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03 - Anarchist Communism - The Conquest of Bread · Sacred Texts Archive

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Chapter three, anarchist communism. Every society, on abolishing private property, will
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be forced, we maintain, to organize itself on the lines of communist anarchy.
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Anarchy leads to communism and communism to anarchy, both alike being expressions of
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the predominant tendency in modern societies. The pursuit of equality. Time was when
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a peasant family could consider the corn it sowed and reoped, or the wood
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and garments woven in the cottage, as the products of its own toil.
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But even then this way of looking at things was not quite correct. There
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were the roads and the bridges made in common, the swamps drained by common
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toil, the communal pastures enclosed by hedges, which were kept in repair by
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each and all. If the looms for weaving or the dyes for coloring fabrics
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were improved by somebody, all profited. And even in those days a peasant
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family could not live alone, but was dependent in a thousand ways on the
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village of the commune. But nowadays, in the present state of industry,
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when everything is interdependent, when every branch of production is knit up with all
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the rest, the attempt to claim an individualist origin for the products of industry
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is absolutely untenable. The astonishing perfection attained by the textile or mining industries in
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civilized countries is due to the simultaneous development of a thousand other industries, great
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and small. To the extension of the railroad system, to inter oceanic navigation,
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to the manual scale of thousands of workers, to a certain standard of
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culture reached by the working classes as a whole, to the laborers in short
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of men in every corner of the globe. The Italians who died of cholera
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while making the Suez Canal, or of anchiolysis in the sent Gothard Tunnel,
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and the Americans mowed down by shot and shell or fighting for the abolition of
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slavery, have helped to develop the cotton industry in France and England, as
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well well as the work girls who languish in the factories of Manchester and Rouen,
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and the inventor who, following the suggestion of some workers, succeeds in
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improving the looms. How then, shall we estimate the share of each in
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the riches which all contribute to a mass. Looking at production from this general
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synthetic point of view, we cannot hold with the collectivists, that payment proportionate
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to the hours of labour rendered by each would be an ideal arrangement, or
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even a step in the right direction, without discussing whether exchange value of goods
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is really measured in existing societies by the amount of work necessary to produce it.
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According to the teaching of Adam Smith and Ricardo, in whose footsteps marks
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has followed, suffice it to say here, leaving ourselves free to return to
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the subject later, that the collectivist ideal appears to us untenable in a society
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which considers the instruments of labour as a common inheritance. Starting from this principle,
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such a society would find itself forced from the very outsets to abandon all
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forms of wages. The mitigated individualism of the collectivist system certainly cannot maintain itself
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alongside a partial communism. The socialization of land and the instruments of production.
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A new form of property requires a new form of remuneration. A new method
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of production cannot exist side by side with the old forms of consumption any more
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than it can adapt itself to the old forms of political organization. The wage
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system arises out of the individual ownership of the land and the instruments of labour.
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It was the necessary condition for the development of capitalist production, and will
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perish with it in spite of the attempt to disguise it as profit sharing.
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The common possession of the instruments of labor must necessarily bring with it the enjoyment
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in common of the fruits of common labor. We hold further that communism is
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not only desirable, but that exists in societies founded on individualism are inevitably impelled
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in a direction of communism. The development of individualism during the last three centuries
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is explained by the efforts of the individual to protect himself from the tyranny of
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capital and of the state. For a time, he imagined, and those
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who expressed his thought for him, declared that he could free himself entirely from
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the state and from society by means of money. He said, I can
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buy all that I need. But the individual was on a wrong track,
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and modern history has taught him to recognize that without the help of all he
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can do nothing, although his strong boxes are full of gold. In fact,
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along with the current of individualism, we find in all modern history a
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tendency on the one hand, to retain all that remains of the partial communism
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of antiquity, and on the other to establish the communist principle in the thousand
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developments of modern mind. As soon as the communes of the tenth, eleventh,
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and twelfth centuries had succeeded in emancipating themselves from their lords, ecclesiastical or
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lay, their communal labour and communal consumption began to extend and develop rapidly.
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The township, and not private persons, freighted ships and equipped expeditions for the
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experts of their manufacture, and the benefit arising from the foreign trade did not
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accrue to individuals, but was shared by all At the outset. The township
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also brought provisions for all their citizens. Traces of these institutions have lingered on
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into the nineteenth century, and the people piously cherished the memory of them in
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their legends. All that has disappeared, but the rural township still struggles to
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preserve the last traces of this communism, and it succeeds except when the state
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throws its heavy sword into the balance. Meanwhile, new organizations based on the
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same principle to every man according to his needs sprung up under a thousand different
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forms. For without a certain level of communism, the present societies could not
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exist. In spite of the narrowly egotistic turn given to men's minds by the
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commercial system, the tendency towards communism is constantly appearing, and it influences our
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activities in a variety of ways. The bridges for the use of which a
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toll was levied in the old days, have become public property and are free
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to all, and so are the high roads, except in the East,
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where a toll is still extracted from the traveler for every mile of his journey.
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Museums, free libraries, free schools, free mills for children, parks
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and gardens open to all, streets paved and lighted, free to all,
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water supply to every house without measure or stint. All such arrangements are founded
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on the principle take what you need. The tramways and railways have already introduced
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monthly and annual season tickets without limiting the number of journeys taken, and two
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nations, Hungary and Russia, have introduced on their railway as the zone system,
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which permits the holder to travel five hundred or eight hundred miles for the
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same price. It is but a short step from that to a uniform charge,
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such as already prevails in the postal service. In all these innovations,
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and in a thousand others, the tendency is not to measure the individual consumption.
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One man was to travel eight hundred miles, another five hundred. These
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are personal requirements. There is no sufficient reason why one should pay twice as
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much as the other, because his need is twice as great. Such are
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the signs which appear even now in our individualist societies. Moreover, there is
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a tendency, though still a feeble one, to consider the needs of the
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individual, irrespective of his past or possible services to the community. We are
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beginning to think of society as a whole, each part of which is so
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intimately bound up with the others that a service rendered to one is a service
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rendered to all. We go into a public library, not indeed the National
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Library of Paris, but say into the British Museum or the Berlin Library.
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The librarian does not ask what services you have rendered to society before giving you
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the book or the fifty books which you require. He even comes to your
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assistance if you do not know how to manage the catalog by means of uniform
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credentials, and very often a contribution of work is preferred. The Scientific Society
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opens its museums, its gardens, its libraries, its laboratories, and its
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annual conversations to each of its members, whether he be a Darwin or a
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simple amateur. At Saint Petersburg, if you are elaborating an invention, you
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go into a special laboratory where you are given a place, a carpenter's bench,
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a turning lathe, all the necessary tools and scientific instruments, provided only
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you know how to use them, and you are allowed to work there as
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long as you please. There are the tools interest others in your idea.
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Join the fellow workers skilled in various crafts, or work a line if you
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prefer it, invent a flying machine, or invent nothing that is your own
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affair. You are pursuing an idea that is enough. In the same way,
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those who manned the lifeboat do not ask credentials from the crew of a
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sinking ship. They launch their boats, risk their lives in the raging waves,
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and sometimes perish, or to save men whom they do not even know
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and what need to note them. They are human beings, and they need
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our aid. That is enough that establishes their right to the rescue. Thus
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we find a tendency eminently communistic, springing up on all sides and in various
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guises, in the very heart of theoretical individualist societies. Suppose that one of
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our great cities, so egotistic in ordinary times were visited tomorrow by some calamity,
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a siege, for instance, that same selfish city would decide that the
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first needs to satisfy were those of the children aged, without asking what services
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they had rendered or were likely to render in society. It would first of
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all feed them. Then the combatants would be cared for, irrespective of the
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courage or the intelligence that each had displayed, and thousands of men and women
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would outfy each other in unselfish devotion to the wounded. This tendency exists,
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and it is felt as soon as the most pressing needs of each are satisfied,
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and in proportion to the productive power of the race increases, it becomes
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an active force every time a great idea comes to oust the mean preoccupations of
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everyday life. How can we doubt then, that when the instruments of production
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are placed at the service of all, when business is conducted on communist principles,
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When labour, having recovered its place of honor in society, produces much
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more than is necessary to all, how can we doubt that this force,
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already so powerful, will enlarge its sphere of action till it becomes the ruling
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principle of social life. Following these indications, and considering further the practical side
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of expropriation, of which we shall speak in the following chapters, we are
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convinced that our first obligation, when the revolution shall have broken the power upholding
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the present system, will be to realize communism without delay. But ours is
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neither the communism of Fourier and the Thansterians, nor of the German state socialists.
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It is anarchist communism, communism without government, the communists of the free.
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It is the synthesis of two ideals pursued by humanity throughout the ages,
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economic and political liberty. In taking anarchy for our ideal of political organization,
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we are only given expression to another marked tendency of human progress. Whenever European
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societies have developed up to a certain point, they have shaken off the yoke
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of authority and substituted a system founded more or less on the principles of individual
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liberty. And history shows us that these periods of partial or general revolution,
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when the old governments were overthrown, were also periods of sudden progress in both
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the economic and the intellectual field. So it was after the enfranchisement of the
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communes, whose monuments produced by the free labour of the guilds have never been
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surpassed. So it was after the great peasant uprising, which brought about the
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Reformation and imperiled the papacy. And so it was again with the society free
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for a brief space which was created on the other side of the Atlantic by
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the malcontents from the old world. And if we observe the present development of
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civilized nations, we see most unmistakably a movement ever more and more marked,
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tending to limit the sphere of action of the government and to allow more and
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more liberty to the individual. This evolution is going on before our eyes,
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though cumbered by the ruins and rubbish of old institutions and old superstitions. Like
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all evolutions, it only awaits a revolution to overthrow the old obstacles which block
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the way that it may find a free scope in a regenerated society. After
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having striven long in vain to solve the insoluble problem, the problem of constructing
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a government which will not constrain the individual to obedience, without itself ceasing to
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be the servant of society, men at last attempt to free themselves from every
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form of government and to satisfy their need for organization by free contracts between individuals
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and groups. Pursuing the same aim, the independence of each small territorial unit
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becomes a pressing need. Mutual agreement replaces law in order to regulate individual interests
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in view of a common object, very often disregarding the frontiers of the present.
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All that was once looked on as a function of the government is to
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day called in question. Things are arranged more easily and more satisfactory without the
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intervention of the state. And in studying the progress made in this direction,
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we are led to conclude that the tendency of the human race is to reduce
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government interference to zero, in fact, to abolish the state, the personification
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of injustice, oppression, and monopoly. We can already catch glimpses of a
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world in which the bonds which bind the individual are no longer laws, but
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social habits, the result of the need felt by each of us to seek
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the supports, the cooperation, the sympathy of his neighbors. Assuredly, the
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idea of a society without a state will give rise to at least as many
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objections as the political economy of society without private capital. We have all been
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brought up from our childhood to regard the state as a sort of providence.
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All our education, the Roman history we learned at school, the Byzantine Code,
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which we studied later under the name of Roman law, and the various
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sciences taught at the universities. A custom ERUs to believe in government and in
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the virtues of state providential. To maintain this superstition, whole systems of philosophy
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have been elaborated and taught. All politics are based on this principle, and
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each politician, whatever his colors, comes forward and says to the people,
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give my party the power we can, and we will free you from your
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miseries which press so heavily upon you from the cradle to the grave. All
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our actions are guided by this principle. Open any book on sociology, or
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jurisprudence, and you will find there the government, its organization, its acts,
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feeling so large a place that we come to believe that there is nothing
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outside the government and the world of statesmen. The press teaches us the same
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in every conceivable way. Whole columns are devoted to parliamentary debates and to political
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intrigues, while the vast everyday life of the nation appears only in the columns
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given to economic subjects, or in the pages devoted to reports of police and
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law cases. And when you read the newspapers, you hardly think of the
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incalculable numbers of beings, All humanity, so to say, who grow up
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and die, who know sorrow, who work and consume, think, can
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create outside the few encumbering personages, who have been so magnified that humanity is
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hidden by the shadows enlarged by our ignorance. And yet as soon as we
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pass from printed matter to life itself, as soon as we throw a glass
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at society, we are struck by this infinitesimal part played by the government.
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Balzac already remarked how millions of peasants spend the whole of their lives without knowing
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anything about the state, save the heavy taxes they are compelled to pay.
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Every day, millions of transactions are made without government intervention, and the greaters
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of them, Thosese of commerce and of the exchange, are carried on in
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such a way that the government could not be appealed to if one of the
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contracting parties had the intention of not fulfilling his agreement. Should you speak to
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a man who understands commerce, he will tell you that the everyday business transacted
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by merchants would be absolutely impossible were it not based on mutual confidence, the
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habit of keeping his word, the desire not to lose his credit, and
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please suffice to maintain this relative honesty. The man who does not feel the
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slightest remorse when poisoning his customers with noxious drugs covered with pompous labels, thinks
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he is in honour bound to keep his engagements. But if this relative morality
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has developed under present conditions, when enrichment is the only incentive and the only
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aim, can we doubt its rapid progress. When appropriation of the fruits of
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others, labour will no longer be the basis of society. Another striking fact
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which especially characterizes our generation speaks still more in favor of our ideas. It
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is the continual extension of the field of enterprise due to private initiative and the
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prodigious development of free organizations of all kinds. We shall discuss this more at
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length in the chapter devoted to free agreement. Suffice it to mention that the
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facts are so numerous and so customary that they are the essence of the second
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half of the nineteenth century. Even no political and socialist writers ignore them,
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always preferring to talk to us about the functions of the government. These organizations,
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free and infinitely varied, are so natural an outcome of our civilization.
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They expand so rapidly, confederate with so much ease, They are so necessary
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a result of continual growth of the needs of civilized man. And lastly,
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they so advantageously replace governmental interference that we must recognize in them a factor of
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growing importance in the life of societies. If they do not yet spread over
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the whole world of the manifestation of life, it is that they find an
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insurmountable obstacle in the poverty of the worker, in the divisions of present society,
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in the private appropriation of capital, and in the state. Abolish these
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obstacles, and you will see them covering the immense field of civilized man's activity.
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The history of the last fifty years furnishes a living proof that representative government
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is impotent to discharge all the functions we have sought to assign to it.
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In days to come, the nineteenth century will be quoted as having witnessed the
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failure of parliamentarianism. This impotence is becoming so evident at all. The thoughts
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of parliamentarianism and the inherent vices of the representative principle are so self evident that
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the few fingers who have made a critical study of them did but give literary
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form to the popular dissatisfaction. It is not difficult, indeed, to see
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the absurdity of naming a few men and saying to them make laws regulating all
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our spheres of activity, although not one of you knows anything about them.
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We are beginning to see that government by majorities means abandoning all the affairs of
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the country to the tide waiters who make up the majorities in the House and
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in the election committees, to those, in a word, who have no
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opinion of their own mankind is seeking and already finding new issues. The International
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Postal Union, the railway unions, and the learned societies give us examples of
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solutions based on free agreement in place instead of law. Today, when groups
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scattered foreign wide wish to organize themselves for some object or other, they no
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longer elect to international parliament of jack of all trades. They proceed in a
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different way, where it is not possible to meet directly or come to an
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agreement by correspondents. Delegates first in the question at issues are sent and they
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are told endeavor to come to an agreement on such or such question, and
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then return not with a law in your pocket, but with a proposition of
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agreement which we may or may not accept. Such is the method of the
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great industrial companies, the learned societies, and numerous associations of everyday description,
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which will already cover Europe and the United States, and such will be the
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method of a free society. A society funded on serfdom is in keeping with
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absolute monarchy. A society based on the wage system and the exploitation of the
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masses by the capitalists find his political expression in parliamentarianism. But a free society
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regaining possession of the common inheritance must seek, in free groups and free federations
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of groups, a new organization in harmony with the new economic phase of history.
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Every economic phase has a political phase corresponding to it, and it would
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be impossible to touch private property unless a new mode of political life be found
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at the same time. End of Chapter three.