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                         ANARCHIST COMMUNISM
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                        Anarchist Communism:
                      Its Basis and Principles
                =====================================
                          by Peter Kropotkin
                          
                                 1887

                                  I
                        ---------------------

Anarchism, the no-government system of socialism, has a double origin.
It is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the
economic and the political fields which characterise the nineteenth
century, and especially its second part.  In common with all
socialists, the anarchists hold that the private ownership of land,
capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to
disappear; and that all requisites for production must, and will,
become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the
producers of wealth.  And in common with the most advanced
representatives of political radicalism, they maintain that the ideal
of the political organisation of society is a condition of things
where the functions of government are reduced to a minimum, and the
individual recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for
satisfying, by means of free groups and federations--freely
constituted--all the infinitely varied needs of the human being.

As regards socialism, most of the anarchists arrive at its ultimate
conclusion, that is, at a complete negation of the wage-system and at
communism.  And with reference to political organisation, by giving a
further development to the above-mentioned part of the radical
program, they arrive at the conclusion that the ultimate aim of
society is the reduction of the functions of government to _nil_--that
is, to a society without government, to an-archy.  The anarchists
maintain, moreover, that such being the ideal of social and political
organisation, they must not remit it to future centuries, but that
only those changes in our social organisation which are in accordance
with the above double ideal, and constitute an approach to it, will
have a chance of life and be beneficial for the commonwealth.

As to the method followed by the anarchist thinker, it entirely
differs from that followed by the utopists.  The anarchist thinker
does not resort to metaphysical conceptions (like "natural rights,"
the "duties of the State," and so on) to establish what are, in his
opinion, the best conditions for realising the greatest happiness of
humanity.  He follows, on the contrary, the course traced by the
modern philosophy of evolution.  He studies human society as it is now
and was in the past; and without either endowing humanity as a whole,
or separate individuals, with superior qualities which they do not
possess, he merely considers society as an aggregation of organisms
trying to find out the best ways of combining the wants of the
individual with those of cooperation for the welfare of the species.
He studies society and tries to discover its _tendencies_, past and
present, its growing needs, intellectual and economic, and in his
ideal he merely points out in which direction evolution goes.  He
distinguishes between the real wants and tendencies of human
aggregations and the accidents (want of knowledge, migrations, wars,
conquests) which have prevented these tendencies from being satisfied.
And he concludes that the two most prominent, although often
unconscious, tendencies throughout our history have been: first, a
tendency towards integrating labour for the production of all riches
in common, so as finally to render it impossible to discriminate the
part of the common production due to the separate individual; and
second, a tendency towards the fullest freedom of the individual in
the prosecution of all aims, beneficial both for himself and for
society at large.  The ideal of the anarchist is thus a mere
summing-up of what he considers to be the next phase of evolution.  It
is no longer a matter of faith; it is a matter for scientific
discussion.

In fact, one of the leading features of this century is the growth of
socialism and the rapid spreading of socialist views among the
working-classes.  How could it be otherwise?  We have witnessed an
unparalleled sudden increase of our powers of production, resulting in
an accumulation of wealth which has outstripped the most sanguine
expectations.  But owing to our wage system, this increase of
wealth--due to the combined efforts of men of science, of managers,
and workmen as well--has resulted only in an unprecedented
accumulation of wealth in the hands of the owners of capital; while an
increase of misery for great numbers, and an insecurity of life for
all, have been the lot of the workmen.  The unskilled labourers, in
continuous search for labour, are falling into an unheard-of
destitution.  And even the best paid artisans and skilled workmen
labour under the permanent menace of being thrown, in their turn, into
the same conditions as the unskilled paupers, in consequence of some
of the continuous and unavoidable fluctuations of industry and
caprices of capital.

The chasm between the modern millionaire who squanders the produce of
human labour in a gorgeous and vain luxury, and the pauper reduced to
a miserable and insecure existence, is thus growing wider and wider,
so as to break the very unity of society--the harmony of its life--and
to endanger the progress of its further development.

At the same time, workingmen are less and less inclined to patiently
endure this division of society into two classes, as they themselves
become more and more conscious of the wealth-producing power of modern
industry, of the part played by labour in the production of wealth,
and of their own capacities of organisation.  In proportion as all
classes of the community take a more lively part in public affairs,
and knowledge spreads among the masses, their longing for equality
becomes stronger, and their demands for social reorganisation become
louder and louder.  They can be ignored no more.  The worker claims
his share in the riches he produces; he claims his share in the
management of production; and he claims not only some additional
well-being, but also his full rights in the higher enjoyments of
science and art.  These claims, which formerly were uttered only by
the social reformer, begin now to be made by a daily growing minority
of those who work in the factory or till the acre.  And they so
conform to our feelings of justice that they find support in a daily
growing minority among the privileged classes themselves.  Socialism
becomes thus _the_ idea of the nineteenth century; and neither
coercion nor pseudo-reforms can stop its further growth.

Much hope of improvement was placed, of course, in the extension of
political rights to the working classes.  But these concessions,
unsupported as they were by corresponding changes in economic
relations, proved delusions.  They did not materially improve the
conditions of the great bulk of the workmen.  Therefore, the watchword
of socialism is: "Economic freedom as the only secure basis for
political freedom." And as long as the present wage system, with all
its bad consequences, remains unaltered, the socialist watchword will
continue to inspire the workmen.  Socialism will continue to grow
until it has realised its program.

Side by side with this great movement of thought in economic matters,
a like movement has been going on with regard to political rights,
political organisation, and the functions of government.  Government
has been submitted to the same criticism as capital.  While most of
the radicals saw in universal suffrage and republican institutions the
last word of political wisdom, a further step was made by the few.
The very functions of government and the State, as also their
relations to the individual, were submitted to a sharper and deeper
criticism.  Representative government having been tried by experiment
on a wide field, its defects became more and more prominent.  It
became obvious that these defects are not merely accidental but
inherent in the system itself.  Parliament and its executive proved to
be unable to attend to all the numberless affairs of the community and
to conciliate the varied and often opposite interests of the separate
parts of a State.  Election proved unable to find out the men who
might represent a nation, and manage, otherwise than in a party
spirit, the affairs they are compelled to legislate upon.  These
defects become so striking that the very principles of the
representative system were criticised and their justness doubted.

Again, the dangers of a centralised government became still more
conspicuous when the socialists came to the front and asked for a
further increase of the powers of government by entrusting it with the
management of the immense field covered now by the economic relations
between individuals.  The question was asked whether a government
entrusted with the management of industry and trade would not become a
permanent danger for liberty and peace, and whether it even would be
able to be a good manager?

The socialists of the earlier part of this century did not fully
realise the immense difficulties of the problem.  Convinced as they
were of the necessity of economic reforms, most of them took no notice
of the need of freedom for the individual.  And we have had social
reformers ready to submit society to any kind of theocracy, or
dictatorship in order to obtain reforms in a socialist sense.
Therefore we have seen in England and also on the Continent the
division of men of advanced opinions into political radicals and
socialists--the former looking with distrust on the latter, as they
saw in them a danger for the political liberties which have been won
by the civilised nations after a long series of struggles.  And even
now, when the socialists all over Europe have become political
parties, and profess the democratic faith, there remains among most
impartial men a well-founded fear of the _Volksstaat_ or "popular
State" being as great a danger to liberty as any form of autocracy if
its government be entrusted with the management of all the social
organisation including the production and distribution of wealth.

Recent evolution, however, has prepared the way for showing the
necessity and possibility of a higher form of social organisation
which may guarantee economic freedom without reducing the individual
to the role of a slave to the State.  The origins of government have
been carefully studied, and all metaphysical conceptions as to its
divine or "social contract" derivation having been laid aside, it
appears that it is among us of a relatively modern origin, and that
its powers have grown precisely in proportion as the division of
society into the privileged and unprivileged classes was growing in
the course of ages.  Representative government has also been reduced
to its real value--that of an instrument which has rendered services
in the struggle against autocracy, but not an ideal of free political
organisation.  As to the system of philosophy which saw in the State a
leader of progress, it was more and more shaken as it became evident
that progress is the most effective when it is not checked by State
interference.  It has thus become obvious that a further advance in
social life does not lie in the direction of a further concentration
of power and regulative functions in the hands of a governing body,
but in the direction of decentralisation, both territorial and
functional--in a subdivision of public functions with respect both to
their sphere of action and to the character of the functions; it is in
the abandonment to the initiative of freely constituted groups of all
those functions which are now considered as the functions of
government.

This current of thought has found its expression not merely in
literature, but also to a limited extent in life.  The uprise of the
Paris Commune, followed by that of the Commune of Cartagena--a
movement of which the historical bearing seems to have been quite
overlooked--opened a new page of history.  If we analyse not only this
movement in itself, but also the impression it left in the minds and
the tendencies manifested during the communal revolution, we must
recognise in it an indication showing that in the future human
agglomerations which are more advanced in their social development
will try to start an independent life; and that they will endeavour to
convert the more backward parts of a nation by example, instead of
imposing their opinions by law and force, or submitting themselves to
the majority-rule, which always is a mediocrity-rule.  At the same
time the failure of representative government within the Commune
itself proved that self-government and self-administration must be
carried further than in a merely territorial sense.  To be effective
they must also be carried into the various functions of life within
the free community.  A merely territorial limitation of the sphere of
action of government will not do--representative government being as
deficient in a city as it is in a nation.  Life gave thus a further
point in favour of the no-government theory, and a new impulse to
anarchist thought.

Anarchists recognise the justice of both the just-mentioned tendencies
towards economic and political freedom, and see in them two different
manifestations of the very same need of equality which constitutes the
very essence of all struggles mentioned by history.  Therefore, in
common with all socialists, the anarchist says to the political
reformer: "No substantial reform in the sense of political equality
and no limitation of the powers of government can be made as long as
society is divided into two hostile camps, and the labourer remains,
economically speaking, a slave to his employer." But to the state
socialist we say also: "You cannot modify the existing conditions of
property without deeply modifying at the same time the political
organisation.  You must limit the powers of government and renounce
parliamentary rule.  To each new economic phase of life corresponds a
new political phase.  Absolute monarchy corresponded to the system of
serfdom.  Representative government corresponds to capital-rule.
Both, however, are class-rule.  But in a society where the distinction
between capitalist and labourer has disappeared, there is no need of
such a government; it would be an anachronism, a nuisance.  Free
workers would require a free organisation, and this cannot have any
other basis than free agreement and free cooperation, without
sacrificing the autonomy of the individual to the all-pervading
interference of the State.  The no-capitalist system implies the
no-government system."

Meaning thus the emancipation of man from the oppressive powers of
capitalism and government as well, the system of anarchism becomes a
synthesis of the two powerful currents of thought which characterise
our century.

In arriving at these conclusions anarchism proves to be in accordance
with the conclusions arrived at by the philosophy of evolution.  By
bringing to light the plasticity of organisation, the philosophy of
evolution has shown the admirable adaptability of organisms to their
conditions of life, and the ensuing development of such faculties as
render more complete both the adaptations of the aggregates to their
surroundings and those of each of the constituent parts of the
aggregate to the needs of free cooperation.  It has familiarised us
with the circumstance that throughout organic nature the capacities
for life in common grow in proportion as the integration of organisms
into compound aggregates becomes more and more complete; and it has
enforced thus the opinion already expressed by social moralists as to
the perfectibility of human nature.  It has shown us that, in the long
run of the struggle for existence, "the fittest" will prove to be
those who combine intellectual knowledge with the knowledge necessary
for the production of wealth, and not those who are now the richest
because they, or their ancestors, have been momentarily the strongest.

By showing that the "struggle for existence" must be conceived not
merely in its restricted sense of a struggle between individuals for
the means of subsistence but in its wider sense of adaptation of all
individuals of the species to the best conditions for the survival of
the species, as well as for the greatest possible sum of life and
happiness for each and all, it has permitted us to deduce the laws of
moral science from the social needs and habits of mankind.  It has
shown us the infinitesimal part played by positive law in moral
evolution, and the immense part played by the natural growth of
altruistic feelings, which develop as soon as the conditions of life
favour their growth.  It has thus enforced the opinion of social
reformers as to the necessity of modifying the conditions of life for
improving man, instead of trying to improve human nature by moral
teachings while life works in an opposite direction.  Finally, by
studying human society from the biological point of view, it has come
to the conclusions arrived at by anarchists from the study of history
and present tendencies as to further progress being in the line of
socialisation of wealth and integrated labour combined with the
fullest possible freedom of the individual.

It has happened in the long run of ages that everything which permits
men to increase their production, or even to continue it, has been
appropriated by the few.  The land, which derives its value precisely
from its being necessary for an ever-increasing population, belongs to
the few, who may prevent the community from cultivating it.  The
coal-pits, which represent the labour of generations, and which also
derive their value from the wants of the manufacturers and railroads,
from the immense trade carried on and the density of population,
belong again to the few, who have even the right of stopping the
extraction of coal if they choose to give another use to their
capital.  The lace-weaving machine, which represents, in its present
state of perfection, the work of three generations of Lancashire
weavers, belongs also to the few; and if the grandsons of the very
same weaver who invented the first lace-weaving machine claim their
right to bring one of these machines into motion, they will be told
"Hands off!  this machine does not belong to you!" The railroads,
which mostly would be useless heaps of iron if not for the present
dense population, its industry, trade, and traffic, belong again to
the few--to a few shareholders, who may not even know where the
railway is situated which brings them a yearly income larger than that
of a medieval king.  And if the children of those people who died by
thousands in digging the tunnels should gather and go--a ragged and
starving crowd--to ask bread or work from the shareholders, they would
be met with bayonets and bullets.

Who is the sophist who will dare to say that such an organisation is
just?  But what is unjust cannot be beneficial to mankind; and _it is
not_.  In consequence of this monstrous organisation, the son of a
workman, when he is able to work, finds no acre to till, no machine to
set in motion, unless he agrees to sell his labour for a sum inferior
to its real value.  His father and grandfather have contributed to
drain the field, or erect the factory, to the full extent of their
capacities--and nobody can do more than that--but he comes into the
world more destitute than a savage.  If he resorts to agriculture, he
will be permitted to cultivate a plot of land, but on the condition
that he gives up part of his product to the landlord.  If he resorts
to industry, he will be permitted to work, but on the condition that
out of the thirty shillings he has produced, ten shillings or more
will be pocketed by the owner of the machine.  We cry out against the
feudal barons who did not permit anyone to settle on the land
otherwise than on payment of one quarter of the crops to the lord of
the manor; but we continue to do as they did--we extend their system.
The forms have changed, but the essence has remained the same.  And
the workman is compelled to accept the feudal conditions which we call
"free contract," because nowhere will he find better conditions.
Everything has been appropriated by somebody; he _must_ accept the
bargain, or starve.

Owing to this circumstance our production takes a wrong turn.  It
takes no care of the needs of the community; its only aim is to
increase the profits of the capitalist.  And we have, therefore,--the
continuous fluctuations of industry, the crisis coming periodically
nearly every ten years, and throwing out of employment several hundred
thousand men who are brought to complete misery, whose children grow
up in the gutter, ready to become inmates of the prison and workhouse.
The workmen being unable to purchase with their wages the riches they
are producing, industry must search for markets elsewhere, amidst the
middle classes of other nations.  It must find markets, in the East,
in Africa, anywhere; it must increase, by trade, the number of its
serfs in Egypt, in India, on the Congo.  But everywhere it finds
competitors in other nations which rapidly enter into the same line of
industrial development.  And wars, continuous wars, must be fought for
the supremacy in the world-market--wars for the possession of the
East, wars for getting possession of the seas, wars for the right of
imposing heavy duties on foreign merchandise.  The thunder of European
guns never ceases; whole generations are slaughtered from time to
time; and we spend in armaments the third of the revenue of our
States--a revenue raised, the poor know with what difficulties.

And finally, the injustice of our partition of wealth exercises the
most deplorable effect on our morality.  Our principles of morality
say: "Love your neighbour as yourself"; but let a child follow this
principle and take off his coat to give it to the shivering pauper,
and his mother will tell him that he must never understand moral
principles in their direct sense.  If he lives according to them, he
will go barefoot, without alleviating the misery around him!  Morality
is good on the lips, not in deeds.  Our preachers say, "Who works,
prays," and everyone endeavours to make others work for him.  They
say, "Never lie!" and politics are a big lie.  And we accustom
ourselves and our children to live under this double-faced morality,
which is hypocrisy, and to conciliate our double-facedness by
sophistry.  Hypocrisy and sophistry become the very basis of our life.
But society cannot live under such a morality.  It cannot last so: it
must, it will, be changed.

The question is thus no more a mere question of bread.  It covers the
whole field of human activity.  But it has at its bottom a question of
social economy, and we conclude: The means of production and of
satisfaction of all needs of society, having been created by the
common efforts of all, must be at the disposal of all.  The private
appropriation of requisites for production is neither just nor
beneficial.  All must be placed on the same footing as producers and
consumers of wealth.  That will be the only way for society to step
out of the bad conditions which have been created by centuries of wars
and oppression.  That will be the only guarantee for further progress
in a direction of equality and freedom, which have always been the
real, although unspoken goal of humanity.

                                 II
                        ---------------------

The views taken in the above as to the combination of efforts being
the chief source of our wealth explain why most anarchists see in
communism the only equitable solution as to the adequate remuneration
of individual efforts.  There was a time when a family engaged in
agriculture supplemented by a few domestic trades could consider the
corn they raised and the plain woolen cloth they wove as productions
of their own and nobody else's labour.  Even then such a view was not
quite correct: there were forests cleared and roads built by common
efforts; and even then the family had continually to apply for
communal help, as is still the case in so many village communities.
But now, in the extremely interwoven state of industry of which each
branch supports all others, such an individualistic view can be held
no more.  If the iron trade and the cotton industry of this country
have reached so high a degree of development, they have done so owing
to the parallel growth of thousands of other industries, great and
small; to the extension of the railway system; to an increase of
knowledge among both the skilled engineers and the mass of the
workmen; to a certain training in organisation slowly developed among
producers; and, above all, to the world-trade which has itself grown
up, thanks to works executed thousands of miles away.  The Italians
who died from cholera in digging the Suez Canal or from
"tunnel-disease" in the St.  Gothard Tunnel have contributed as much
towards the enrichment of this country as the British girl who is
prematurely growing old in serving a machine at Manchester; and this
girl as much as the engineer who made a labour-saving improvement in
our machinery.  How can we pretend to estimate the exact part of each
of them in the riches accumulated around us?

We may admire the inventive genius or the organising capacities of an
iron lord; but we must recognise that all his genius and energy would
not realise one-tenth of what they realise here if they were spent in
dealing with Mongolian shepherds or Siberian peasants instead of
British workmen, British engineers, and trustworthy managers.  An
English millionaire who succeeded in giving a powerful impulse to a
branch of home industry was asked the other day what were, in his
opinion, the real causes of his success?  His answer was:--"I always
sought out the right man for a given branch of the concern, and I left
him full independence--maintaining, of course, for myself the general
supervision." "Did you never fail to find such men?" was the next
question.  "Never." "But in the new branches which you introduced you
wanted a number of new inventions." "No doubt; we spent thousands in
buying patents." This little colloquy sums up, in my opinion, the real
case of those industrial undertakings which are quoted by the
advocates of "an adequate remuneration of individual efforts" in the
shape of millions bestowed on the managers of prosperous industries.
It shows in how far the efforts are really "individual." Leaving aside
the thousand conditions which sometimes permit a man to show, and
sometimes prevent him from showing, his capacities to their full
extent, it might be asked in how far the same capacities could bring
out the same results, if the very same employer could find no
trustworthy managers and no skilled workmen, and if hundreds of
inventions were not stimulated by the mechanical turn of mind of so
many inhabitants of this country.

The anarchists cannot consider, like the collectivists, that a
remuneration which would be proportionate to the hours of labour spent
by each person in the production of riches may be an ideal, or even an
approach to an ideal, society.  Without entering here into a
discussion as to how far the exchange value of each merchandise is
really measured now by the amount of labour necessary for its
production--a separate study must be devoted to the subject--we must
say that the collectivist ideal seems to us merely unrealisable in a
society which has been brought to consider the necessaries for
production as a common property.  Such a society would be compelled to
abandon the wage-system altogether.  It appears impossible that the
mitigated individualism of the collectivist school could co-exist with
the partial communism implied by holding land and machinery in
common--unless imposed by a powerful government, much more powerful
than all those of our own times.  The present wage-system has grown up
from the appropriation of the necessaries for production by the few;
it was a necessary condition for the growth of the present capitalist
production; and it cannot outlive it, even if an attempt be made to
pay to the worker the full value of his produce, and
hours-of-labour-checks be substituted for money.  Common possession of
the necessaries for production implies the common enjoyment of the
fruits of the common production; and we consider that an equitable
organisation of society can only arise when every wage-system is
abandoned, and when everybody, contributing for the common well-being
to the full extent of his capacities, shall enjoy also from the common
stock of society to the fullest possible extent of his needs.

We maintain, moreover, not only that communism is a desirable state of
society, but that the growing tendency of modern society is precisely
towards communism--free communism--notwithstanding the seemingly
contradictory growth of individualism.  In the growth of individualism
(especially during the last three centuries) we see merely the
endeavours of the individual towards emancipating himself from the
steadily growing powers of capital and the State.  But side by side
with this growth we see also, throughout history up to our own times,
the latent struggle of the producers of wealth to maintain the partial
communism of old, as well as to reintroduce communist principles in a
new shape, as soon as favourable conditions permit it.  As soon as the
communes of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries were enabled to
start their own independent life, they gave a wide extension to work
in common, to trade in common, and to a partial consumption in common.
All this has disappeared.  But the rural commune fights a hard
struggle to maintain its old features, and it succeeds in maintaining
them in many places of Eastern Europe, Switzerland, and even France
and Germany; while new organisations, based on the same principles,
never fail to grow up wherever it is possible.

Notwithstanding the egotistic turn given to the public mind by the
merchant-production of our century, the communist tendency is
continually reasserting itself and trying to make its way into public
life.  The penny bridge disappears before the public bridge; and the
turnpike road before the free road.  The same spirit pervades
thousands of other institutions.  Museums, free libraries, and free
public schools; parks and pleasure grounds; paved and lighted streets,
free for everybody's use; water supplied to private dwellings, with a
growing tendency towards disregarding the exact amount of it used by
the individual; tramways and railways which have already begun to
introduce the season ticket or the uniform tax, and will surely go
much further in this line when they are no longer private property:
all these are tokens showing in what direction further progress is to
be expected.

It is in the direction of putting the wants of the individual _above_
the valuation of the services he has rendered, or might render, to
society; in considering society as a whole, so intimately connected
together that a service rendered to any individual is a service
rendered to the whole society.  The librarian of the British Museum
does not ask the reader what have been his previous services to
society; he simply gives him the books he requires; and for a uniform
fee, a scientific society leaves its gardens and museums at the free
disposal of each member.  The crew of a lifeboat do not ask whether
the men of a distressed ship are entitled to be rescued at a risk of
life; and the Prisoners' Aid Society does not inquire what a released
prisoner is worth.  Here are men in need of a service; they are
_fellow_ men, and no further rights are required.

And if this very city, so egotistic to-day, be visited by a public
calamity--let it be besieged, for example, like Paris in 1871, and
experience during the siege a want of food--this very same city would
be unanimous in proclaiming that the first needs to be satisfied are
those of the children and old, no matter what services they may render
or have rendered to society.  And it would take care of the active
defenders of the city, whatever the degrees of gallantry displayed by
each of them.  But, this tendency already existing, nobody will deny,
I suppose, that, in proportion as humanity is relieved from its hard
struggle for life, the same tendency will grow stronger.  If our
productive powers were fully applied to increasing the stock of the
staple necessities for life; if a modification of the present
conditions of property increased the number of producers by all those
who are not producers of wealth now; and if manual labour reconquered
its place of honour in society, the communist tendencies already
existing would immediately enlarge their sphere of application.

Taking all this into account, and still more the practical aspects of
the question as to how private property _might_ become common
property, most of the anarchists maintain that the very next step to
be made by society, as soon as the present regime of property
undergoes a modification, will be in a communist sense.  We are
communists.  But our communism is not that of the authoritarian
school: it is anarchist communism, communism without government, free
communism.  It is a synthesis of the two chief aims pursued by
humanity since the dawn of its history--economic freedom and political
freedom.

I have already said that anarchism means no-government.  We know well
that the word "anarchy" is also used in current phraseology as
synonymous with disorder.  But that meaning of "anarchy," being a
derived one, implies at least two suppositions.  It implies, first,
that wherever there is no government there is disorder; and it
implies, moreover, that order, due to a strong government and a strong
police, is always beneficial.  Both implications, however, are
anything but proved.  There is plenty of order--we should say, of
harmony--in many branches of human activity where the government,
happily, does not interfere.  As to the beneficial effects of order,
the kind of order that reigned at Naples under the Bourbons surely was
not preferable to some disorder started by Garibaldi; while the
Protestants of this country will probably say that the good deal of
disorder made by Luther was preferable, at any rate, to the order
which reigned under the Pope.  While all agree that harmony is always
desirable, there is no such unanimity about order, and still less
about the "order" which is supposed to reign in our modern societies.
So that we have no objection whatever to the use of the word "anarchy"
as a negation of what has been often described as order.

By taking for our watchword anarchy in its sense of no-government, we
intend to express a pronounced tendency of human society.  In history
we see that precisely those epochs when small parts of humanity broke
down the power of their rulers and reassumed their freedom were epochs
of the greatest progress, economic and intellectual.  Be it the growth
of the free cities, whose unrivalled monuments--free work of free
associations of workers--still testify to the revival of mind and of
the well-being of the citizen; be it the great movement which gave
birth to the Reformation--those epochs when the individual recovered
some part of his freedom witnessed the greatest progress.  And if we
carefully watch the present development of civilised nations, we
cannot fail to discover in it a marked and ever-growing movement
towards limiting more and more the sphere of action of government, so
as to leave more and more liberty to the initiative of the individual.
After having tried all kinds of government, and endeavoured to solve
the insoluble problem of having a government "which might compel the
individual to obedience, without escaping itself from obedience to
collectivity," humanity is trying now to free itself from the bonds of
any government whatever, and to respond to its needs of organisation
by the free understanding between individuals pursuing the same common
aims.

Home Rule, even for the smallest territorial unit or group, becomes a
growing need.  Free agreement is becoming a substitute for law.  And
free cooperation a substitute for governmental guardianship.  One
after the other those activities which were considered as the
functions of government during the last two centuries are disputed;
society moves better the less it is governed.  And the more we study
the advance made in this direction, as well as the inadequacy of
governments to fulfill the expectations placed in them, the more we
are bound to conclude that humanity, by steadily limiting the
functions of government, is marching towards reducing them finally to
_nil_.  We already foresee a state of society where the liberty of the
individual will be limited by no laws, no bonds--by nothing else but
his own social habits and the necessity, which everyone feels, of
finding cooperation, support, and sympathy among his neighbours.

Of course the no-government ethics will meet with at least as many
objections as the no-capital economics.  Our minds have been so
nurtured in prejudices as to the providential functions of government
that anarchist ideas _must_ be received with distrust.  Our whole
education, from childhood to the grave, nurtures the belief in the
necessity of a government and its beneficial effects.  Systems of
philosophy have been elaborated to support this view; history has been
written from this standpoint; theories of law have been circulated and
taught for the same purpose.  All politics are based on the same
principle, each politician saying to people he wants to support him:
"Give me the governmental power; I will, I can, relieve you from the
hardships of your present life." All our education is permeated with
the same teachings.  We may open any book of sociology, history, law,
or ethics: everywhere we find government, its organisation, its deeds,
playing so prominent a part that we grow accustomed to suppose that
the State and the political men are everything; that there is nothing
behind the big statesmen.  The same teachings are daily repeated in
the Press.  Whole columns are filled up with minutest records of
parliamentary debates, of movements of political persons.  And, while
reading these columns, we too often forget that besides those few men
whose importance has been so swollen up as to overshadow humanity,
there is an immense body of men--mankind, in fact--growing and dying,
living in happiness or sorrow, labouring and consuming, thinking and
creating.

And yet, if we revert from the printed matter to our real life, and
cast a broad glance on society as it is, we are struck with the
infinitesimal part played by government in our life.  Millions of
human beings live and die without having had anything to do with
government.  Every day millions of transactions are made without the
slightest interference of government; and those who enter into
agreements have not the slightest intention of breaking bargains.
Nay, those agreements which are not protected by government (those of
the exchange, or card debts) am perhaps better kept than any others.
The simple habit of keeping one's word, the desire of not losing
confidence, are quite sufficient in an overwhelming majority of cases
to enforce the keeping of agreements.  Of course it may be said that
there is still the government which might enforce them if necessary.
But without speaking of the numberless cases which could not even be
brought before a court, everyone who has the slightest acquaintance
with trade will undoubtedly confirm the assertion that, if there were
not so strong a feeling of honour in keeping agreements, trade itself
would become utterly impossible.  Even those merchants and
manufacturers who feel not the slightest remorse when poisoning their
customers with all kinds of abominable drugs, duly labelled, even they
also keep their commercial agreements.  But if such a relative
morality as commercial honesty exists now under the present
conditions, when enrichment is the chief motive, the same feeling will
further develop very quickly as soon as robbing someone of the fruits
of his labour is no longer the economic basis of our life.

Another striking feature of our century tells in favour of the same
no-government tendency.  It is the steady enlargement of the field
covered by private initiative, and the recent growth of large
organisations resulting merely and simply from free agreement.  The
railway net of Europe--a confederation of so many scores of separate
societies--and the direct transport of passengers and merchandise over
so many lines which were built independently and federated together,
without even so much as a Central Board of European Railways, is a
most striking instance of what is already done by mere agreement.  If
fifty years ago somebody had predicted that railways built by so many
separate companies finally would constitute so perfect a net as they
do today, he surely would have been treated as a fool.  It would have
been urged that so many companies, prosecuting their own interests,
would never agree without an International Board of Railways,
supported by an International Convention of the European States, and
endowed with governmental powers.  But no such board was resorted to,
and the agreement came nevertheless.  The Dutch associations of ship
and boat owners are now extending their organisations over the rivers
of Germany and even to the shipping trade of the Baltic.  The
numberless amalgamated manufacturers' associations, and the
_syndicates_ of France, are so many instances in point.  If it be
argued that many of these organisations are organisations for
exploitation, that proves nothing, because, if men pursuing their own
egotistic, often very narrow, interests can agree together, better
inspired men, compelled to be more closely connected with other
groups, will necessarily agree still more easily and still better.

But there also is no lack of free organisations for nobler pursuits.
One of the noblest achievements of our century is undoubtedly the
Lifeboat Association.  Since its first humble start, it has saved no
less than thirty-two thousand human lives.  It makes appeal to tho
noblest instincts of man; its activity is entirely dependent upon
devotion to the common cause, while its internal organisation is
entirely based upon the independence of the local committees.  The
Hospitals Association and hundreds of like organisations, operating on
a large scale and covering each a wide field, may also be mentioned
under this head.  But, while we know everything about governments and
their deeds, what do we know about the results achieved by free
cooperation?  Thousands of volumes have been written to record the
acts of governments; the most trifling amelioration due to law has
been recorded; its good effects have been exaggerated, its bad effects
passed by in silence.  But where is the book recording what has been
achieved by free cooperation of well-inspired men?  At the same time,
hundreds of societies are constituted every day for the satisfaction
of some of the infinitely varied needs of civilised man.  We have
societies for all possible kinds of studies--some of them embracing
the whole field of natural science, others limited to a small special
branch; societies for gymnastics, for shorthand-writing, for the study
of a separate author, for games and all kinds of sports, for
forwarding the science of maintaining life, and for favouring the art
of destroying it; philosophical and industrial, artistic and
anti-artistic; for serious work and for mere amusement--in short,
there is not a single direction in which men exercise their faculties
without combining together for the accomplishment of some common aim.
Every day new societies are formed, while every year the old ones
aggregate together into larger units, federate across the national
frontiers, and cooperate in some common work.

The most striking feature of these numberless free growths is that
they continually encroach on what was formerly the domain of the State
or the Municipality.  A householder in a Swiss village on the banks of
Lake Leman belongs now to at least a dozen different societies which
supply him with what is considered elsewhere as a function of the
municipal government.  Free federation of independent communes for
temporary or permanent purposes lies at the very bottom of Swiss life,
and to these federations many a part of Switzerland is indebted for
its roads and fountains, its rich vineyards, well-kept forests, and
meadows which the foreigner admires.  And besides these small
societies, substituting themselves for the State within some limited
sphere, do we not see other societies doing the same on a much wider
scale?

One of the most remarkable societies which has recently arisen is
undoubtedly the Red Cross Society.  To slaughter men on the
battle-fields, that remains the duty of the State; but these very
States recognise their inability to take care of their own wounded:
they abandon the task, to a great extent, to private initiative.  What
a deluge of mockeries would not have been cast over the poor "Utopist"
who should have dared to say twenty-five years ago that the care of
the wounded might be left to private societies!  "Nobody would go into
the dangerous places!  Hospitals would all gather where there was no
need of them!  National rivalries would result in the poor soldiers
dying without any help, and so on,"--such would have been the outcry.
The war of 1871 has shown how perspicacious those prophets are who
never believe in human intelligence, devotion, and good sense.

These facts--so numerous and so customary that we pass by without even
noticing them--are in our opinion one of the most prominent features
of the second half of the nineteenth century.  The just-mentioned
organisms grew up so naturally, they so rapidly extended and so easily
aggregated together, they are such unavoidable outgrowths of the
multiplication of needs of the civilised man, and they so well replace
State-interference, that we must recognise in them a growing factor of
our life.  Modern progress is really towards the free aggregation of
free individuals so as to supplant government in all those functions
which formerly were entrusted to it, and which it mostly performed so
badly.

As to parliamentary rule and representative government altogether,
they are rapidly falling into decay.  The few philosophers who already
have shown their defects have only timidly summed up the growing
public discontent.  It is becoming evident that it is merely stupid to
elect a few men and to entrust them with the task of making laws on
all possible subjects, of which subjects most of them are utterly
ignorant.  It is becoming understood that majority rule is as
defective as any other kind of rule; and humanity searches and finds
new channels for resolving the pending questions The Postal Union did
not elect an international postal parliament in order to make laws for
all postal organisations adherent to the Union.  The railways of
Europe did not elect an international railway parliament in order to
regulate the running of the trains and the partition of the income of
international traffic.  And the Meteorological and Geological
Societies of Europe did not elect either meteorological or geological
parliaments to plan polar stations, or to establish a uniform
subdivision of geological formations and a uniform coloration of
geological maps.  They proceeded by means of agreement.  To agree
together they resorted to congresses; but, while sending delegates to
their congresses they did not say to them, "Vote about everything you
like--we shall obey." They put forward questions and discussed them
first themselves; then they sent delegates acquainted with the special
question to be discussed at the congress, and they sent
_delegates_--not rulers.  Their delegates returned from the congress
with no _laws_ in their pockets, but with _proposals of agreements_.
Such is the way assumed now (the very old way, too) for dealing with
questions of public interest--not the way of law-making by means of a
representative government.

Representative government has accomplished its historical mission; it
has given a mortal blow to court-rule; and by its debates it has
awakened public interest in public questions.  But to see in it the
government of the future socialist society is to commit a gross error.
Each economic phase of life implies its own political phase; and it is
impossible to touch the very basis of the present economic
life--private property--without a corresponding change in the very
basis of the political organisation.  Life already shows in which
direction the change will be made.  Not in increasing the powers of
the State, but in resorting to free organisation and free federation
in all those branches which are now considered as attributes of the
State.

The objections to the above may be easily foreseen.  It will be said
of course: "But what is to be done with those who do not keep their
agreements?  What with those who are not inclined to work?  What with
those who would prefer breaking the written laws of society, or--on
the anarchist hypothesis--its unwritten customs?  Anarchism may be
good for a higher humanity,--not for the men of our own times."

First of all, there are two kinds of agreements: there is the free one
which is entered upon by free consent, as a free choice between
different courses equally open to each of the agreeing parties.  And
there is the enforced agreement, imposed by one party upon the other,
and accepted by the latter from sheer necessity; in fact, it is no
agreement at all; it is a mere submission to necessity.  Unhappily,
the great bulk of what are now described as agreements belong to the
latter category.  When a workman sells his labour to an employer and
knows perfectly well that some part of the value of his produce will
be unjustly taken by the employer; when he sells it without even the
slightest guarantee of being employed so much as six consecutive
months, it is a sad mockery to call that a free contract.  Modern
economists may call it free, but the father of political economy--Adam
Smith--was never guilty of such a misrepresentation.  As long as
three-quarters of humanity are compelled to enter into agreements of
that description, force is of course necessary, both to enforce the
supposed agreements and to maintain such a state of things.
Force--and a great deal of force--is necessary to prevent the
labourers from taking possession of what they consider unjustly
appropriated by the few; and force is necessary to continually bring
new "uncivilised nations" under the same conditions.

But we do not see the necessity of force for enforcing agreements
freely entered upon.  We never heard of a penalty imposed on a man who
belonged to the crew of a lifeboat and at a given moment preferred to
abandon the association.  All that his comrades would do with him, if
he were guilty of a gross neglect, would probably be to refuse to have
anything further to do with him.  Nor did we hear of fines imposed on
a contributor to the dictionary for a delay in his work, or of
_gendarmes_ driving the volunteers of Garibaldi to the battlefield.
Free agreements need not be enforced.

As to the so-often repeated objection that no one would labour if he
were not compelled to do so by sheer necessity, we heard enough of it
before the emancipation of slaves in America, as well as before the
emancipation of serfs in Russia.  And we have had the opportunity of
appreciating it at its just value.  So we shall not try to convince
those who can be convinced only by accomplished facts.  As to those
who reason, they ought to know that, if it really was so with some
parts of humanity at its lowest stages, or if it is so with some small
communities, or separate individuals, brought to sheer despair by ill
success in their struggle against unfavourable conditions, it is not
so with the bulk of the civilised nations.  With us, work is a habit,
and idleness an artificial growth.  Of course, when to be a manual
worker means to be compelled to work all one's life long for ten hours
a day, and often more, at producing some part of something--a pin's
head, for instance; when it means to be paid wages on which a family
can live only on the condition of the strictest limitation of all its
needs; when it means to be always under the menace of being thrown
tomorrow out of employment--and we know how frequent are the
industrial crises, and what misery they imply; when it means, in a
very great number of cases, premature death in a paupers' infirmary,
if not in the workhouse; when to be a manual worker signifies to wear
a life-long stamp of inferiority in the eyes of those very people who
live on the work of these "hands;" when it always means the
renunciation of all those higher enjoyments that science and art give
to man--oh, then there is no wonder that everybody--the manual workers
as well--has but one dream: that of rising to a condition where others
would work for him.

Overwork is repulsive to human nature--not work.  Overwork for
supplying the few with luxury--not work for the well-being of all.
Work is a physiological necessity, a necessity of spending accumulated
bodily energy, a necessity which is health and life itself.  If so
many branches of useful work are so reluctantly done now, it is merely
because they mean overwork, or they are improperly organised.  But we
know--old Franklin knew it--that four hours of useful work every day
would be more than sufficient for supplying everybody with the comfort
of a moderately well-to-do middle-class house, if we all gave
ourselves to productive work, and if we did not waste our productive
powers as we do waste them now.

As to the childish question, repeated for fifty years: "Who would do
disagreeable work?" frankly I regret that none of our _savants_ has
ever been brought to do it, be it for only one day in his life.  If
there is still work which is really disagreeable in itself, it is only
because our scientific men have never cared to consider the means of
rendering it less so.  They have always known that there were plenty
of starving men who would do it for a few cents a day.

As to the third--the chief--objection, which maintains the necessity
of a government for punishing those who break the law of society,
there is so much to say about it that it hardly can be touched
incidentally.  The more we study the question, the more we are brought
to the conclusion that society itself is responsible for the
anti-social deeds perpetrated in its midst, and that no punishment, no
prisons, and no hangmen can diminish the numbers of such deeds;
nothing short of a reorganisation of society itself.

Three quarters of all the acts which are brought before our courts
every year have their origin, either directly or indirectly, in the
present disorganised state of society with regard to the production
and distribution of wealth--not in perversity of human nature.  As to
the relatively few anti-social deeds which result from anti-social
inclinations of separate individuals, it is not by prisons, nor even
by resorting to the hangmen, that we can diminish their numbers.  By
our prisons, we merely multiply them and render them worse.  By our
detectives, our "price of blood," our executions, and our jails, we
spread in society such a terrible flow of basest passions and habits,
that he who should realise the effects of these institutions to their
full extent would be frightened by what society is doing under the
pretext of maintaining morality.  We _must_ search for other remedies,
and the remedies have been indicated long since.

Of course now, when a mother in search of food and shelter for her
children must pass by shops filled with the most refined delicacies of
refined gluttony; when gorgeous and insolent luxury is displayed side
by side with the most execrable misery; when the dog and the horse of
a rich man are far better cared for than millions of children whose
mothers earn a pitiful salary in the pit or the manufactory; when each
"modest" evening dress of a lady represents eight months, or one year,
of human labour; when enrichment at somebody else's expense is the
avowed aim of the "upper classes," and no distinct boundary can be
traced between honest and dishonest means of making money--then force
is the only means for maintaining such a state of things.  Then an
army of policemen, judges, and hangmen becomes a necessary institution

But if all our children--all children are _our_ children--received a
sound instruction and education--and we have the means of giving it;
if every family lived in a decent home--and they _could_ at the
present high pitch of our production; if every boy and girl were
taught a handicraft at the same time as he or she receives scientific
instruction, and _not_ to be a manual producer of wealth were
considered as a token of inferiority; if men lived in closer contact
with one another, and had continually to come into contact on those
public affairs which now are vested in the few; and if, in consequence
of a closer contact.  we were brought to take as lively an interest in
our neighbours' difficulties and pains as we formerly took in those of
our kinsfolk--then we should not resort to policemen and judges, to
prisons and executions.  Anti-social deeds would be nipped in the bud,
not punished.  The few contests which would arise would be easily
settled by arbitrators; and no more force would be necessary to impose
their decisions than is required now for enforcing the decisions of
the family tribunals of China.

And here we are brought to consider a great question: what would
become of morality in a society which recognised no laws and
proclaimed the full freedom of the individual?  Our answer is plain.
Public morality is independent from, and anterior to, law and
religion.  Until now, the teachings of morality have been associated
with religious teachings.  But the influence which religious teachings
formerly exercised on the mind has faded of late, and the sanction
which morality derived from religion has no longer the power it
formerly had.  Millions and millions grow in our cities who have lost
the old faith.  Is it a reason for throwing morality overboard, and
for treating it with the same sarcasm as primitive cosmogony?

Obviously not.  No society is possible without certain principles of
morality generally recognised.  If everyone grew accustomed to
deceiving his fellow-men; if we never could rely on each other's
promise and words; if everyone treated his fellow as an enemy, against
whom every means of warfare is justifiable--no society could exist.
And we see, in fact, that notwithstanding the decay of religious
beliefs, the principles of morality remain unshaken.  We even see
irreligious people trying to raise the current standard of morality.
The fact is that moral principles are independent of religious
beliefs: they are anterior to them.  The primitive Tchuktchis have no
religion: they have only superstitions and fear of the hostile forces
of nature; and nevertheless we find with them the very same principles
of morality which are taught by Christians and Buddhists, Mussulmans
and Hebrews.  Nay, some of their practises imply a much higher
standard of tribal morality than that which appears in our civilised
society.

In fact, each new religion takes its moral principles from the only
real stock of morality--the moral habits which grow with men as soon
as they unite to live together in tribes, cities, or nations.  No
animal society is possible without resulting in a growth of certain
moral habits of mutual support and even self-sacrifice for the common
well-being.  These habits are a necessary condition for the welfare of
the species in its struggle for life--cooperation of individuals being
a much more important factor in the struggle for the preservation of
the species than the so-much-spoken-of physical struggle between
individuals for the means of existence.  The "fittest" in the organic
world are those who grow accustomed to life in society; and life in
society necessarily implies moral habits.  As to mankind, it has
during its long existence developed in its midst a nucleus of social
habits, of moral habits, which cannot disappear as long as human
societies exist.  And therefore, notwithstanding the influences to the
contrary which are now at work in consequence of our present economic
relations, the nucleus of our moral habits continues to exist.  Law
and religion only formulate them and endeavour to enforce them by
their sanction.

Whatever the variety of theories of morality, all can be brought under
three chief categories: the morality of religion; the utilitarian
morality; and the theory of moral habits resulting from the very needs
of life in society.  Each religious morality sanctifies its
prescriptions by making them originate from revelation; and it tries
to impress its teachings on the mind by a promise of reward, or
punishment, either in this or in a future life.  The utilitarian
morality maintains the idea of reward, but it finds it in man himself.
It invites men to analyse their pleasures, to classify them, and to
give preference to those which are most intense and most durable.  We
must recognise, however, that, although it has exercised some
influence, this system has been judged too artificial by the great
mass of human beings.  And finally--whatever its varieties--there is
the third system of morality which sees in moral actions--in those
actions which are most powerful in rendering men best fitted for life
in society--a mere necessity of the individual to enjoy the joys of
his brethren, to suffer when some of his brethren are suffering; a
habit and a second nature, slowly elaborated and perfected by life in
society.  That is the morality of mankind; and that is also the
morality of anarchism.

Such are, in a very brief summary, the leading principles of
anarchism.  Each of them hurts many a prejudice, and yet each of them
results from an analysis of the very tendencies displayed by human
society.  Each of them is rich in consequences and implies a thorough
revision of many a current opinion.  And anarchism is not a mere
insight into a remote future.  Already now, whatever the sphere of
action of the individual, he can act, either in accordance with
anarchist principles or on an opposite line.  And all that may be done
in that direction will be done in the direction to which further
development goes.  All that may be done in the opposite way will be an
attempt to force humanity to go where it will _not_ go.

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