization; an organization prevents the development of individuality;—we will have none of it!” “We are individualists, we are Anarchists; nothing more!” exclaimed after them certain persons, sincere in the sense that they desired to appear more advanced than all their comrades, and having no originality their own. They entangled themselves in exaggerations, pushing the ideas to absurdity; and around them collected the whom the governing class has an interest in introducing among its adversaries, to divide or mislead them.

Now, behold those Anarchists launched into discussions Anarchy, Communism, the initiative, organization; the harmful useful influence of groups; egoism and altruism; in fine, lot of things one more absurd than the other. For, after being thoroughly discussed by honest opponents, the end of it is that all want the same thing, though calling it by different name. As a matter of fact the Anarchists who demand Communism are the first to recognize that the individual has not been put into the world for society’s sake; that, on the contrary, the latte has been formed solely for the purpose of furnishing the former greater facility for evolution. It is quite plain that when certain number of persons group together and unite their forces they have in view the obtaining of a greater sum of enjoyment with a less expenditure of energy. In nowise have they the intention of sacrificing their initiative, their will, their individuality, for the benefit of an entity which did not exist before their union, which will disappear with their dispersion. To economize their forces while continuing to wrest from nature the things necessary to their existence, and which they could not obtain but by the concentration of their efforts, was certainly the motive which guided those human beings who first commenced to group themselves; or what, at least, must have been tacitly understood as such, if not completely reasoned out in their primitive associations, which associations might well be, even had to be, temporary and limited to the duration of the effort, falling apart when the result was once attained.

No Anarchist, therefore, thinks of subordinating the existence of the individual to the progress of society. Freedom of the people, complete freedom in all their modes of action, is all we ask. And if there be those who repudiate organization, who swear by the individual alone, who say that they despise the community, declaring that the egoism of the individual should be his only rule of conduct, and that the adoration of his ego should come before and above all humanitarian considerations, —believing themselves to be therein more advanced than others —such people can never have studied the psychological and physiological nature of man, never have given themselves an account of their own feelings; they have no idea of what constitutes the real life of man, its physical, moral, and intellectual needs.

Our present society exhibits some of these perfect egoists: the Delobelles, the Hjalmar Eikdals, are not rare; they are found not only in romances. Without meeting any great number of them, it is sometimes given to us to run up against these types who think only of themselves, who see nothing in life but their own persons. If there is a tempting bit on the table they appropriate it without scruple. They live largely outside while their folks at home are dying of hunger. They accept the sacrifices of all who surround them,—father, mother, wife, children—as their due, while they shamelessly put on dignified airs and take their ease. The sufferings of others are not counted, provided that their own existence runs smoothly. Still worse, they do not even perceive that others suffer for them and through them. When they are fed and well-disposed, humanity is satisfied and refreshed! Behold the type of your perfect egoist in the absolute sense of the word! -But we may also add it is the type of a very sorry individual. The most repugnant bourgeois does not even approach this type; he, at times, still has love for his own people, or at least something akin to it which takes its place. We do not believe that the sincere partisans of the most exaggerated individualism have ever had the intention of giving us this type as the ideal of future humanity; no more than the Communist-Anarchists have meant to preach abnegation and renunciation for the individual in the society which they anticipate. Disclaiming the entity “society,” they equally disclaim that other entity, the “individual,” which those who have carried the theory to absurdity tend to create.

The individual has a right to his entire liberty, to the satisfaction of all his needs; that is understood. Only, as there exist more than a billion of individuals on the earth, with equal rights if not with equal needs, it follows that all these rights must be satisfied without encroaching on one another; otherwise that would be oppression, which would render the success of the revolution futile.

What tends greatly to befog our ideas is that this adulterate society which governs us, based upon the antagonism of interests, has made people prey upon one another, and forces them to tear each other to pieces in order to secure to themselves the possibility of living. In the existing society one must be either robber or robbed; there is no middle way. Today the one who helps a neighbor runs great risk of being duped; hence the belief, among those who do not reason, that men cannot live without fighting each other. The Anarchists, however, say that society should be based on the strictest solidarity. In that society which they wish to realize, it must not be that individual happiness, were it only in its very least important division, be attained at the expense of another individual. Personal well-being must flow from the general well-being; when an individual feels himself injured in his autonomy or in his belongings, all other individuals must feel the same injury in order that they may remedy it. So long as this ideal is not realized, so long as this goal is not reached, societies will be but arbitrary organizations, against which persons who feel themselves wronged will have the right to revolt.

If men could live isolated, if they could return to the state of nature, there would be no discussion as to how they should live: each would live as he pleased. The earth is big enough to accommodate everybody. But would the earth, if left to itself, furnish sufficient for all to live upon? This is less certain. It would probably mean ferocious war between individuals, the “struggle for existence” of the early ages, in all its fury. It would be the cycle of evolution already run through and recommencing,—the stronger oppressing the weaker until superseded by the cunning, until money-value should displace force-value. If we have had to traverse this period of blood, of misery and exploitation, which is called the history of humanity, it is because man has been egoistic in the absolute sense of the word, without any corrective, without any mitigation. He has had in view from the outset of all his associations, nothing but the satisfaction of his immediate desires. Whenever he has been able to enslave a weaker fellow he has done so without scruple, seeing only the amount of work to be got out of the victim, without reflecting that the necessity of surveillance, the revolts he will have to suppress, will end, in the long run, in compelling him to perform an equally onerous labor, and that it would be better to work side by side, lending each other mutual aid.

It is thus that authority and property have succeeded in establishing themselves. Now, if we wish to overturn them, it cannot be done by beginning our past evolution over again. If this theory that the motive of the individual should be egoism pure and simple,—the adoration and culture of the ego,—were admitted, one would necessarily declare that the individual should launch into the melee and work to gain the means of self-gratification without concerning himself as to whether he crushes others at his side. To affirm this would be to confess that the coming revolution should be made by and for the strong, that the new society must be a perpetual conflict between individuals. If it were so we should have no reason to proclaim the idea of general enfranchisement. We should rebel against the existing society only because its capitalistic organization did not permit us likewise to possess.

It may be that among those calling themselves Anarchists there are some who regard the question from this standpoint. This would explain to us the defections and recantations of persons who, after having been most ardent, have deserted their principles to range themselves among the defenders of the existing society, because it offered them compensations. Certainly we do combat this society because it does not afford us satisfaction for all our aspirations; but we also comprehend that our own interests, rightly understood, would have this satisfaction of our needs extended to all the members of society. Man is always egoistic, he always tends to make of his ego the centre of the universe. But with the development of his intelligence he comes to understand that if his ego wishes to be satisfied there are other egos that equally wish to be satisfied, (those that have not been have made it understood that they had a right to be) whence sentimentalists and mystics have come to preach renunciation, sacrifice, devotion to one’s neighbor.

Social authority, while continuing to preach the oppression of the individual for the sake of the collectivity—this dogma has contributed to its maintenance even as much as force has— social authority has had to modify itself, to concede a larger share to individuality. For if narrow, badly understood egoism is opposed to the functioning of society, renunciation and the spirit of sacrifice are fatal to individuality. To sacrifice oneself for others, above all when they are indifferent to you, does not enter into every one’s disposition. And besides it would, in the long run, be even prejudicial to humanity, for it would allow narrow minds, egoistic in the the bad sense of the word, to rule; that type of humanity farthest from perfect would come to absorb the others. Altruism, properly so-called, could not, therefore, take root either.

But though egoism or altruism, separately, each pushed to its extreme, is pernicious to the individual and society, united they are resolved into a third term, which is the law of future societies. This law is Solidarity.

Many of us will combine with the intention of realizing one of our aspirations. This association having nothing forced in it, nothing arbitrary, prompted only by some need of our being, it is quite evident that the more pressing the need the more force and activity shall we contribute to the association. All having cooperated in production, we shall all have rights in consumption; that is plain; but as the sum of needs will have been calculated (counting in those which must be foreseen) that the satisfaction of all may be attained, solidarity will have no trouble in securing to each his share. Is it not said that man’s nature is to have his eyes bigger than his stomach? Now, the more intense his desire is the greater an amount of activity will he devote to its realization. Thus he will come to produce not only sufficient to satisfy the co-participants, but also those in whom desire would not have been awakened but for the sight of the thing produced. Man’s needs being infinite, infinite will be his means of satisfying them, and it is this variety of needs which will concur in the establishment of general harmony.

In our present society, wherein we are accustomed to depend upon the toil of others to obtain the things necessary for existence, there is but one object: to procure money enough to enable one to buy what he wants. Now, as manual labor does not even enable one to keep himself from starving, he who has only this resource, seeks to obtain money by every means except work, becoming an official, journalist, or what-not, including blackmailer. He who has a start goes into commerce and increases his income by robbing his contemporaries; he gambles in stocks, he speculates, or makes others work for him. People engage in all %orts of occupations, more or less dishonorable, except the one thing necessary that all might have their share,—useful production. So that each one pulls the cover over himself without concerning himself about those whom he lays naked, whence this unreasoned egoism which seems to have become the sole motive of human actions.

But as man grows refined, he comes also to live not only for himself and in himself. The type of the humane egoist, perfectly developed, is to suffer with the sufferings of those who surround him, to have his enjoyment spoiled by the reflection that others, owing to the vicious social organization in which we live, may suffer by it. Among the bourgeoisie there are persons whose sensitiveness is certainly highly developed; when the influences of environment, education, or heredity, leave them leisure to reflect upon social misery and turpitude; when they reckon up their existence, they try as much as possible to remedy misery with charity. Whence, philanthropic works! But the habit of believing society normally constituted, the habit of considering poverty eternal, the result of the laborer’s misconduct, engenders an unfeeling character, inquisitorial in its philanthropy. Because for the man born, educated, brought up in the hothouses of wealth and luxury, it is very difficult, even impossible, save under exceptional circumstances, to come to doubt the legitimacy of the situation he occupies. For the parvenu it is still more difficult, for he believes he owes his situation to his talent and his work. Religion, conceit, and the economists, have so reiterated that work is a punishment, that poverty is the result of the improvidence of those who are a prey to it, that how can you expect him who has never had to struggle against adversity not to believe himself of a superior essence! From the day he begins to doubt it, sets himself to study the social organization, if he is sufficiently endowed to understand its viciousness, his pleasures will be poisoned at their fountainhead. This man will suffer when he says to himself that his luxury necessitates the misery of a mass of workers, that every one of his possessions is purchased at the expense of the sufferings of those who are sacrificed to produce them. If this man’s combativeness is developed equally with his sensitiveness he will make one more rebel against the social order which does not secure moral and intellectual satisfaction even to him. For it must not be forgotten that the social problem is not confined to a simple material question. We certainly do contend, and that before everything else, that all should have enough to eat. But our demands are not limited to this; we also contend that each should be able to develop himself according to his faculties, and to procure those intellectual gratifications which the needs of his brain create. True that for many Anarchists the question stops there; and that is what has brought about these divers interpretations and discussions of egoism, altruism, etc. Nothing more urgent than the stomach question! Only it would be dangerous to the success of the revolution to stop there, for then one might just as well accept the Socialistic State, which could, and would, secure all in the satisfaction of their physical needs.

If the next revolution were to confine its objects to the sole problem of material life, it would greatly risk being arrested or the way, degenerating into a vast revel of gluttony, which, the orgy once over, would not be long in surrendering the insurgent: to the blows of capitalistic reaction. Happily this problem, paramount today to the workingmen whose future is rendered uncertain by more and more prolonged periods of idleness, as we admit, is not the only one which will be solved in the next revolution. Without doubt the first work of the Anarchists towards making the revolution a success, will be to seize social wealth, to call upon the disinherited to take possession of stores, machinery, and the soil; to install themselves in healthy localities, destroying the rat-holes in which they are forced to remain today. The revolutionists should destroy all the old parchments which guarantee the functioning of property; the offices of bailiffs, notaries, register of land surveys, register of deeds, the entire civil staff, should be visited and “cleaned out.” But to do all this work something more than famishing people is needed,—individuals, conscious of their individuality, jealous of all their rights, determined to conquer them and capable of defending them once they are acquired. This is why a question of subsistence only would be powerless to effect such a transformation; and it is also why there rise up, together with the right to subsistence which the Anarchists demand, all these questions of art, science, and philosophy, which they are forced to study, to fathom, to elucidate, and which are the cause of Anarchistic ideas embracing every branch of human science. Everywhere have arguments in favor of these ideas been found, everywhere there have risen up adherents who furnished their quota of demands, and reinforced the principles with their special knowledge. The sum of human learning is so great that the most privileged brains can appropriate only a portion; likewise the conception of Anarchism though condensed by certain minds which outline its bases and trace its program, cannot be elucidated but by the collaboration of all, by the help of each one’s knowledge. And this it is which gives it its strength, for it is the collaboration of all which enables it to sum up all human aspirations.

CHAPTER III.

TOO ABSTRACT.

“You are too abstract!” This is an objection frequently raised against the Anarchists by many people. They say that since we address ourselves to the workers we should make man fruitful propaganda if we should take up less elevated subjects By the preceding chapters we have seen that it is the development of the ideas themselves which has drawn us into the treatment of questions not always within the scope of those whom w address; this is a fatality to which we submit and against which we can do nothing. To those who are just beginning to nibble at the social question our writings may often appear dry; this we do not deny. But can we alter the fact that the question: which we treat and which must be treated, are dry in them’ selves? Can we prevent the principles which we defend, linked together as they are, identified with every branch of human knowledge, from leading those who wish to elucidate them to study things they did not before deem necessary? And, moreover, has not all this preparatory work to which they would condemn us, been already performed by our predecessors, the Socialists? Do not the capitalistic classes themselves work for the demolition of their society? Are not all ambitious radicals, Socialists more or less deeply dyed, bent upon demonstrating to the workers that the present society can do nothing for them; that it must be changed?

The Anarchists therefore have only to analyze this enormous work, to coordinate it, to extract its essence. Their role is limited to proving that it is not by changing governors that the ills from which we suffer may be cured; that it is not by merely modifying the machinery of the social organism that we shall prevent it from producing those evil effects which the very bourgeois, desirous of getting into power, knows so well how. to show up. But our task is complicated precisely because the ideas which we advocate are abstract. If, indeed, we were willing to content ourselves with declamations and assertions, the task would be rendered easy, both for us and for our readers. The more difficult the problems to be solved the more need is there to acquaint ourselves with arguments and logic. It is easy to say and write, “Comrades, the bosses rob us! The bourgeoisie are drunkards! Rulers are scoundrels! We must rebel, kill the capitalists, set fire to the factories!” Moreover, before any one wrote it the exploited had sometimes killed their exploiters, the governed had revolted, the poor had rebelled against the rich; yet the situation was in nowise altered. They had changed rulers. In 1789 property changed hands; subsequently the people revolted, hoping thereby to force it to change hands again. Yet the governing continued to oppress the governed, the rich continued to live at the expense of the exploited; nothing was altered. Since it was written the people have likewise revolted, and nothing is altered. Hence it is not a question of saying or writing that the laborer is exploited; it is necessary to explain to him above all how in changing masters he does not cease to be exploited, and how, were he to put himself in his master’s place, he would in turn become an exploiter, leaving behind him the exploited who would then make against him the same complaints he now makes against those he would like to have dispossessed. It is necessary to make him understand further how the capitalistic classes have interested him in the existing society, persuaded him to defend the privileges of his exploiters while he believes himself defending his own interests in an organization which, in fact, has nothing for him but promises never to be realized.

By its organization, based upon the antagonism of interests, our bourgeois society charges itself with the task of bringing the workers to a revolution. Now, the workers have always made revolutions, but have forever allowed the benefits thereof to be juggled away, because they “did not know.” The role of the propagandist, then, is to teach the workers; and to teach them one must give demonstrations to them. Assertion makes believers, but not conscious ones. At the time when, even for the most advanced Socialists, authority was the basis of all organization, there was nothing wrong in having mere believers. On the contrary it facilitated the task of those who set themselves up as directors. One could go ahead with assertions; one was believed according to the degree of authority he had been clever enough to acquire; and as the directors did not exact of their proselytes a knowledge of why they were to act, but only to “believe” strongly enough to make them blindly obey received orders, they had no need of killing themselves to furnish arguments. Believing in providential men who were to think and act for them, the mass of proselytes did not need to learn much. Had not the leaders a plan of social organization already prepared in their heads, which they would hasten to execute once they were carried into power? To know how to fight and kill each other, that was all they asked the common herd to know and to do. The leaders once in power the dear people had nothing to do but wait; everything would come to them at the proper time without their troubling themselves about it.

But Anarchistic principles have come to overthrow all this. Denying the necessity of providential men, making war upon authority, and claiming for each individual the right and the duty to act under the pressure of his own impulses only, of submitting to no constraint or restriction of his autonomy; proclaiming individual initiative as the basis of all progress and of every truly libertarian association, Anarchism cannot content itself with making believers; it must, above all, aim to convince, that its converts may know why they believe, that the arguments with which they have been furnished may have struck home, that they may have weighed, discussed and considered the value of these for themselves. Hence a propaganda more difficult, more arduous, more abstract, but also more effective.

From the moment the individual relies solely on his own initiative, he must be enabled to exercise it effectively. That such initiative may adapt itself freely to the action of other individuals, it must be conscious, reasoned, based upon the logic of the natural order of facts. That all these separate acts may converge to a common end, they must be animated by a common idea, well understood and clearly elaborated; whence it follows that nothing but a close, logical, and thoroughly defined discussion of the principles can open the minds of those who adopt them, and lead such to reflect for themselves. Hence our method of procedure, which, instead of causing us to get a lot of rhetorical fireworks out of any idea we take up, leads us to turn it over in all its aspects, to dissect it, even to its final toms, in order to extract from it the greatest possible amount of argument.

Ah, it is no small thing to overthrow a society as we talk of doing, above all when it is desired that this social upheaval shall be universal as we wish it to be! It is clear that the people who compose this society, however cruel it may be to them, are not going to see the necessity of its overthrow as we do, all in a moment, having been accustomed to look upon it as the palladium of their safety and the means of their well-being. They know very well that this society does not furnish them what it has promised, but they cannot understand the necessity for its total destruction. Has not every one his little reform to propose, which is to grease the wheels and make the machine run to the satisfaction of all? They want, therefore, to know whether this upheaval will be profitable or prejudicial to them, whence arise a mass of questions leading to the discussion of every branch of human knowledge, in order to know whether they will survive in the cataclysm we would provoke. And hence the perplexity of the worker who sees unfolding before him a multitude of questions which they took good care not to teach him at school, discussions which it is very hard for him to follow, subjects which for the most part he hears treated of for the first time;—questions, however, which he must study to the bottom and solve if he desires to be able to profit by this autonomy which he demands, if he does not want to use his initiative to his own detriment, and, more than all, if he wishes to get on without providential men.

When a question, however abstract it may be, presents itself to the investigations of the Anarchist propagandist, he cannot make it otherwise than abstract; nor can he pass it by in silence, under the pretext that those to whom he speaks have never heard of it. To explain it in plain, clear, precise, and concise language; to avoid “thousand-legged words,” as one of our comrades puts it,—that is words which are understood only by the initiated;—to avoid burying one’s thought in high-flown and redundant phraseology, or seeking after phrases and effects, this is all that can be done by those who have it at heart to propagate the principles, to spread them and make them understood among the masses; but we cannot mutilate them with the excuse that they are not accessible to the people. If it were necessary to evade every question which the majority of readers are not able to understand upon first enunciation, we should be condemned to return to declamation, to the art of stringing out meaningless phrases one after the other, and saying nothing. This role is too well played by the bourgeois rhetoricians for us to attempt to supersede them in it. If the workers want to emancipate themselves they must understand that this emancipation will not come of itself; that they must obtain it; and that self-education is one of the forms of the social struggle. The possibility and the continuance of their exploitation by the capitalistic class proceed from their ignorance. They must know how to free themselves intellectually if they wish to be able to free themselves materially. If they already recoil before the difficulties of mental emancipation, which depends solely upon their own willingness, what then will it be before the difficulties of a more active struggle in which it will be necessary to expend an altogether incommensurate force of character and amount of will! Useless and injurious as it is, the bourgeoisie has nevertheless succeeded in concentrating in the brains of a few all the scientific knowledge necessary to the present development of humanity. If we do not want the revolution to be a step backward, the worker must be able intellectually to replace the bourgeoisie which he wishes to overthrow; his ignorance must not be an obstacle to the development of sciences already acquired. If he does not know them thoroughly he must be able to comprehend them when he finds himself in their presence.

To be sure we quite understand all this impatience; we can imagine that those who are hungry would like to see the dawning of the day when they will be able to appease their hunger: we are perfectly aware that those who submit to the yoke of authority only by suppressing their anger, are impatient to shake it off, desirous of listening to words in conformity with their condition of mind, reminding them of their hatreds, their desires, their aspirations, their thirst for justice. But however jreat this impatience, however legitimate the demands and the iced of realizing them, the idea advances only by degrees, penetrates the mind and lodges there only when matured and elaborated. When we consider that the bourgeoisie which we wish to overthrow took centuries of preparation before it overturned the royalty, it should cause us to reflect upon the work of elaboration which we have to do. In the fourteenth century, when Etienne Marcel attempted to seize the power for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, already organized in corporations, the bourgeois class already felt itself to be strong; for a long time it had been aspiring to authority and had organized itself for that purpose, had educated and developed itself, had worked for its enfranchisement by endeavoring to obtain from the baronage the freedom of the communes. It was not, however, till four centuries later that it succeeded in winning the long coveted boon.

Assuredly we hope not to have to wait so long for our enfranchisement and the overthrow of capitalistic exploitation. Its complete collapse at the end of so short a period of power is hurrying it on to a speedy fall. Yet if the bourgeoisie was able in 1789 to substitute itself for “divine right,” it was because it had prepared itself intellectually for such substitution; and the more rapid the downfall the more haste should we workers make to prepare ourselves intellectually, not to replace the power which we must destroy but to organize ourselves so as to prevent any aristocracy’s substituting itself for that which has given way. The idea of free individual initiative once being established, people should be enabled (we cannot repeat it too often) to learn how to reason and to combine their initiative. If they have not the will to deliver themselves from their own ignorance, how will they be able to make others understand when they themselves have not been able to learn? Let us have no fear, then, of discussing the most abstract questions; each solution obtained is a step forward on the pathway of emancipation. Leaders being discarded, the knowledge hitherto in their possession must be diffused among the masses; and there is but one means of bringing it within their reach, which is, that, while continuing to go forward we persuade them to interest themselves in questions which interest us. Once more: Let us make ourselves as clear as possible; but let us not mutilate ourselves for then, instead of bringing the masses to us we should be brought to them; instead of going forward we should go back ward,—truly a queer way of understanding progress.

CHAPTER IV.

IS MAN EVIL?

It is upon the contention that “ man is too evil to know to govern himself,” that authoritarians base their justification of the power they wish to establish. “ Power is necessary to reform mankind “ is the reply to the Anarchists when they speak of establishing a society based upon solidarity, entire equality, and absolute autonomy for the individual, without authority, rule, or constraint. “Man is evil.” Undoubtedly! But may he become better, and may he become worse? Is any change in his present condition possible, either for good or ill? Can he be improved or deteriorated physiologically and morally? And if evolution in one sense or another be possible (as history proves that it is) does the heritage of ancient laws, the harness of old institutions, tend to make men better, or do they help to make him worse? The answer to this question will tell us which of the two, modern man or the social state, must be reformed first.

Nowadays no one denies that the physical environment has an enormous influence upon the physiological constitution of man; now, with still greater reason the intellectual and moral environment must influence his psychological constitution.

Upon what is our present society based? Does it tend to create harmony among men? Is it so managed that the adversity of, one shall be felt by others, in order that all may be led to diminish or prevent it? Does personal well-being flow from general well-being, and is no one interested in disturbing the operation thereof? This society of kings, priests, merchants, and employers—does it permit all generous ideas to come forth, or does it not rather tend to stifle them? Has it not at its command, for the purpose of crushing the weak, this brute force—money—which puts the most generous and least egoistic at the mercy of the most greedy and least scrupulous?

To study the mechanism of capitalistic society is sufficient to discover that it can produce nothing good. Aspirations towards lie good and the beautiful must be perennial in the human race, rot to have been choked by the rapacity and narrow, unreasoning egoism which official society has inculcated in it from the cradle. This society, as we have observed in the preceding chapter, is based upon the antagonism of interests, and makes every individual the enemy of his neighbor. The seller’s interest is opposed to the buyer’s; the stock-raiser and the agriculturist ask for nothing better than a “good epidemic and a good hailstorm” among their neighbors, in order to raise the price of their commodities, when they do not have recourse to the State which “protects” them, while seizing, by virtue of “superior right,” the products of their competitors; the development of mechanical appliances tends to greater and greater division of the workers, throwing them out of employment and leading them to disputes among themselves for the chance to take each other’s jobs, and the number of these is increasing largely beyond the demand. In fine, everything in our traditional’ “society” tends to split up mankind.

Why is there idleness and misery at the present moment? Because the stores are glutted with products. How is it that it has not yet occurred to anybody to set them on fire or take possession of them, and thus procure that employment which is refused, by creating among the workers themselves the markets which their exploiters go so far to seek?—“Because we are afraid of the soldiers and militia,” does some one say? This fear is real, but it does not of itself suffice to explain the apathy of the starving. How many occasions present themselves in the course of one’s life to do wrong without the slightest risk, and yet one does not commit it for other reasons than for fear of the soldiery. And besides, the starving, if they should all unite, are numerous enough, in Paris, for instance, not to be afraid of the troops, to hold the police-force in check for a whole day, empty the stores, and have a good feast for once. In the case of those who go to prison for tramping and begging, is it in reality the fear of prison which makes them beg for that which it would cost them no more to take? It is because in addition to cowardice there is a sentiment ‘of sociability which prevents people from returning evil for evil, and makes them submit to the heaviest shackles in the belief that these are necessary to the functioning of society. Does any one believe that force alone would suffice to insure respect for property, were it not mingled in the people’s minds with a character of legitimacy which makes them accept it as the result of individual labor? Have the severest penalties ever prevented those who, without troubling themselves whether it were legitimate or not, have wished to live at the expense of others, from carrying out their intents? What would it be, then, if people, studying over their misery and discovering its cause in property, were of a nature so given to evil as is popularly alleged? Society would not endure another moment; there would then be “the struggle for existence” in its most ferocious expression, a return to pure barbarism. It is precisely because man has tended towards what is better, that he has allowed himself to be ruled, enslaved, deceived, exploited, and still repudiates violent measures to effect his final enfranchisement.

This declaration that “man is born to evil,” and that there is no change to hope for, means, when analyzed: “Man is bad society is therefore bad, and there is nothing to hope for, either from one or the other. What is the use of losing one’s time in seeking for a perfection which humanity cannot attain? Let us look out for ourselves as best we can. If the sum of gratifications we obtain is made up of the tears and blood of the victim we have sown along our route, what does it matter to us? On must crush others to escape being crushed himself. So much the worse for those who fall.”—Well, let the privileged one who have thus far managed to bolster up their sway, to send the workers to sleep, to transform them into defenders of their masters’ privileges, first by promising them a better life in the other world, then, when they ceased to believe in God, by preaching to them morality, patriotism, social utility, etc., and today by making them hope to gain, through universal suffrage, a multitude of reforms and improvements impossible to effect, (for the ills which flow from the very essence of the social organization cannot be prevented so long as we attack the effects only, without finding the cause, so long as society itself be not transformed)—let the exploiters of the poor, then, proclaim the unadulterated right of force, and we shall see how long their sway will last! Force will balance force.

When man first began to group together with his fellows, he must still have been much more of an animal than a human being; ideas of morality and justice did not exist in him. Having had to struggle against other animals, against all nature, his first groups were formed out of the necessity for an association of forces, not by the desire for solidarity. No doubt these associations were, as we have already said, temporary at the start, limited to the capture of the game to be hunted or the overthrow of the obstacle to be conquered, later to the repulse or killing of an assailant. It was only by thus practicing association that men were brought to understand its importance; and the societies thus formed continued to live and became permanent. But on the other hand this life of continual struggle could not help developing the sanguinary and despotic instinct in people. The weaker had to submit to the rule of the stronger when they did not serve the latter as food. It could not have been till much later that cunning gained a precedence equal to that of force.

When we study man in his earliest appearance it must be admitted that he was then a wicked enough animal indeed; but since he has reached his present development and formed conceptions of which he was formerly incapable, what reason is there why he should stop and go no further? To attempt to deny that man may still progress is to be as much in error as if one had affirmed, at the time he dwelt in caves and had nothing but a club or a stone weapon as a means of defense, that he would not one day become capable of building the opulent cities of today, of utilizing electricity and steam. Why shall man, who has reached the point of guiding the selection of domestic animals in the direction of his needs, not reach the point of guiding his own tastes in the direction of the good and beautiful of which he begins to have conceptions? Little by little man has evolved and does evolve every day. His ideas are constantly modified. Physical force, though sometimes thrusting itself upon him, is no longer admired in the same degree. Ideas of morality, of justice, of solidarity have developed; they have so much weight that the privileged, to succeed in maintaining their privileges, are obliged to make people believe themselves exploited and gagged in their own interest. This deception cannot last. People begin to feel themselves too cramped in this illy-balanced society. Aspirations which began to come to light centuries ago, at first isolated and incomplete, today begin to assume definite shape; they are found even among those who may be classed among the privileged of the present organization. There is not a single person who has not at times uttered his cry of revolt or indignation against this society, still governed by the dead, which seems to have undertaken the task of crushing all our sentiments, acts, aspirations, and from which we suffer the more in proportion to our development. Ideas of liberty and justice are becoming more defined; those who proclaim them are still in the minority, but a minority strong enough to make the possessing classes uneasy and afraid.

Man, then, like all other animals, is but the product of an evolution worked out under the influence of the environment in which he lives and the conditions of existence he is forced to submit to or combat; only, more than other animals, or at least in a higher degree, has he come to reason upon his origin, to formulate aspirations for his future. It depends upon him to conjure this fatality of “evil” alleged to be attached to his existence. By succeeding in creating for himself other conditions of life he will succeed in modifying himself also. For the rest, without going further the question may be summarized thus: “Has every individual, good or bad, the right to live as he likes, to revolt if exploited, or if others seek to bind him to conditions of existence repugnant to him?” The pets of fortune and those who are in power claim to be better than others; but it would suffice that “the bad” should overthrow them and establish themselves in their place, thus inverting the roles, to have equal reason with the first for being “good.” The system of private property, by putting all our social wealth in the hands of a few, has permitted these to live as parasites at the expense of the mass whom they have enslaved, and whose product only serves o keep up their show and idleness, or to defend their interests. This condition, recognized as unjust by those who submit to it, cannot last. The workers will demand free possession of what .hey produce, and will revolt if the denial of the request continues. Vainly does capitalism seek to entrench itself behind the argument that “man is evil;” the revolution will come. Then it will appear either that man is indeed incapable of perfectibility, (we have just seen the contrary) in which case there would be a war of appetites, and whatever theirs might be the capitalistic classes would be doomed in Advance, since they are the minority,—or that man is evil because institutions help to make him such; in which case he may elevate himself to a social state which will contribute to his moral, intellectual, and physical development, and manage to transform society in such a way as will effect the solidarity of all its interests. But however it be, the revolution will come! The sphinx interrogates us and we answer without fear, for we Anarchists, destroyers of laws and property, we know the key to the enigma.

CHAPTER V.

PROPERTY.

Before proceeding with the exposition of our ideas it will be well to review the institutions which we wish to destroy, to discover upon what bases capitalistic society rests, the positive value of these bases, and why and how society is transformable only on condition that the entire organization be changed; why no improvement will be possible so long as this transformation is not wrought. From this study the reasons why we are Anarchists and revolutionists will naturally follow.

Protection to private property and hereditary transmission of the same in families,—this is the principle upon which existing society rests. Authority, the family, the magistracy, the army, and every hierarchic and bureaucratic organization, which stifles and devours us, proceed from this principle. There is religion also, but we leave it aside, since science, bourgeois though it be, has killed that.

We do not propose to give the history of property. That has been done, again and again, by Socialists of all schools; all have shown that it is nothing else than the result of robbery, fraud, and the right of force. Here, therefore, we have only to notice certain facts which demonstrate its iniquity and exhibit the evils which flow from it; which prove that proposed reforms are but snares to deceive the exploited, and that, to prevent the evils we wish to cure, we must attack their principal source, the present proprietary and capitalistic organization.

Science shows us today that the earth owes its origin to a nucleus of cosmic matter, primevally detached from the solar nebula. This nucleus, by the effect of its rotation upon its axis and around the central star, became condensed to such a degree that the compression of the gases led to their conflagration; and this globe, son of the sun, like that which had given it birth, must then have shone with its own light in the Milky Way like a very small star. The globe cooled, having passed from the gaseous to the liquid state, then to a slimy condition, then, becoming more and more dense, to complete solidification. But in this primitive furnace the association of different gases was effected in such a fashion that their various combinations had given birth to those fundamental materials which form the composition of the earth: minerals, metals, free gases suspended in the atmosphere. The operation of cooling progressing by degrees, the action of air and water upon the minerals helped to form a coating of vegetable earth. During this time the association of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, begot in the depths of the waters, a species of organic jelly, without definite form, without organs, without consciousness, but already endowed with the faculty of changing place by pushing out pro longations of its substance on the side towards which it wished to go, or rather on the side upon which some attraction made itself felt; endowed, too, with this additional faculty of assimilating foreign bodies taken into its substance and thereby nourishing itself. Finally, endowed with one last faculty: having reached a certain degree of development, the power of dividing itself in two and giving birth to a new organism, in every respect similar to its progenitor.

Behold the modest beginnings of humanity! So modest that it is only very much later, after a long series of evolutions, after the formation of a certain number of types in the chain of beings, that we come to distinguish the animal from the vegetable. To trace the whole series up to man would be to rewrite here the history of evolution, which modern science explains in a manner so clear and comprehensible to those who are willing to judge without prejudice, that we can only refer the reader to it, contenting ourselves with instancing merely the principal facts in support of our demonstration concerning the arbitrary monopolization of a part of the soil by a certain set of individuals, who take possession of it for their own profit and that of their descendants, to the injury of others less favored and of future generations. It is perfectly plain that this explanation of the appearance of man upon the earth destroys all the marvelous story of his creation. No more God, nor creative entity! Man is but the product of an evolution of terrestrial life which is itself but the product of a combination of gases which gases have in turn undergone an evolution before attaining the power of combining in the density and proportions necessary to the development of vital phenomena.

The theory of the supernatural origin of man being set aside, the idea that society, such as exists, with its divisions of rich and poor, governed and governing, proceeds from a divine will, no longer holds good. Authority, so long propped up by its “supernatural origin,”—a fable which has contributed at least as much as brute force to maintain it—was in its turn exhausted under the discussion and menaced with ruin; today it entrenched itself behind universal suffrage and majority rule. But authority could maintain itself intact only so long as it was not discussed. We shall see further that it no longer has any means to support itself save force. Hence we may say that property and authority, being placed under discussion, are on the highroad to extinction, for what is discussed is scarcely revered any longer; that which force alone sustains force can destroy.

The vegetable sustains itself at the expense of the mineral and the atmosphere, the animal at the expense of the vegetable and, later, at the expense of the animal itself. But there are no preconceived ideas in this, having in view the establishment of any hierarchy among beings, on the part of a creator, or of a nature-entity, who should have created the vegetable to serve as food for the animal, the animal and vegetable to feed man or to be slaves to the human race in order to create the happiness of the elect. There is only an evolving sequence of natural laws, which so resulted that the condensation of gases having formed minerals, there was nothing but vegetable life which could assimilate the mineral and transform it into an organic combination capable of hastening the birth of animal life.

The evolutional origin of man being admitted it becomes evident to all that, when the first thinking beings appeared upon the earth, there could no longer be any need of a tutelary providence to facilitate their development, and consequently nobody to assign to some a directing power over their fellows, to others property in the soil, and to the great mass misery and privation, respect for their masters, with the sole function of producing for the benefit of the latter. However “the struggle for existence” having begun as the sole law for individuals, to eat in order not to be eaten was their sole preoccupation. But when they commenced unconsciously to practice this other and higher vital law, assistance in struggle, heredity having developed in them the instincts of combativeness, of oppression towards the victim, (everything being a prey to man, even man himself) it follows according to all the evidence that this spirit of struggle and domination, stored up in the brain by past generations, sought to gain like precedence in the organized collectivity. Those persons who possessed it in the highest degree imposed their will upon those who possessed it in a lesser degree. This authority, being established, followed the fluctuations of human intelligence, and transformations of the social organization were effected accordingly as force, the religious spirit, or commercialism, were triumphant. Authority under its divers modes of operation, therefore, has maintained itself up to the present time, and will maintain itself until man, freed from error and prejudice, reconquers himself entirely, renouncing the imposition of his will upon others in order not to have to submit to the will of those stronger than himself.

But the divine origin of authority and property being denied by bourgeois science itself, the bourgeoisie have sought to give them solid and natural bases. The economists have taken social facts resulting from a bad organization, and setting them up as “ natural laws,” making them the cause of what exists while they are but the effects, decorating these absurdities with the name of science, they have pretended to legitimize the most monstrous social crimes, the most heinous piracies of capitalism, blaming the causes of poverty upon the poor themselves, setting up the most monstrous egoism as a law of social conservation, when, on the contrary, as we have seen in one of the preceding chapters, egoism is but a cause of conflict, of loss of energy, and retrogression, if it be not tempered and softened by this other more evolved and humane law of solidarity.

Bourgeois society being founded upon capital, and this being represented by money, the economists, in order to mask the peculiar role it plays in the work of production and exchange, have reduced everything to capital. The man who impregnates his wife and begets children, expends capital; but he creates some also, for the child, become a man, will be—capital! The muscular power which the workman spends in production—capital! (Observe, by the way, that besides their arms the workmen, in the performance of no matter what sort of work, bring to bear an amount of intelligence often superior to that of the contractor; but as it would then be necessary to count two portions of capital for the workman, and as that would embarrass the economists in their calculations, they pass this over in silence). Yet as all this reduction of human activity to capital does not explain the origin of money-capital, the economists have discovered that “money-capital is that portion of labor which industrious and provident persons have not immediately consumed and have held in reserve for future needs.” Right here the calculation becomes interesting. All capital put into use, the economists dogmatically affirm:—

It ought to produce a sum equal to its own value, that it may reconstitute itself completely; As this employed capital runs risks, it should produce a surplus value, which represents an insurance-premium to cover the said risks.

Now, the workman, who is paid right along for his labor and consequently runs no risks, has a right to the first claim only, permitting him to replace his capital expended; that is to say, to feed, clothe, and lodge himself and finally to repair the strength which he has depleted. He should not produce more children than the excess of his wages permits him to bring up.

But the employer—Oh! it is a different affair with him! In the first place he invests an original capital, the money necessary to pay the workmen, settle for purchases, etc., which represents the pleasures of which he has deprived himself. This capital, like that of the workman, ought to bring in sufficient to replace itself, but in addition the insurance premium for the risks it runs, which constitutes the profit of the exploiter. Secondly, if it be an industrial enterprise, there are buildings and machines for the employees,—still more capital to be reproduced and to bring in its insurance premium. But this is not all. The exploiter’s intelligence is capital, too, and none of the least. A capitalist must know how to make judicious employment of his capital, how to manage his business and himself; he must inquire as to what products it is advantageous to produce, where they are in demand, etc. This third capital must be restored out of the enterprise. Observe that if the investor be an engineer, a scholar, or a doctor, the premium must be much greater, because, costing more dearly to establish, they consequently cost much more dearly to repair.

This subtle distinction established, transforming into capital the divers elements of production, the division seems fair: the capitalist pockets three-fourths of the product for his share and the trick is played. The workman has received his pay, why should he complain? Let him economize also and he may likewise invest his savings in enterprises and triple his share! Let him stop spending his money foolishly in saloons! Let him not have so many children! The struggle is hard; they must learn how to curtail their pleasures if they want to increase them later, pack of loafers that they are!

Would the gentlemen economists, who talk to us of the greater intelligence of the capitalists, venture to affirm that those who, by a stroke on the bourse, by stock-jobbing and monopolies, sweep away millions, have expended an intelligence a million times superior, we will not say to that of the workman who may pass as an artist at his trade, but to that of even the humblest workman in the lowest trade? Take a workman, supposing him to be one of the most favored, earning good wages as compared with the least favored, having no periods of enforced idleness or sickness. Can this workman live the larger life which ought to be assured to those who produce, in order to satisfy their physical and intellectual needs while working? Nonsense! He cannot satisfy the hundredth part of his needs, however limited they be. He must reduce them still further if he wants to save a few pennies for his old age. And however great his parsimony he will never manage to save enough to live without working. The savings accumulated during his productive period will hardly amount to compensation for the deficit which old age brings, unless he receive an inheritance or some other windfall which has nothing to do with work. And for every one of these privileged workers how many wretched ones are there who have nothing to appease their hunger! The development of machinery has permitted the exploiters to reduce the number of their hands; the unemployed, become more and more numerous, have diminished wages and multiplied periods of enforced idleness; sickness reduces them still further, so that “the wage-earner in good circumstances” tends more and more to become a myth, and, instead of hoping to get out of his misery, the worker must expect, if capitalistic society endures much longer, to sink still deeper in it.

Now, let us suppose that the well-situated workman, instead of continuing to invest his savings in values of any kind, sets himself up in business on his own account after he has gathered together a certain amount. This is becoming more and more impossible, thanks to machinery, which requires the concentration of enormous capital and leaves no room for the isolated workman; but we will assume its possibility and suppose that this workman-employer works alone. If the postulate of political economy be true, that every faculty of man is employed capital, and that it produces a fortune for him who puts it into use, here is an individual who invests money-capital, force-capital, and intelligence-capital; having to divide with nobody it will not be long till he sees his money-capital increase ten-fold in his hands, and becomes in his turn a millionaire.

In practice the workman who works alone on his own account is rarely to be found. The small employer, with two or three workmen, lives perhaps a little better than those he employs, but he must work as hard, if not harder, constantly pressed as he is to meet his obligations; he can expect no improvement, happy if he manage to maintain himself in his comparative comfort and escape failure. Big profits, big fortunes, life “ driven four-in-hand,” are reserved to the big proprietors, big share-holders, big manufacturers, big speculators, who do not work themselves but employ workmen by hundreds; which proves that capital is indeed accumulated labor, but the labor of others accumulated in the hands of one person—a robber! For the rest the best proof that there is something fundamentally vicious in the social organization, is that machinery, a development begotten by all our acquired knowledge transmitted from generation to generation, and which consequently ought to benefit every human being, rendering all lives broader and easier by the fact that it increases their power of production and furnishes them the means of producing much more while working fewer hours,—machinery has brought nothing but an increase of misery and privation to the workers. The capitalists are the only ones to benefit by the advantages of mechanical inventions, which enable them to reduce the number of their employees, and with the help of the antagonism thus established, competition between the unemployed and the employed, they profit by lowering the wages of the latter, poverty forcing the former to accept the price offered, even though it be less than the amount necessary to their maintenance and restoration of energy; which proves that the pretended “natural laws” are violated by their own operation, and that consequently if they be laws they are far from being natural.

On the other hand it is certain that the capitalists, with all their capital, all their machinery, could produce nothing without the co-operation of the workers, whilst the latter, by coming to an understanding among themselves and uniting their forces, could produce very well without the assistance of capital. But setting that aside the conclusion we want to draw is this:—From the moment it is admitted that the capitalists cannot put their capital into use without the co-operation of the worker, the latter becomes the most important factor in production, and in all logic ought to receive the greater share of the product. Now, how comes it that it is the capitalists, on the contrary, who absorb the greater share of the product? The less they produce the more they get! And the more the workers produce the more they increase their chances of idleness, and have consequently less chances to consume! How comes it that the more the stores are crammed with products the more the producers die of hunger, and what ought to be a source of general wealth and enjoyment becomes a source of misery for those who labor?

From all this it follows clearly that private property is accessible only to those who exploit their fellows. The history of humanity shows that this form of property was not that of the first human associations; that it was only at a much later period of their evolution, when the family commenced to emerge from promiscuity, that private property begins to be seen in property common to the clan or tribe. This would prove nothing against its legitimacy if such appropriation had operated otherwise than arbitrarily; we speak of it merely to prove to the bourgeoisie; who have tried to make an argument in its favor by claiming that property has always been what it now is, that that argument no longer has any value in our eyes. For the rest, did those who declaim so much against, the Anarchists for demanding expropriation by force distress themselves very much about expropriating the nobility in 1789, and frustrating the peasantry who had made themselves useful by hanging country squires, destroying charter-houses, and seizing seigniorial wealth? Did not the confiscations and sales, either fictitious or at absurd prices, which were made, have for their object the spoliation of the former possessors and the peasants who hoped for a share, in order that the bourgeoisie might monopolize the spoil to their own profit? Did they not make use of the out-and-out right of force, which they masked and sanctioned by legal comedies? Was not this spoliation iniquitous, (admitting that which we demand to be so, which it is not) seeing that it was not done for the benefit of the collectivity, but helped solely to enrich certain traffickers, who straightway hastened to make war upon the peasants that had thrown themselves into the assault upon the castles, by shooting them or treating them as brigands? The bourgeoisie, then, are badly out of place in crying out against robbery when we want to force them to make restitution, for their property is itself but the fruit of robbery.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FAMILY.

Property, the family, authority, have developed along parallel lines; of this there is no doubt. Granting that men united their efforts under the pressure of a common need, of some obstacle to be overcome against which individual efforts had exhausted themselves in vain, it follows that the benefits resulting from this co-operation of forces were shared in common. These associations being temporary, confined to the immediate e obtained, there is likewise no doubt that the first human association must have been, as it still is among certain mammiferous animals,—some of the anthropoid apes—the nucleus of the family; that is to say, a group of one or a number of females and their young around the strongest male, who, in order to preserve his authority, expelled from the horde all the young males that had become old enough to give him umbrage. But as to whether this authority of the male was complete and assumed sway over every group from the start, it would be rash to decide; for though we find, among savages, examples in which the association having increased in numbers, by the grouping together of several family centers the authority of the male is preponderant, yet by a number of very convincing examples, by a number of customs such as that of couvade it would seem that the mother-right of primogeniture was the first recognized.[1] Certain peoples exist in which the children belong to the tribe of the mother; others in which the authority of the male is already recognized, but in which his sister’s children inherit his possessions to the exclusion of his own. This would go to establish a transition from maternal to paternal authority. Another transitional characteristic is this custom of couvade, by which, when the woman is in confinement, it is the man who goes to bed, swallows drugs, and receives congratulations upon his delivery. In this one feels that the man, in order to affirm his authority over his progeny, needs facts to prove his paternity. He would not need them if it were not contested by anterior customs, which have perhaps disappeared, but the memory of which is perpetuated by the practice of retroactive customs that the former gave rise to.

As to the union of men and women, how many times has its form not been changed? At the outset, the very beginnings of humanity, there is no form of marriage; the most complete promiscuity reigns between the sexes; the male cohabits -with the first female that comes in his way, who on the other hand accepts or submits to the caresses of all the males that take her. As men develop and become a little less brutal, though a great amount of promiscuity still reigns, they commence to distinguish a primitive sort of relationship. They have not yet learned to distinguish the terms father, mother, brother, sister, very definitely, but unions between tribes having the same totem, or the same common origin, are forbidden; the women, however, continue to belong to all the men, and the latter to all the women, of the tribe. Later on, the male having been acknowledged, the latter begins to recognize certain degrees of consanguinity and affiliation; but marriages continue to take place between brothers and sisters, the son inherits any member of his father’s harem without scruple. A still further step in. evolution must be taken before the mother of the heir ceases to be included in the inheritance.

Observe also that if there be peoples among whom a single male may possess several females, on the other hand there exist some among whom the females possess several males. But these progressive steps, these changes of custom, do not follow logically, one after the other, mutually eliminating each other, as a more complex one appears. Rather these customs are founded one upon the other, fused and confused in such a manner that they can no longer be recognized. Their combinations are so multiplied, customs are so superimposed upon each other, eliminating one here, another there, that it is only by studying the observations of former travelers and still existing tribes that we are enabled to form an approximate idea of human evolution.

From all this, then, it follows that property has rested upon other bases than those upon which it is today supported, has had another method of division, and owes its present destiny only to force, cunning and robbery; for it is quite clear that the family having begun in common association, individual property could not then exist, and, consequently, that what originally belonged to all could not become the property of individuals without some sort of spoliation. In like manner the family has been quite different from what it now is. And the bourgeoisie, which claims that these two institutions rest upon unassailable and immovable bases do not know what they are talking about, since there is no reason why that which has evolved at all should not evolve further. Their affirmation would prove only one thing, which is that if these two institutions were not to progress any more, they must be very near their decadence. For it is a law of life that that which no longer advances, perishes and disintegrates, in order to give birth to other organisms having a period of evolution to run through. And the truth of this axiom is so apparent that the bourgeoisie have been forced to recognize it by admitting divorce as a corrective to marriage, which they would have preferred to maintain indissoluble. True, divorce is applicable only in special cases, can be obtained only by means of a lawsuit, of proceedings without number, and requires the expenditure of a great deal of money, but it is none the less an argument against the stability of the family, since, after having so long repudiated it, they have at length recognized it as necessary, and since it has so powerfully shaken the family by breaking up marriage, which sanctions the family. What more candid confession in favor of free unions could be asked? Does it not become plainly evident that it is useless to seal with a ceremony what another ceremony may unseal? Why have an old woman in pants with a belt around his waist to consecrate a union which three other old women in gowns and caps can declare null and void?

The Anarchists, therefore, reject the institution of marriage. They say that two beings who love each other have no need of the permission of a third in order to go to bed together. From the moment that their wishes so incline them, society has no reason to spy upon them and still less to intervene in the matter. Further the Anarchists say this: “By the mere fact that they have given themselves to each other, the union of a man and a woman is not therefore indissoluble; they are not condemned to finish their days together if they become antipathetic to each other. What they have made of their own free will they can unmake of their own free will. Under the empire of passion, the pressure of desire, they saw each other’s good qualities only; they shut their eyes to each other’s defects; they became united; and behold, their life in common effaces the good qualities, brings out the defects, sharpens the angles which they cannot round off. Is it necessary that these two beings, because in a moment of passionate effervescence they deceived themselves with illusions, should pay a whole lifetime of suffering for the error of a moment, which made them take for a profound and eternal passion what was but the result of an over-excitation of the senses? Nonsense! It is time to return to more healthy notions!”

Has not the love of man and woman always been stronger than all laws, all prudery, all the reprobation, which men have sought to attach to the performance of the sexual act? In spite of the blame cast upon the woman who deceives her husband—we do not here speak of the man, who has always known how to take the biggest half in matters of morals,—in spite of the role of Pariah which our modest society reserves for the unmarried mother, has it ever, for a single moment, prevented women from making cuckolds of their husbands, or girls from giving themselves to whoever pleases them, or knows how to profit by a moment when the senses speak louder than reason? History and literature talk of nothing else than men and women cuckolded and girls seduced! The creative impulse is the prime motor of man; we hide it, but we yield to its pressure. For the few passionate souls who, weak and timorous, commit suicide together with the beloved being, (sometimes not daring to break with prejudices or not having the moral force to struggle against the obstacles put in their way by custom and the idiocy of imbecile parents), there are countless numbers who mock at prejudices—in secret. All these prejudices have only helped to make us frauds and hypocrites; that is all.

Why be stubborn in seeking to regulate what has escaped long centuries of oppression? Rather let us recognize, once for all, that the feelings of mankind elude all regulations, and that entire liberty is necessary in order that they may unfold completely and normally. Let us be less puritanic and we shall be more candid, more moral.

The man who owns property, wishing to transmit the fruit of his rapine to his descendants, (the woman having been considered up till now as inferior, and rather as property than as an associate) it is evident that man has fashioned the family with a view to insuring his supremacy over woman; and to be able to transmit his possessions to his descendants at his death, he had to make the family indissoluble. Based upon interests, and not upon affection, it is plain that some force and sanction were necessary to prevent separations under the shocks occasioned by the antagonism of interests. Now, the Anarchists, who have been accused of wanting to destroy the family, want only to destroy this antagonism; to base the family upon affection in order to render it more permanent. We have never set it up as a principle that a man and woman who desire to finish their days together shall not do so, for the reason that we want unions to be free. We have never said that the father and mother should not bring up their children, because we demand that the liberty of the latter shall be respected, and that they shall no longer be considered as things—property—by their progenitors. Certainly we do want to abolish the legal family; we want men and women to be free to give themselves and take themselves back whenever they please. We w