Part 6 (2/2)
Delivered from the yoke of the State and capitalist exploitation, individuals will of their own free motion set themselves to supply the wants of the great All of society. Everything will be done by means of ”free arrangement.”
”Well, Citizens, let others preach industrial barracks, and the convent of ”Authoritarian” Communism, we declare that the _tendency_ of societies is in the opposite direction. We see millions and millions of groups const.i.tuting themselves freely in order to satisfy all the varied wants of human beings, groups formed, some by districts, by streets, by houses; others holding out hands across the walls (!) of cities, of frontiers, of oceans. All made up of human beings freely seeking one another, and having done their work as producers, a.s.sociating themselves, to consume, or to produce articles of luxury, or to turn science into a new direction. This is the tendency of the nineteenth century, and we are following it; we ask only to develop it freely, without let or hindrance on the part of governments. Liberty for the individual!” ”Take some pebbles,” said Fourier, ”put them into a box and shake them; they will arrange themselves into a mosaic such as you could never succeed in producing if you told off some one to arrange them harmoniously.”[56]
A wit has said that the profession of faith of the Anarchists reduces itself to two articles of a fantastic law: (1) There shall be nothing.
(2) No one is charged with carrying out the above article.
This is not correct. The Anarchists say:
(1) There shall be everything. (2) No one is held responsible for seeing that there is anything at all.
This is a very seductive ”Ideal,” but its realisation is unfortunately very improbable.
Let us now ask, what is this ”free agreement” which according to Kropotkine, exists even in capitalist society? He quotes two kinds of examples by way of evidence: (_a_) those connected with production and the circulation of commodities; (_b_) those belonging to all kinds of societies of amateurs--learned societies, philanthropic societies, etc.
”Take all the great enterprises: the Suez Ca.n.a.l, _e.g._, Trans-Atlantic navigation, the telegraph that unites the two Americas. Take, in fine, this organisation of commerce, which provides that when you get up in the morning you are sure to find bread at the bakers' ... meat at the butchers', and everything you want in the shops. Is this the work of the State? Certainly, to-day we pay middlemen abominably dearly. Well, all the more reason to suppress them, but not to think it necessary to confide to the Government the care of providing our goods and our clothing.”[57]
Remarkable fact! we began by snapping our fingers at Marx, who only thought of suppressing surplus value, and had no idea of the organisation of production, and we end by demanding the suppression of the profits of the middleman, while, so far as production is concerned, we preach the most bourgeois _laissez-faire, laissez pa.s.ser_. Marx might, not without reason, have said, he laughs best who laughs last!
We all know what the ”free agreement” of the bourgeois _entrepreneur_ is, and we can only admire the ”absolute” navete of the man who sees in it the precursor of communism. It is exactly this Anarchic ”arrangement”
that must be got rid of in order that the producers may cease to be the slaves of their own products.[58]
As to the really free societies of _savants_, artists, philanthropists, etc., Kropotkine himself tells us what their example is worth. They are ”made up of human beings freely seeking one another after having done their work as producers.” Although this is not correct--since in these societies there is often not a single _producer_--this still farther proves that we can only be free after we have settled our account with production. The famous ”tendency of the nineteenth century,” therefore, tells us nothing on the main question--how the unlimited liberty of the individual can be made to harmonise with the economic requirements of a communistic society. And as this ”tendency” const.i.tutes the whole of the scientific equipment of our ”Anarchist thinker,” we are driven to the conclusion that his appeal to science was merely verbiage, that he is, in spite of his contempt for the Utopians, one of the least ingenious of these, a vulgar hunter in search of the ”best Ideal.”
The ”free agreement” works wonders, if not in Anarchist society, which unfortunately does not yet exist, at least in Anarchist arguments. ”Our present society being abolished, individuals no longer needing to h.o.a.rd in order to make sure of the morrow, this, indeed being made impossible, by the suppression of all money or symbol of value--all their wants being satisfied and provided for in the new society, the stimulus of individuals being now only that ideal of always striving towards the best, the relations of individuals or groups no longer being established with a view to those exchanges in which each contracting party only seeks to 'do' his partner” (the ”free agreement” of the bourgeois, of which Kropotkine has just spoken to us) ”these relations will now only have for object the rendering of mutual services, with which particular interests have nothing to do, the agreement will be rendered easy, the causes of discord having disappeared.”[59]
Question: How will the new society satisfy the needs of its members? How will it make them certain of the morrow?
Answer: By means of free agreements.
Question: Will production be possible if it depends solely upon the free agreement of individuals?
Answer: Of course! And in order to convince yourself of it, you have only to _a.s.sume_ that your morrow is certain, that all your needs are satisfied, and, in a word, that production, thanks to free agreement, is getting on swimmingly.
What wonderful logicians these ”companions” are, and what a beautiful ideal is that which has no other foundation than an illogical a.s.sumption!
”It has been objected that in leaving individuals free to organise as they like, there would arise that compet.i.tion between groups which to-day exists between individuals. This is a mistake, for in the society we desire money would be abolished, consequently there would no longer be any exchange of products, but exchange of services. Besides, in order that such a social revolution as we contemplate can have been accomplished we must a.s.sume that a certain evolution of ideas will have taken place in the mind of the ma.s.ses, or, at the least, of a considerable minority among them. But if the workers have been sufficiently intelligent to destroy bourgeois exploitation, it will not be in order to re-establish it among themselves, especially when they are a.s.sured all their wants will be supplied.”[60]
It is incredible, but it is incontestably true: the only basis for the ”Ideal” of the Anarchist-Communists, is this _pet.i.tio principii_, this ”a.s.sumption” of the very thing that has to be proved. Companion Grave, the ”profound thinker,” is particularly rich in a.s.sumptions. As soon as any difficult problem presents itself, he ”a.s.sumes” that it is already solved, and then everything is for the best in the best of ideals.
The ”profound” Grave is less circ.u.mspect than the ”learned” Kropotkine.
And so it is only he who succeeds in reducing the ”ideal” to ”absolute”
absurdity.
He asks himself what will be done if in ”the society of the day after the revolution” there should be a papa who should refuse his child _all education_. The papa is an individual with unlimited rights. He follows the Anarchist rule, ”Do as thou wouldst.” No one has any right, therefore, to bring him to his senses. On the other hand, the child also may do as he likes, and he wants to learn. How to get out of this conflict, how resolve the dilemma without offending the holy laws of Anarchy? By an ”a.s.sumption.” ”Relations” (between citizens) ”being much wider and more imbued with fraternity than in our present society, based as it is upon the antagonism of interests, it follows that the child by means of what he will see pa.s.sing before his eyes, by what he will daily hear, will escape from the influence of the parent, and will find every facility necessary for acquiring the knowledge his parents refuse to give him. Nay more, if he finds himself too unhappy under the authority they try to force upon him, he would abandon them in order to place himself under the protection of individuals with whom he was in greater sympathy. The parents could not send the gendarmes after him to bring back to their authority the slave whom the law to-day gives up to them.”[61]
It is not the child who is running away from his parents, but the Utopian who is running away from an insurmountable logical difficulty.
And yet this judgment of Solomon has seemed so profound to the companions that, it has been literally quoted by Emil Darnaud in his book ”La Societe Future” (Foix. 1890, p. 26)--a book especially intended to popularise the lucubrations of Grave.
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