and the principle of undiluted freedom of the individual. And they came up with it by espousing another principle: that of harmony by natural law.
Do what thou wilt: but the fact is, they say, that, unsolicited and naturally, you will want only that which cannot infringe the equal rights of others to do as they wish.
A friend writes: “Our freedom, unfolding through the complete range of human faculties, will never trespass against the freedom of others. Just as the stars, gravitating around their own centers follow special trajectories, so men may follow their own line of freedom without ever overlapping and without descending into chaos.” And others, substituting physiology for astrology, speak of a “sympathetic agglomeration of cells in plants and animals”; and still others of the formation of crystals and so on, through the entire gamut of the natural sciences. No one seems to remember, even though these may be encountered in nature, misshapen or failed crystals, the struggle for survival, cosmic catastrophes, diseases, abortions, and the entire endless parade of disasters and hurts.
Disharmony and conflict of interests are the result of existing institutions. Destroy the State: respect complete freedom of trade, of banking, of minting; let title to ownership of the land be bound by the obligation to cultivate or otherwise work it in person; let us have free, completely free competition—say the individualist anarchists of Tucker’s school—and peace will prevail in the world. Economic rent, which is to say the difference in value, in terms of productivity and position, of the various tracts of land will vanish naturally and competition will lead naturally to the wisest use of nature’s blessings for the benefit of all.165
Destroy the State and private property, say the individualist anarchists of the communist school (and there is such a thing, despite the seeming contradiction in terms)—and everything will go well: everybody will agree naturally; everybody will work because work is a physiological need; production will always and naturally meet consumer demand and there will be no need for either rules or agreements because… with everybody doing as he pleases, it will turn out that, quite unknowingly and unintentionally, he will have done precisely what the rest wanted him to.
So, delving right to the very bottom of things, it turns out that individualist anarchism is nothing but a sort of harmonism and providentialism.
In our view, the underlying principles of individualism are entirely wrong.
The individual human being is not a being independent of society, but is rather the product of it. But for society, he would never have been able to hoist himself out of the realms of brutish animality and become truly human, and, outside of society, could not help but slide more or less quickly back into primitive animality.
When Dr. Stockmann, the protagonist of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, irked at not being understood and followed by the public, exclaimed “The strongest man is he who stands most alone,” he just made a downright blunder, even though he has been taken as anarchist whereas he was merely an aristocrat. If he knew more than the rest and was capable of more than the rest, that was because, more than the rest, he had lived a life in intellectual communication with men present and past, because, more than the rest, he had reaped the benefits of society—and thus, owed society a greater debt.
In society a man may be free or a slave, happy or unhappy, but in society he must remain because that is the context of his being a man. Therefore, instead of aspiring to some notional and impossible autonomy, he should look for the basis of his freedom and happiness in the agreement with his fellow men, joining with the rest to adjust those social institutions that do not suit him.
Likewise, the belief in some natural law, whereby harmony is automatically established between men without any need for them to take conscious, deliberate action, is hollow and utterly refuted by the facts.
Even if the State and private property were to be done away with, harmony does not come to pass automatically, as if Nature busies herself with men’s blessings and misfortunes, but rather requires that men themselves create it.
But if we are to make ourselves understood, we shall have to speak of this at some length… and our readers are already whining about our articles being unduly lengthy.
Another time, then.
165 The American anarchist Benjamin Tucker (1843–1939) set out his thinking mainly in the pages of the review Liberty, which he edited from 1881 until 1908, and from which he published the 1893 book entitled Instead of a Book.
A Few Words to Bring the Controversy To An End [by Saverio Merlino]
Translated from “Poche parole per chiudere la polemica,”
L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 6 (April 18, 1897).
I.
We are coming around to each other, it seems to me.
In a society run in accordance with the principles of anarchist Socialism, in grave matters of indivisible common concern, minorities will have to defer to the opinion and even the will of majorities; but the majorities must not misuse their power by trampling on the rights of the minorities. In the absence of a compromise of this sort, coexistence would not be possible.
Thus far, we are in agreement.
But what if a minority should not be willing to defer to the opinion of the majority in respect to one of the aforementioned matters? You say that in that case, Anarchy will be out of the question. So the wishes of a tiny minority, indeed, of one single person, will suffice for Anarchy—as you understand it—to be ruled out. A handful of scoundrels or reactionaries or eccentrics or neurotics, even a single person, will be able to thwart the operation of the anarchist system, simply by nay-saying, by declining to defer willingly to the majority. And since there is always going to be some curmudgeon in any society, the upshot of your reasoning is that Anarchy is all well and good but will never come to pass.
I, on the other hand, have a less absolute understanding of Anarchy. I do not go for the ultimatum you posit. As I see it the anarchist idea will begin to be acted out long before men attain a state of perfection, whereby, won over to the benefits of association, they willingly defer to one another. Starting right now, this idea ought to suggest to us ways and means of providing for our common interests and resolving such conflicts as may arise, without authority or centralization, without some established authority within society that has the capability of imposing its own wishes and its own interests upon the mass of its subjects.
That is the only practicable Anarchy and it is an imminently practicable Anarchy: the only sort worth bothering ourselves about.
Let us look at the examples you have cited. You say:
In an anarchist society there cannot be any police. In order to dispense with police, though, men must respect one another and a gentleman should be able to walk the streets without fear of being assaulted, or at least, with the assurance that his neighbors and passersby will come to his defense, should he be attacked by someone stronger than him. If the weak were in fear of being mugged, they would cry out for a police force to protect them, and Anarchy would be done for.
Therefore you pose a dilemma: either no form of social or collective defense against crime, except the casual defense by the crowd—or police, Government, the existing state of affairs.
In contrast, I believe that between the current system and the one that presupposes the end of crime, there is room for intermediate forms—for a social defense that is not a function of a Government, but that is practiced in each locality under the gaze and control
