Anarchy by Errico Malatesta - Section 5

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section five of Anarchy. This is a libovox recording. All
libervox recordings are in public domain. For more information or
to volunteer pleases at libovox dot org. Recording by Anna Simon.
Anarchy by Errico Maltesta. All that you have said may
be true, say some anarchy may be a perfect form

(00:21):
of social life. But we have no desire to take
a leap in the dark. Therefore, tell us how your
society will be organized. Then follows a long string of questions,
which would be very interesting if it were our business
to study the problems that might arise in an emancipated society,
but of which it is useless and absurd to imagine

(00:44):
that we could now offer a definite solution. According to
what method will children be taught? How will production and
distribution be organized? Will there still be large cities, or
will people spread equally over all the surface of the earth.
Will all the inhabitants of Siberia winter at nice? Will
every one dine on partridges and drink champagne? Who will

(01:06):
be the miners and sailors? Who will clear the drains?
Will the sick be nursed at home or in hospitals?
Who will arrange the railway timetable, What will happen if
the engine driver falls ill while the train is on
its way, And so on without end, as though we
could prophesy all the knowledge and experience of the future time,
or could, in the name of anarchy, prescribe for the

(01:27):
coming man what time we should go to bed, and
on what days he should cut his nails. Indeed, if
our readers expect from us an answer to these questions,
or even to those among them really serious and important,
which cannot be anything more than our own private opinion
at this present hour, we must have succeeded badly in
our endeavor to explain what anarchy is. We are no

(01:50):
more profits than other men. And should we pretend to
give an official solution to all the problems that will
arise in the life of the future society, we should
have indeed a curious idea of the abolition of government.
We should then be describing a government dictating, like the clergy,
a universal code for the present and all future time.

(02:12):
Seeing that we have neither police nor prisons to enforce
our doctrine, humanity might laugh with impunity at us and
our pretensions. Nevertheless, we consider seriously all the problems of
social life which now suggest themselves on account of their
scientific interest, and because, hoping to see anarchy realized, we
wish to help towards the organization of the new society.

(02:33):
We have therefore our own ideas on these subjects, ideas
which are to our minds likely to be permanent or
transitory according to their respective cases. And did space permit,
we might add somewhat more on these points. But the
fact that we today think in a certain way on
a given question is no proof that such will be
the mode of procedure in the future. Who can foresee

(02:56):
the activities which may develop in humanity when it is
emancipated from miss oppression, when all are the means of
instruction and self development, when the strife between man with
the hatred and rancored breeds will be no longer a
necessary condition of existence. Who can foresee the progress of science,
that new sources of production, means of communication, et cetera.

(03:17):
The one essential is that a society be constituted in
which the exploitation and domination of man by man are impossible.
That the society, in other words, be such that the
means of existence and development of labor be free and
open to everyone, and all be able to cooperate according
to their wishes and their knowledge in the organization of
social life. Under such conditions, everything will necessarily be performed

(03:42):
in compliance with the needs of all, according to the
knowledge and possibilities of the moment, and everything will improve
with the increase of knowledge and power. In fact, a
program which would touch the basis of the new social
constitution could not do more, after all, than indicate a method.
And method, more than anything else, defines parties and determines

(04:03):
their importance in history. Method apart, every one says he
wishes for the good of mankind, and many do truly
wish for it. As parties disappear, every organized action directed
to a definite end disappears. Likewise, it is therefore necessary
to consider anarchy as above all a method. There are

(04:24):
two methods by which the different parties not anarchistic expect
or say they expect to bring about the greatest good
of each and all. These are the authoritarian or state
socialist and the individualist methods. The former entrusts the direction
of social life to a few, and it would result
in the exploitation and oppression of the masses. By that view,

(04:48):
the second party trusts to the free initiative of individuals,
and proclaims, if not the abolition the reduction of government. However,
as it respects private property and its founded on the
principle of each for himself and therefore on competition, its
liberty is only the liberty of the strong, the license

(05:08):
of those who have to oppress and exploit the weak,
who have nothing. Far from producing harmony, it would tend
always to augment the distance between the rich and the poor,
and end also through exploitation and domination in authority. This
second method, individualism is, in theory a kind of anarchy
without socialism. It is therefore no better than a lie,

(05:32):
because liberty is not possible without equality, and true anarchy
cannot be without solidarity without socialism. The criticism which individualists
pass on government is merely the wish to deprive it
of certain functions, to virtually hand them over to the capitalist.
But it cannot attack those repressive functions which form the

(05:52):
essence of government, For without an armed force, the proprietary
system could not be upheld, nay even more or under individualism,
the repressive power of government must always increase in proportion
to the increase by means of free competition of the
want of equality and harmony. Anarchists present a new method,

(06:14):
the free initiative of all and free agreement. Then, after
the revolutionary abolition of private property, every one will have
equal power to dispose of social wealth. This method, not
admitting the re establishment of private property, must lead, by
means of free association, to the complete triumph of the
principles of solidarity. Thus we see that all the problems

(06:38):
put forward to combat the anarchistic idea are on the
contrary arguments in favor of anarchy, because it alone indicates
the way in which, by experience, those solutions which correspond
to the dicta of science and to the needs and
wishes of all, can best be found. How will children
be educated? We do not know what. Then, the parents, teachers,

(07:02):
and all who are interested in the progress of the
rising generation will meet, discuss, agree and differ, and then
divide according to their various opinions, putting into practice the
methods which they respectively hold to be best. That method, which,
when tried, produces the best results, will triumph in the end.
And so for all the problems that may arise according

(07:24):
to what we have so far said, it is evident
that anarchy, as the anarchists conceive it, and as alone
it can be comprehended, is based on socialism. Furthermore, were
it not for that school of socialists who artificially divide
the natural unity of the social question considering only some
detached points, and were it not also for the equivocations

(07:45):
with which they strive to hinder the social revolution, we
might say right away that anarchy is synonymous with socialism,
because both signify the abolition of exploitation and of the
domination of man over man, whether maintain by the force
of arms or by the mobilization of the means of life. Anarchy,
like socialism, has for its basis and necessary point of departure,

(08:09):
equality of conditions. Its aim is solidarity, and its method liberty.
It is not perfection, nor is it the absolute ideal, which,
like the horizon, always recedes as we advance towards it.
But it is the open road to all progress and
to all improvement made in the interest of all humanity.

(08:32):
There are authoritarians who grant that anarchy is the mode
of social life, which alone opens the way to the
attainment of the highest possible good for mankind because it
alone can put an end to every class interested in
keeping the masses oppressed and miserable. They also grant that
anarchy is possible because it does nothing more than release

(08:53):
humanity from an obstacle government against which it has always
had to fight its painful way to its progrem Nevertheless,
these authoritarians, re enforced by many warm lovers of liberty
and justice in theory, retire until our last entrenchments because
they are afraid of liberty and cannot be persuaded that

(09:13):
mankind could live and prosper without teachers and pastors. Still
hard pressed by the truth, they pitifully demand to have
the reign of liberty put off for a while, indeed,
for as long as possible. Such is the substance of
the arguments that meet us at this stage. A society
without a government, which would act by free, voluntary cooperation,

(09:36):
trusting entirely to the spontaneous action of those interested and
founded altogether on solidarity and sympathy, is, certainly, they say,
a very beautiful ideal, but like all ideals, it is
a castle in the air. We find ourselves placed in
a human society which has always been divided into oppressors
and oppressed, And if the former are full of the

(09:59):
spirit of domination and have all the vices of tyrants,
the latter are corrupted by servility and have those still
worse vices which are the result of enslavement. The sentiment
of solidarity is far from being dominant in man at
the present day. And if it is true that the
different classes of men are becoming more and more unanimous
among themselves, it is nonetheless true that that which is

(10:22):
most conspicuous and impresses itself most on human character today
is the struggle for existence. It is a fact that
each fights daily against everyone else, and competition presses upon
all workmen and masters, causing every man to become a
wolf towards every other man. How can these men, educated

(10:43):
in a society based upon antagonism between individuals as well
as classes, be transformed in a moment and become capable
of living in a society in which each shall do
as he likes and as he should, without external coercion,
caring for the good of others simply by the impulse
of their own nature. And with what heart or what

(11:05):
common sense can ye trust to a revolution on the
part of an ignorant, turbulent mass, weakened by misery, stupefied
by priestcraft, who are to day blindly sandronary, and to
morrow will let themselves be humbuged by any knave who
dares to call themselves their master. Would it not be
more prudent to advance gradually towards the anarchistic ideal, passing

(11:28):
through republican, democratic, and socialistic stages. Will not an educative
government compose of the best man, be necessary to prepare
the advancing generations for their future destiny. These objections also
ought not to appear valid if we have succeeded in
making our readers understand what we have already said, and

(11:50):
in convincing them of it. But in any case, even
at the risk of a repetition, it may be as
well to answer them. We find ourselves continually met by
the false notion that government is in itself a new
force sprung up. One knows not whence which of itself
adds something to the sum of the force and capability

(12:12):
of those whom it is composed of and of those
who obeyed. While on the contrary, all that is done
is done by individual men, The government as a government
adds nothing save the tendency to monopolize for the advantage
of certain parties or classes, and to repress all initiative
from beyond its own circle. To abolish authority or government

(12:36):
does not mean to destroy the individual or collective forces
which are at work in society, nor the influence men
exert over one another. That will be to reduce humanity
to an aggregate of inert and separate atoms, an impossibility which,
if it could be performed, would be the destruction of
any society, the death blow to mankind. The abolish authority

(13:01):
means to abolish the monopoly of force and of influence.
It means to abolish that state of things by which
social force, that is, the collective force of all in
a society, is made the instrument of the thought, will
and interests of a small number of individuals. These, by
means of the collective force, suppressed the liberty of everyone

(13:23):
else to the advantage of their own ideas. In other words,
it means to destroy a mode of organization by means
of which the future is exploited between one revolution and
another to the profit of those who have been the
victors of the moment. Mihail Bakunnen, in an article published
in eighteen seventy two, asserts that the great means of

(13:46):
action of the International with the propagating of their ideas
and the organization of the spontaneous action of its members
in regard to the masses. He then adds, to whoever
might pretend that actions so organized would be an outrage
on the liberty of the masses, or an attempt to
create a new authoritative power, we would reply that he

(14:08):
is a sophist and a fool. So much the worse
for those who ignore the natural social law of human
solidarity to the extent of imagining that an absolute mutual
independence of individuals and of masses is a possible or
even desirable thing to desire, it would be to wish
for the destruction of society. For all, social life is

(14:30):
nothing else than this mutual and incessant interdependence among individuals
and masses. All individuals, even the most gifted and strongest,
indeed most of all the most gifted and strongest, are
at every moment of their lives at the same time,
produces and products equal liberty for every individual is only

(14:52):
the resultant, continually reproduced of this mass of material, intellectual,
and moral influence exercised on him by all the individuals
around him belonging to the society in which he was born,
has developed and dies to wish to escape this influence
in the name of a transcendental liberty, divine, absolutely egoistic,

(15:12):
and sufficient to itself, is the tendency to annihilation. To
refrain from influencing others would mean to refrain from all
social action, indeed, to abstain from all expression of one's
thoughts and sentiments, and simply to become non existent this
independence so much extolled by idealists and metaphysicians. Individual liberty

(15:34):
conceived in this sense would amount to self annihilation in nature,
as in human society, which is also a part of
this same nature. All that exists lives only by complying
with the supreme conditions of interaction, which is more or
less positive and potent with regard to the lives of
other beings, according to the nature of the individual. And

(15:57):
when we vindicate the liberty of the masses, we do
not pretend to abolish anything of the natural influences that
individuals or groups of individuals exert upon one another. What
we wish for is the abolition of artificial influences, which
are privileged, legal and official end. Certainly, in the present

(16:19):
state of mankind, oppressed by misery, stupefied by superstition, and
sunk in degradation, the human lot depends upon a relatively
small number of individuals. Of course, all men will not
be able to rise in a moment to the height
of perceiving their duty or even the enjoyment of so
regulating their own action that others also will derive the

(16:41):
greatest possible benefit from it. But because nowadays the thoughtful
and guiding forces at work in society are few, that
is no reason for paralyzing them still more, and for
the subjection of many individuals to the direction of a few.
It is no reason for constituting society and such a
man that the most active forces, the highest capacities, are,

(17:04):
in the end found outside the government and almost deprived
of influence on social life. All this now happens owing
to the inertia that secured positions foster to heredity, to protectionism,
to party spirit, and all the mechanisms of government. For
those in government office taken out of their former social position,

(17:27):
primarily concerned in retaining power, lose all power to act
spontaneously and become only an obstacle to the free action
of others. With the abolition of this negative potency constituting government,
society will become that which it can be with the
given forces and capabilities. At the moment, if there are
educated men desires of spreading education, they will organize the

(17:51):
schools and will be constrained to make the use and
enjoyment to be derived from education felt. And if there
are no such men are only a few of them,
a government cannot create them. All it can do, as
in fact it does nowadays, is to take these few
away from practical, fruitful work in the sphere of education
and put them to direct from above what has to

(18:14):
be imposed by the help of a police system. So
they make out of intelligent and impassionate teachers mere politicians,
who become useless parasites, entirely absorbed in imposing their own
hobbies and in maintaining themselves in power. If there are
doctors and teachers of hygiene, they will organize themselves for

(18:35):
the service of health. And if there are none, a
government cannot create them. All that can do is to
discredit them in the eyes of the people, who are
inclined to entertain suspicions sometimes only too well founded with
regard to everything which is imposed upon them. If there
are engineers and mechanics, they will organize the railways, et cetera.

(18:57):
And if there are none, a government cannot create them.
The revolution, by abolishing government and private property, will not
create force which does not exist, but it will leave
a free field for the exercise of all available force
and of all existent capacity. While it will destroy every
class interested in keeping the masses degraded, it will act

(19:20):
in such a way that everyone will be free to
work and make his influence felt in proportion to his
own capacity, and in conformity with its sentiments and interests.
And it is only thus that the elevation at the
masses is possible. For it is only with liberty that
one can learn to be free, as it is only
by working that one can learn to work. A government,

(19:44):
even had it no other advantages, must always have that
of habituating the government to subjection, and must also tend
to become more oppressive and more necessary in proportion as
its subjects are more obedient than docile. But suppose government
with the direction of affairs by the best people, who

(20:04):
are the best, and how shall we recognize their superiority?
The majority are generally attached to old prejudices, and have
ideas and instincts already outgrown by the more favored minority,
but not the various minorities, who all believe themselves in
the right. As no doubt many of them are in
part which shall be chosen to rule, and by whom

(20:27):
and by what criterion, Seeing that the future alone can
prove which among them is the most superior. If you
choose a hundred partisans of dictatorship, you will discover that
each one of the hundred believes himself capable of being,
if not sole dictator, at least of assisting very materially
in the dictatorial government. The dictators would be those who,

(20:50):
by one means or another, succeeded in imposing themselves on society,
and in course of time, all their energy would inevitably
be employed in the fare lending themselves against the attacks
of their adversaries, totally oblivious of their desire, if ever,
they had had it to be merely an educative power.
Should government be, on the other hand, elected by universal suffrage,

(21:13):
and so be the emanation more or less sincere of
the wish of the majority. But if you consider these
worthy electors as incapable of providing for their own interests,
how can they ever be capable of themselves choosing directors
to guide them wisely? How solve this problem of social alchemy?

(21:34):
To elect a government of geniuses by the votes of
a mass of fools? And what will be the lot
of the minority who are the most intelligent, most active,
and most advanced in society? To solve the social problem
to the advantage of all. There is only one way
to expel the government by revolutionary means, to expropriate the

(21:57):
holders of social wealth, putting everything at the disposition of all,
and to leave all existing force, capacity, and good will
among men free to provide for the needs of all.
We fight for anarchy and for socialism because we believe
that anarchy and socialism ought to be brought into operation
as soon as possible, which means that the revolution must

(22:20):
drive away the government, abolish private property, and intrust all
public service, which will then embrace all social life to
the spontaneous, free, unofficial, and unauthorized operation of all those interested,
at all those willing volunteers. There will certainly be difficulties
and inconveniences, but the people will be resolute, and they

(22:45):
alone can solve all difficulties anarchically, that is, by direct
action of those interested and by free agreement. We cannot
say whether anarchy and socialism will triumph after the next
revolutionary attempt, but this is certain that if any of
the so called transition programs triumph, it will be because

(23:07):
we have been temporarily beaten, and never because we have
thought it wise to leave in existence any one part
of that evil system under which humanity groans. Whatever happens,
we shall have some influence on events by our numbers,
our energy, our intelligence, and our steadfastness. Also, even if

(23:29):
we are now conquered, our work will not have been
in vain. For the more decided we shall have been
in aiming at the realization of all our demands, the
less there will be of government and of private property
in the new society, and we shall have done a
great work. For human progress is measured by the degree
in which government and private property are administered. If to

(23:52):
day we fall without lowering our colors, our cause is
certain of victory tomorrow. End of section five end of
Anarchy by Erco Malteste.