Philosophic Anarchism, Its Good Side and Its Very Bad AWPROBLEM IN APPLIED ANARCHISM:Being entitled to all he produces (Anarchist maxim), what portion of a loaf of bread fallts to the man who fed the cow that dropped the calf that made the ox that pulled the plow that broke the ground that grew the wheat that made the flour that formed the dough that puffed up, a white WAITING FOR HIS loaf in the baker's ovenI If the ox die in the midst of the plowing, then whatf Shall Ocht be stricken out for Naught,-NikiUan i "In the night, wohite cows look black:" In the dark, GQlotto's O Is all corners: In a dark mind,.4las, anything I *1~ Philosophic Anarchism, Its Good Side and Its Very Bad "White Cows, in the Dark, Look Black" Written, Published, and Sold BY J. S. CRAWFORD, Cherokee, Iowa Price, post paid, paper, 15 cents Also POLITICAL SOCIALISM,-Why It Would Fail? 10 cents POLITICAL SOCIALISM,-Would It Fail in Success 25 cents 7"Liberal Discount to Trade. Stamps not Wanted. Inclose wrapped coin. Reference, Senator Crawford, Washington, D. C. CONTENTS Anarchism and Socialism Defined and Distinguished. Preliminary and Historic Background of Anarchy. First Philosophic Anarchist. First American Anarchist et al. Greatest of All Anarchists et al. Note on High Explosives, The Haymarket Riot, and Doctor Law-cure. COPYRIGHT, NOVEMBER, 1911 by J. S. CRAWFORD A PREDICAMENT:-Being entitled to all he produces (socialist maxim), claim is made that the wageworker earns $3,500 a year and gets $500 a year, thus being robbed of $3,000 a year: That is, if he pay 35 cents a pound for butter, he is robbed of 30 cents: That is (in the Socialist-State), somebody must raise cattle; maintain cows; produce milk; churn, and market butter for 5 cents a pound: Now, how compel the socialist farmer to do so much and get so littleP?-Political Socialism,-Would It Fail in Success? by the writer. FOUR DEFINITIONS,---TWO OF ANARCHISM AND TWO OF SOCIALISM,--- These Definitions Show the Likeness and the Unlikeness of the Movements OF ANARCHISM: BENJAMIN R. TUCKER: "Anarchism is the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished." E. V. ZENKZR: "Anarchism means, in its Ideal Sense, the perfect, unfettered self-government of the individual, and, consequently, the absence of any kind of external government. OF SOCIALISM: PRSIDZNT TA1T, in speech at Waterloo, Iowa, September 28, 19II:"There is a tendency among some foreign governments to encourage what they call trusts, to take part themselves in the management of the trtists, to fix prices, and to depend upon governmental control to secure their reasonable conduct; but such a system, with us. is absolutely impossible, and it might as well be understood. The countries to which reference is made are veering toward Socialism." RODBERTUS: "The Social Question is the problem how peaceably to transfer society from our system, based on private property in land and capital, to the higher order which is historically to follow it.-The New Socialism finds the solution in: The Collective Ownership and Management of all the Means of Production, Transportation, and Exchange. John Spargo strikes out the word All and discriminates between Means which are socially, and those which are not socially, used." POLITICAL ANARCHISM--ITS POLICY AND PHILOSOPHY PRELIMINARY It often has been said that the first man to propose a systematic Anarchy was Josiah Warren, a New Englander with Puritanic back-ground. But this is a mistake. E. V. Zenker, in A Criticism and History of The Anarchist Theory, says, that sometime in the middle ages, a religious sect known as Beg-hards or Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit, grew to some importance in the Rhein Valley. The Beg-hards were Anarchists in that they rejected all state authority, had a community of women, a community of goods, and preached a perfect equality. One branch of the sect became known as Adamites, which called their assemblies Paradises, and, in their enthusiasm for this happy state of nature, appeared "literally in Adamite costume, that is, quite naked." Then came Peter of Chelcic and the Chelcicians. This sect renounced the state and held their women and goods in common. Their rallycry was "The State is Sinful." But being a party of peace they could make no war so con PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM tented themselves by declaring that the way to get rid of the state was to ignore it. The Ana-Baptists (ana meaning again) developed Anarchist ideas. They preached that princes and all potentates were the scourges of humanity and oppressors of the people. They refused to pay taxes to the king or tithes to the priest. At Muenster in Westphalia they became impertinent and immoral. In 1532, under the leadership of John of Leyden, sometimes called the Brigham Young of the Reformation, crime was not uncommon. This leader who had four wives, in a fit of passion, publicly beheaded one of them in the market-place. The scandal of the sect finally became so great that state authority was invoked to suppress not only its customs but its members as well. In Rabelais's Abbey of Thelema, the Vicar of Mendon and his merry abbots had but one rule, one grand motto: "Do as thou wouldst!" The reformation of Huss had a tendency to stimulate cults and filled the public eye with such freak leaders as Peter of Chelcic, and John of Leyden, while the reformation of Luther had a tendency to exalt the individual and lessen the hold of temporal government on affairs of the citizen. Rousseau's fanciful doctrine (contrat social) that the State came into existence by a contract in which the Individual agreed with Society to waive his "natural rights" in considera ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD tion of mutual benefit, had a tendency to overthrow the doctrine of Absolutism, that the King "was the appointed of God," and could do no wrong. Of course an implied contract could not overthrow a divine arrangement. Not only did Rousseau take this ground of negation but he said that, "the real founder of society was the man who first fenced in a plot of ground and declared, "This is Mine!" As an index of the then strange confusion of thought, Diderot, who was a contemporary of Rousseau, wrote: "Nature created neither Masters nor Servants."* Of course fanaticism was rampant. The Bishop of Warmie wrote concerning such characters as the above mentioned Peter and John: "They are far more resolved than the followers of Luther or Zwingli to meet death and to bear the hardest tortures, for they run to suffer punishment, no matter how horrible, as to a banquet." And it would seem that that spirit has never deserted Anarchism. At last came the great French Revolution of 1789-93, in which feudal estates were confiscated *Confusion subsisted, not only among different persons, but contradictions arose in the mind of individuals. The Bishop of Meaux declared that the wild ass is the prey of the desert lion and the poor are the prey of the rich; then announced this contradiction: "By the primal law on Nature nothing is one man's more than another's; each man has an equal right to everything." PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM and patents of nobility, in effect, at least, annulled, and the nobles, under penalty of death, driven from the country (see Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities). In reaction, however, the public mind was taking a stronger hold on the rights of the person and the security of the middle class's property. This is proved by the French Bill of Rights which declared that property is inviolable and sacred. Robespierre, as a religionist, asserted this principle with vehemence but applied it to the middle-class (bourgeoise) only. Napoleon insisted that he could not destroy property rights if he wanted to, rather it was his will to secure them, and the Code Napoleon so provides. Out of this revolutionary and reformatory soil sprang two doctrines both challenging established order, both adverse to the legal concept of property, and both adverse to each other. Socialism seeks remedies by and through the State--Anarchism by and through the Individual. To one the function of the State is a blessing and indispensible, to the other civil authority is intolerable and all coercion an invasion of individual rights. Neither of these movements fully realizes of what a large and cumbrous body, society is the expression; nor of what a great variety of heterogenous elements it is composed; nor of the wisdom and folly, benevolence and selfishness, energy and indolence, crime and stupidity, cour ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 9 age and cowardice, caprice and conviction, mixed in fluctuating and incalculable proportions, enter into the composition.* But their assurance is boundless and unqualified. It is a mistake, also, to say (as is done often of late) that Socialism and Anarchism have abandoned Utopian ideas. Their Utopias, today, are more extravagant than ever before. It is also a mistake to say that these two movements aim at exactly opposite results. Starting from the same point, they proceed together sympathetically, in bitter and destructive criticism of established order. Then they part company and go in precisely opposite directions but, in contradiction, arrive at identically the same Utopia. Now, our purpose, in the present work, is to trace one of these movements and get, if we can, a valid conception of its foundation, its purpose, its programme, and its method. We shall find that while the spirit of Anarchism is everywhere the same, its methods are rife with contradiction,-to master its philosophy is no child's play. Its psychology is difficult to reconcile. Some of its adherents are positively the best men in the world, others are absolutely the worst, and the public forms its opinion of all chiefly from the latter. It embodies itself in no official platform; to do so would invalidate its *See J. S. McKinzie's Introduction to Social Philosophy, page 316. 10 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM own premises, a fact which does not lessen our present difficulty. It is said that Milton, when contemplating Paradise Lost, remarked that his work would require the reading of many hard and rare books: Just so. And the work here in hand, in order to form a cogent, valid, and authoritative digest of the best Anarchist writings requires the reading of some "hard and rare" books: Difficulties aside, we return to the question of the FIRST PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHIST William Godwin was born in Cambridgeshire, England, in 1756, and died in London in 1836. He was educated as a clergyman and served a parish in that capacity a number of years. He finally became a dissenter and a Puritan, dropping the title, Reverend. This because of his studies of that French philosophy which formed the background of Girondist politics and precipitated the great Revolution. These French orators, economists, poets, and speculative thinkers were far more anarchistic in spirit and ideals than either the Feuillants or the Jacobins. Godwin seems to have been a headstrong man with a keen sense of what used to be called natural justice based upon reason. He ignored convention and married for his second wife Mary Wollstonecroft, who was the unmar ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD II ried mother of a daughter, Fanny, who took the surname of her step-father. One of his daughters married the poet, Shelley. Shelley and Godwin did not always agree,-the matter of ~I,ooo coming between them as an unpaid loan from the son-in-law. Godwin was a highly intellectual dreamer and visionary. He wrote upwards of thirty books, his novel, Caleb Williams, being highly successful. In 1793, the last year of the French Revolution, William Godwin published a two-volume work under the title, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. These books are models of arrangement; octavo; with at least two inch margins on which are printed sub-headings of the leading paragraphs; with catch-words below the foot-lines; with an exhaustive table of contents, and continuous pagination running close to a thousand. Mr. Zenker says that this work attracted remarkable attention because of its novelty and audacity. "Workmen were observed to be collecting their savings in order to buy it and to read it under a tree or in an ale-house."* The copyrightbrought ~700 besides a royalty. Those of us who are familiar with old Greenback party days *Anarchism &c., by E. V. Zenker, New York, 1897, page i9. 12 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM and the argument then put f orth, not without friction and furious earnestness., may be surprised to learn that the Octopus did not originate in Wall street. Now what did William Godwin teach?That our supreme law (law in the sense of norm) is the general welfare. (It will be noticed that this language is identical with that in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution is itself supreme law, while Godwin went on to promulgate a doctrine in derogation to all law and constitutions.) He opposed all civil law. He opposed all coercive authority. He opposed private property as such. He opposed the family as a legal institution. He became indifferent to religion. He proclaimed the sovereignty of the Individual. He proclaimed individual Liberty as a sovereign right. He prophesied that the State would gradually disappear and adopted the dictum of Thomas Paine: "Society is produced by our wants, govermient by our wickedness: The first is a blessing, the last an evil." He held that the commonwealth must be organized in small voluntary jurisdictions and speaks of parishes as the unit; that crime is an ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 13 invasion and that the accused must be tried by a jury of the first twelve available men and that this jury is to be a judge of what we call the law as well as the fact,-an equitable proceeding. He proclaimed Reason to be the supreme faculty. He held Justice and Morals to be the product of Reason. He held that ideas are not innate but the product of Experience first, and Reason afterward. (Thus it will be seen that he was a Positivist.) We now come to the Utopia: Godwin lived before scientific evolution came into vogue but he proclaimed what he called a "Progressive Development." Because of his Individual Liberty and Sovereignty as a man, the Individual is to develop in Virtue and eventuate into a perfect Individual. This may require many generations but the perfected generation will live thence forward forever. Sensuality will gradually disappear and the race will cease to generate: "Thy kingdom come!" This kingdom will be here on earth and strange to say that part of the Utopia is now preached from many an orthodox pulpit. That no false inference may be drawn, let us now brief up an abstract of citations and passages from the writings of this rare old Individualist, remembering that he is breaking ground as a pioneer of a system of Anarchy:* *As the pagination of the two volumes, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, &c., is continuous, no citation of volume will be made. 14 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM At page 380 it is set down: Above all we shall not forget that government is an evil, an usurpation upon private judgment and the individual conscience of mankind; and that however much we may be obliged to admit it as a necessary evil for the present, it behooves us as the friends of reason and the human species, to admit as little of it as possible, and carefully to observe whether, in consequence of the gradual humiliation of the human mind, that little may not hereafter be diminished. At page 565, we read: General justice and mutual interest are found more capable of binding men than signatures and seals. * * * * The motives of offense would become rare, its aggravations few, and rigor superfluous. The principal object of punishment is restraint upon a dangerous member of the community; and the end of this restraint would be answered by the general inspection that would be exercised by the members of a limited circle over the conduct of each other and by the gravity and good sense that would characterize the censures of men from whom all mystery and impiricism would be banished. No individual would be hardy enough in the cause of vice, to defy the general condemnation of sober judgment that would surround him. It would carry despair to his mind, or, what is better, it would carry conviction. He would be obliged by a force not less irresistible than whips and chains, to reform his conduct. IT~S GOOD SIM1, ITS M1~Y BAD ' is In this we see the effect which Godwin attributed to the small jurisdiction. Turning now to the question of law: From preceding argument, at page 771, this is the conclusion: From all these considerations, we can not hesitate to conclude universally that law is an institution of the most pernicious tendency. Page 773: The true principle that ought to be substituted in the room of law, is that of reason exercising an uncontrolled jurisdiction upon the circumstances of the case. * ** It is not to be supposed that there are not men now existing whose intellectual accomplishments rise to the level of law. At page 776 it is said: men are weak at present, because they have always been told that they are weak and must not be trusted with themselves. Take them out of their shackles; bid them enquire, reason, and judge and *you will soon find them very different beings. **Tell them if their passions be gigantic, they must rise with gigantic energy and subdue them. Godwin has much to say about equity and natural reason in settling controversies. As to lawyers he takes occasion to remark: Page 771: A lawyer can scarcely fail to be a dishonest man. This is less a subject of censure than of regret. * * * Let us, however, suppose a circumstance which is altogether impossible, that a man shall be a perfectly honest lawyer. He is determined to 16 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM plead no cause that he does not believe to be just and to apply no argument that he does not apprehend to be solid. He designs, so far as his sphere extends, to strip law of its ambiguity and to speak the manly language of reason. This man is, no doubt, highly respectable so far as relates to himself, but it may be questioned whether he is not a more pernicious member of society than the dishonest lawyer. May it have been that Godwin failed of admission to the English bar? Until men learn better our author admits that some agency must perform the function of government. "If it be the business of every man to exercise his own judgment, he can in no instance, surrender this function into the hands of another:" quoting thus from Rousseau, Godwin proceeds to make answer: Admitting then the propriety of each man having a share in directing the affairs of the whole, it seems necessary that he should concur in the electing or appointing of officers and administrators so that questions may be debated, then abiding the decision of the majority. All this, however, is to be provisional and temporary and will pass away when the corruption of mankind will have passed away. Citing the Grecian republics whose councils he says had no authority but that of their personal character, Godwin goes on to say: ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD I7 Man is not originally vicious. * * * It will finally be sufficient for juries to recommend a certain mode of adjusting controversies, without assuming the prerogative of dictating that adjustment. * * * This is the most memorable stage of human improvement. With what delight must every well informed friend of mankind look forward to that auspicious period, the dissolution of political government, of the brute engine which has been the cause of the vices of mankind, and which has mischiefs of various sorts incorporated within its substance, and no otherwise to be removed than by its utter annihilation. We come now to a point on which turns the psychological mystery of modern life. No where in Godwin's teaching is there to be found the slightest sanction of violence. Indeed his whole doctrine is a protest both express and implied, against coercion. Progressive improvement is to thrive only in an atmosphere of peace, mutual protection, individual freedom, and good will. "The general welfare," self-control, nobility of purpose, and high morality are to be realized in the voluntary exercise of personality and individual liberty. William Godwin was an intellectual man, overly kind, overly sensitive, and sentimental, He lived in the shadow of feudalism and the great French Revolution. He felt that 18 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM the average man was oppressed and outraged by fiefs, grants, crown privileges, and patents of nobility but he was never violent except in opposing violence. Yet his teachings have led to crimes, the fiercest and most unjustifiable in history. William McKinley was perhaps as near a model man as ever sat in the Presidential chair. By inherent force of character and the inborn nobility of a kind heart as well as by his purely mental endowment he made his way from a middle walk of life. It well might have been thought that such a career would have a stimulating and ennobling effect upon the motives and ambition of such a man as Leon Czolgosz. Instead it seems to have filled the young Pole's heart with secretive and morbid design. Ambition perverted, he broods in unreason. Nourished by unhappy reflections from within and unrestrained by a selfish interest in the affairs of men from without, he plots in silence against organized society. Absorbed and weak, one idea possesses him,-little did Godwin think that his teaching of philanthropy would react in misanthropy or that the remark of the Bishop of Warmie again would be made good: "They run to suffer punishment, no matter how horrible, as to a banquet!" Bloody assassination by dirks, revolvers, dynamite bombs, and infernal machines have thus come to be the product of a kind, visionary man ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 19 dreaming dreams of peace, good will, brotherly devotion to all mankind,-dreaming of a calm, he woke up a storm."* Without qualification Godwin was opposed to the private ownership of land and movable prop*The explosive, dynamite, was invented by Alfred Nobel, a Swede, in 1866. The Nobel family, having developed the oil industry in Russia, and perfected other explosives, became rich. The Nobel peace-prize is an honor and distinction known the world over. It is said that the Alpine tunnels could not have been driven without the invention of dynamite. This explosive has come into general use for blasting in mines, blowing out stumps, exploding shells, and for other mechanical and military purposes. The composition of dynamite is simple and easily understood. Its ingredients are nitric acid and glycerine kneeded by hand into a binder such as clay or soaked into sawdust, then molded into sticks which resemble candles. It is fired by a fulminating cap or a fuse. Nihilists call dynamite black jelly, the Weapon of the Red Terror and of the Revolution. Gun-cotton is another destructive agent which belongs to this family. It may be discharged by a blow and like dynamite, but unlike gun-powder, is effective in the open air. It is also the base of smokeless powders. Gun-cotton is produced by soaking common cotton in a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acid. It is used extensively in mining harbors, laying trains, etc. Lvddite, used in the English navy, milinite, used in the French navy, and jovite, under experiment in the American navy, are highly destructive explosives, composed chiefly of picric acid, of which nitric acid is the basic ingredient. Zola, in his book called Paris, gives an account of a French scientist who gave his life to the invention of bombs. The bomb used in the Haymarket riot in Chicago, was seven inches long and charged with dynamite. Military possibilities of the areoplane give additional interest to high explosives, grenades, torpedoes, and torpedo-guns. 20 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM erty in most of its forms. His treatment of the question is not so clear as Proudhon's and we pass over his rather confused chapters on the subject, anticipating that the reader will be satisfied with a brief of the French writer's views and far more interesting philosophy. All recognized, philosophic Anarchists (save Warren and Proudhon) denounce the institution of marriage. Their reasoning leads to this because they adopt what is known as the Economic Interpretation of History (Economic Determinism of the French) first set out in the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte and later developed by Karl Marx.* The statements of the American writer, Lewis Morgan, in his Ancient Societies, are accepted without challenge. Morgan's views briefly are these: In primitive times property was held in common. A woman brought into the clan (gens) became the wife of all the brothers so that the children of the brothers, whether hers or not, called her "mother." She also became the head of the family and the child took her name. The uterine line thus established the family. But later when private property came to be recognized and the father wished to transmit to his *This question has been treated at great length by Achille Loria in what he calls the Economic Foundations of Society, London, I899; also by Mr. Seligman, in a more recent book published in New York. ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 21 own children, the marriage of one man only to one woman only was gradually introduced. This accounts for what scientists call monogony and the change of the matriarchal family to the patriarchal. The institution of modern marriage, in part at least, thus loses its sanctity and becomes a reversal of the ancient or natural order. Property rights control (and this is the key to the whole economic theory) and the woman is reduced from her high estate because of exploitation. Marxian Socialism and philosophic Anarchism lead directly to the pairing family (free love). Anarchists make no attempt to deny this and Socialists, like Bax, Bebel, Lewis, and Untermann who are "not afraid of their horses" openly accept the natural conclusion of their own premises.* As to the family, I now quote from Godwin, page 848 et sequor: *In the writer's book on Political Socialism,-Would It Fail in Success? attempt is made to show that here's the rock on which the movement is bound to split. The Christian Socialist will be slow to accept a doctrine, to him, so repugnant and yet so inevitable. The Economic Theory goes further: Marriage was instituted to transmit property, the State was instituted to protect property, and religion was instituted to support the State: Thus the chain of materialism is complete. The theory accounts for all social institutions on economic ground. The family, the throne, and the altar are incidents to property: Matter dictated principles to mind; not mind to matter 22 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM This subject of cohabitation is particularly interesting as it includes in it the subject of marriage. It will, therefore, be proper to extend our enquiries somewhat further under this head. Cohabitation is not only an evil as it checks the independent progress of the mind; it is also inconsistent with the imperfections and propensities of men. It is absurd to expect that the inclinations and wishes of two human beings should coincide throughout a long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together, is to subject them to some inevitable portion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness. This cannot be otherwise so long as man has failed to reach the standard of absolute perfection. The supposition that I must have a companion for life, is the result of a complication of vices. It is the dictate of cowardice and not of fortitude. It flows from the desire to be loved and esteemed for something that is not desert. * * * The institution of marriage is a system of fraud. * * * Marriage is law and the worst of laws. So long as I seek to engross one woman to myself, and to prohibit my neighbor from proving his superior desert and reaping the fruits of it, I am guilty of the most odious of monopolies. * * * The abolition of marriage will be attended with no evils. * * * But it may happen that other men will feel for some woman the same preference that I ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 23 do. This will create no difficulty. We will enjoy her conversation and we will be wise enough to regard the sensual intercourse as a very trivial object. * * * One of the measures which will probably be dictated by the spirit of the new order is the abolition of surnames. It will be noticed that this doctrine is almost identical with that laid down by Emma Goldman in Mother Earth. Now where is all this coming out? To what Utopia does it lead? A ready answer is at hand and the answer is its own best refutation. With a statement of that answer, we are done with the speculations of the first, philosophic Anarchist, William Godwin: The men, therefore, who shall exist when the earth shall refuse itself to a more extended population, will cease to propagate, for they will no longer have any motive, either of error or of duty, to induce them. In addition to this, they will, perhaps, be immortal. The whole will be a people of men and not of children. Generation will not succeed generation. Truth will not have to recommence her career at the end of every thirty years. There will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice as it is called, and no government. * * * There will be no disease, no anguish, no melancholy, and no resentment. Every man will seek with one ineffible ardor the good of all. Mind will be active and eager; yet never 24 24 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM disappointed. Men will then see the progressive advancement of the virtuous and the good. FIRST AMERICAN ANARCHIST ET AL While Josiah Warren seems to have been a man who did his own thinking and evidently worked out his doctrine of Cost the Limit of Price independently of other thinkers, it is probable that he was familiar with the social theories of Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. At any rate he was attracted to Robert Owen's socialist colony at New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825. For a time he was an enthusiastic adherent of Socialism. But when the time came, of which Lockwood tells, that "the women fought like dogs and cats," Warren saw that the experiment was a failure. In Baillie's biography, then, we are not surprised to find Warren summing up the cause of the failure in this wise: *Josiah Warren was born in Boston in 1798, and is said to have been a grand-nephew of Gen. Joseph Warren, who was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. The younger Warren was a musician, an inventor, a writer, and a student of social science. His doctrine was announced in a book under the title, Equitable Commerce, written at the Owenite colony in New Harmony, Indiana, in 1846. This book was later published under the title, The New Civilization, &c. William Baillie has written a very satisfactory biography of Josiah Warren, and Stephen Pearl Andrews has edited his manuscripts. ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 25 Personal liberty was at a discount, incentive to sustained individual effort was lacking, and each was inclined to ascribe the faults of the system to the shortcomings of his neighbor. As matter of fact Warren became a strong Individualist. In all tenets, save that of the marriage relation, he spontaneously drifted into philosophic Anarchism. Concerning marriage he writes: One of my conclusions is that the sudden and total abolition of marriage customs and habits, without replacing them with some definite, regulating, preserving thought and arrangement, our social condition would be worse, if possible, than it is now.-In this we see the influence of the Puritan. As above indicated Warren held that cost is the proper limit of price and that private property in real estate, except values created on the land by labor, should be abolished. Though an inventor, he opposed letters-patent on the ground that they lead to monopoly; he regarded restrictive tariffs as unjust; and, like Proudhon, he tried to effect exchanges by means of creditmoney, indeed facsimiles of his labor notes are printed in his Equitable Commerce. Under his plan of cost being the limit of price; rent, profit, and interest were to disappear,-cost being the labor necessary to produce a commodity and 26 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM money being a certificate of the amount (in hours) of labor bestowed upon it. Stores were simply depots of exchange,-clearing houses of commodities and labor notes. Sovereignty of the Individual,-Liberty,-was the watchword, and laissez faire the spirit of Warren's teaching. Benjamin R. Tucker epitomizes the whole doctrine in a simple but emphatic imperative: Mind your own business! Warren founded two colonies,-one at Equity, Ohio, the other at Modern Times on Long Island. These colonies became the rallying-places for people of various cults, biases, isms, and queer notions,-women in bloomers and men in skirts were not wanting, while the "Adamites," with difficulty, were suppressed. The Modern Times colony did attain to some degree of success; finally, however, both failed. The imaginative nature of Josiah Warren is shown by the fact that he invented a successful lard-lamp, a rotary printing-press, and a method of musical notation. At divers times he carried on mercantile establishments which he called Equity stores. In these stores, prices of all articles were marked in hours,-that is time of labor required to produce and to exchange articles of equivalent labor-cost. No profit was charged, but the time of the merchant in effecting the exchange was added to the mark. Mr. Warren died acquitted of the charge of being a ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 27 rich man, but not until he had established himself as an authority quoted by such writers as John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin, Moncure D. Conway, Benjamin R. Tucker, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and other American publicists of note and ability. At page 55 of Equitable Commerce, we read: Cost being made the limit of price, would put a stop to all fluctuations in prices and in trade; would enable each one to know, from year to year, the price of everything; would put a stop to every species of speculation, compel everyone to produce as much as he consumed; would distribute the burden of labor among all and reduce the amount of labor of each to one, two, or three hours per day; would raise everyone above the temptation to invade another, and everyone would consequently feel secure from any encroachments,-governments and laws would not then be thought necessary, in order to restrain men from encroaching on each other and this excuse for their existence would be swept away. At page 67 it is stated: Money represents robbery, banking, gambling, swindling, counterfeiting, &c., as much as it does property. Cost being made the limit of price,-by reducing the burden of labor to a mere pastime or necessary exercise, it would probably annihilate cost, when like water or amateur music, no price would be set upon it; and the highest aspirations of the best of 28 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM our race would be naturally realized.-This is quoted from page IoI. Finally we cite a passage from page 53: We should be no such thing as a body politic. Each man and woman must be an individual; no member of any body but that of the human family. The most profound American scholar who has so far declared himself to be an Anarchist is Benjamin R. Tucker, first of Boston, later of New York. Mr. Tucker was editor of Liberty, a bi-monthly organ of Anarchism, and has translated a number of French works, notably the What is Property? of M. Proudhon. He has also produced Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One. His editorials are calm and lucid and taking advanced ground are worthy of careful study. G. Bernard Shaw pays Mr. Tucker the tribute of quoting him as the best authority extant on Individualist Anarchism. At page 15, in a pamphlet entitled State Socialism and Anarchism Mr. Tucker defines Anarchism as: The doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations and that the State should be abolished. He also says that Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that the best government is that which ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 29 governs least and that that which governs least is no government at all. Of course the question of how protection is to be thrown over the person and property must occur to every thoughtful reader of Anarchist literature, and it is only such advanced apostles of the doctrine as Mr. Tucker who attempt ananswer. Indeed the security of person and property is foreign to a good deal of anarchistic writing. Tucker says: Even the simple police function of protecting person and property, Anarchists deny to governments supported by compulsory taxation. Protection they look upon as a thing to be secured, as long as it is necessary, by voluntary association and co-operation for self-defense, or as a commodity to be purchased, like any other commodity, of those who offer the best article at the lowest price. In their view, it is in itself an invasion of the individual to compel him to pay for or suffer a protection against invasion that he has not asked for and does not desire. And they further claim that protection will become a drug upon the market, after poverty and consequently crime have disappeared through the realization of their economic program. * * * Nor does the anarchist scheme furnish any code of morals to be imposed upon the individual. "Mind your own business!" is its only moral law. Interference with another's business is a crime and the only 30 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM crime, and as such may be properly resisted. In accordance with this view, Anarchists look upon attempts to arbitrarily suppress vice as in themselves crimes. They believe liberty and the resultant well-being to be a sure cute for all the vices. But they recognize the right of the drunkard, the gambler, the rake, and the harlot, to live their lives until they shall freely choose to abandon them. * * * To them legal marriage and legal divorce are equal absurdities. * * * Children belong exclusively to the mothers until old enough to belong to themselves. * * * Anarchism is an ideal which cannot be advanced by the forcible expropriation of Johann Most and Prince Kropotkin. In a group with Mr. Tucker have stood Stephen T. Byington, Henry L. Mencken, and Lysander Spooner. The above extracts give a fair idea of their beliefs. So far we have been dealing with evolutionary Anarchists. But while on the subject of American Anarchy, it is necessary to say somewhat of revolutionary Anarchists,-apostles of the Red Terror,--"Activity!" so-called. The line is firmly drawn and closely guarded between the Passive and the Dynamic branches of the movement. The Intellectuals are enthusiastic believers in Darwin, Spencer, and the whole system ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 3I of synthetic evolution. Their faith is in peaceful, developing, inevitable, scientific methods,no longer vague, evolution has become their vogue. Suffice it to say that when it comes to method, the Dynamic and the Passive Anarchist are at opposite poles. As a result of Count Bismarck's Exclusion Act passed, I think, in 1878 and running ten years, Terrorists were forced out of the German empire. Johann Most took refuge in London, where he published Freiheit (Freedom), in which he printed the formulae for compounding high explosives and poisons. He printed pictorial descriptions also of bombs and their mechanism. In London Most served two jail sentences, and at last was unable to find compositors who would set up his matter. In 1883 he came to New York and published Freiheit with varying success. No doubt he stimulated the growth of Anarchism in this country. He died three or four years ago, and his policies are now repudiated by most Anarchists. A colony of these German refugees found their way to Cecilia, Brazil; another group came to Paterson, New Jersey; and still another group to Chicago. Gaetana Bresci, the Italian silk-weaver, who shot King Humbert, worked for a time in the silk mills of Paterson. Emma Goldman,-an ex-Russian Jewess,-came to this 32 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM country in 1886. As a girl of seventeen, she was employed as a glover in Rochester, New York, thus coming in contact with masses of factory girls. A woman of intense feeling and tremendous intellectual force, she has not always been fairly treated. This persecution has served to give her undue prominence. For five or six years she, in association with Alexander Berkman, has published a New York monthly, Mother Earth. This publication is sarcastic rather than radical and is not devoid of either interest or cleverness. The Chicago refugees were extremists and most of them desperate. In 1886 employes of the McCormick Harvester Works went out on strike for an 8-hour day. While an excited demonstration was being held in the Haymarket, West Madison street, a dynamite bomb was thrown; eight policemen were killed, and a large number wounded. Arrests followed and as a result five men were sentenced to the gallows, and a number to life-terms in prison (the latter were pardoned by Governor Altgelt). In November, 1886, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Albert R. Parsons were executed. They died like stoics. All declined the good offices of a clergyman and declared that they wanted to die as they had lived, with no faith in God or man as exalted above humanity. On the gallows Spies said: "You may stran ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 33 gle my voice but my silence will be more terrible than speech." Fischer shouted: "This is the happiest moment of my life: Hoch die Anarchie!" Engel cried in a strong voice: "Hurrah for Anarchy!" Parsons, who, the night before, sang Anna Laurie, started to make a speech and got as far as: "Oh, men of America- " when the sentence was executed. Lingg, who was an expert bomb maker, committed suicide in prison. With a small bomb in his mouth, he rushed passed the guard and seizing a lighted candle applied it to the fuse,-the results were too revolting to be described here. He failed of immediate death and as the surgeons applied restoratives, he remained perfectly conscious and eyed them as complacently and as curiously as though they had been at work on some other patient.* What a strange contradiction: The worst of men seek to organize a society in which the unit could be only the best of men. It is easy to un*Captain Schaack, of the Chicago police, has written an exhaustive account of the trial, imprisonment, and execution of the Haymarket Anarchists. Lingg seems to have been a very ingenious man. The bomb used in the riot was seven inches long and appears to have been ramified with glass tubes attached to percussion caps so that the mass of explosive solids would be reacted upon instantly and, when the tubes broke, be converted into gases. 34 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM derstand how criminals who need the restraints of law seek to abolish it, but why they seek to establish a system practical to perfect men only is not easily understood, unless we accept the principle laid down by Edward Carpenter in Civilization, Its Cause and Cure,-that is that the struggles of the race have been a failure, achievement is not worth while, and we ought to go back to savagery. And strange it is, too, that because they believed in free development and chafed under unwise law, the claim is made that Jefferson, Whitman, Emerson, William Penn, and Thoreau, yes, and Fra Albertus, were Anarchists,-as well insist that Carlyle was a fop because he liked showy words. Truth to be told there is too much of a tendency toward legislation.* But Truth is a tyrant. Its authority cannot be brushed aside, much less escaped. Free-will comes near being another tyrant. We lack much in being ready *If suggestive therapeutics (bread-pills) make men well, then suggestive pathology (the essence of quackery) may make them sick. If society be an organism, as I am inclined to believe, then there is another psychology, one behind the individual psychology; it is composite and full of whims and hypo. So along comes the medicine-man rigged out in Rough-rider blouse, feather-in-hat, press-bureau, and all in hot foot, multiplying and magnifying the patient's ill.-Slapdash, "Here's your Legislative cure!" Character or no character: Young Politics is in office. Men fit for legislative i-dots escape their proper function: "How?" I-dots are abolished.-Slap-dash!-Ah, a Thunder ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 35 head is forming: Funnel-shaped: What now? Money, credit, bonds, stocks, markets fly to cover: Mill-wheels stop: Labor, chasing a red pom-pon, has made a fool of itself, and is in search of a bread-line. Time drags, but slowly out of it all come sober men. Steady now, you hard-headed, old politician: The social organism is again finding its legs: Again it stands solid on its feet. The Medicine-man has gone down before the Machine-man and strange to say, before we are aware, all is well again: Dr. Law-cure goes into peaceful quietism. But reaction is yet to be heard from, so here come Benjamin R. Tucker and such as Nietzsche. Like eagles fretting against the bars, they fret against human limitations, against the bars of time and space. With the audacity of an athlete vaulting a dozen horses and a score of elephants, they would condescend to soar the infinite and the eternal. "Give us freedom!" they cry: "Out with law! Away with restraint! We long for the super-man sufficient unto himself. Our Aught is Naught and Nihilism: Down with authority and up with libertyl"-and this all unconscious of the weakling dupes who are to follow with dirks, bombs, and giant gun-powder; eager to tumble down, topsyturvy, every finger-board which points to future happiness and welfare. Then, too, comes Justice, slowly, on her leaden heel, but when she strikes it is as with an iron fist. In some such way as this, I poorly account for social hysterics and would point out that the only New-order man who survives is the New-order Machine-man. Let it further be noted that natural, formative, educational, rational methods only, and behind which are sincere, honest, constant men,-men of the Christian ideal,-such as they only finally count. Then there are dreamy, daffy, goody-goodies, who would rather build a castle in the air than a cottage on the ground; who would rather cut a coat from rain-bows than weave it out of good, stout yarn,-but I never saw one of these men stand behind a pay-roll and make it good; I never heard one of them in troublous times, walking the floor at night, to protect the bank's account. Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them, that's the solvent: And it cannot be amended by striking out nor by substituting, Do unto others as they want you to. 36 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM for the perfect man: it is a noble ideal to give your mantle to the thief who takes your coat. But practically this perfect man could not get from one railroad station in Chicago to another. Thou shalt, and Thou shalt not, still have their place in this world. Ought is a tremendous fact. The theory of Anarchism is self-government carried to the extreme, and it will be a last step in our progress toward perfection. American exclusion acts, then, have served a good purpose and in the last ten years there has been a noticeable decline in the red-handed pretension of Dynamic Anarchism. THE GREATEST OF ANARCHISTS ET AL Notwithstanding his affectation of dress and field-work, Count Leo Tolstoi was an idealist, a peace-loving non-resistant, a mystic, a religionist. Mikhail Bakunin was a realist; a revolutionist; a rough-shod, roystering bully; magnetic, daring, and desperate, he dealt with men rather than with letters. Prince Kropotkin is a scholar, a philanthropist, kindly disposed, still a revolutionist. These three were Russian aristocrats, all Anarchists; and all different; the first, a Passive; the second a Dynamic; the last a Communist. Despite his great shelf of books, the brightest minds are not fully agreed as to just what Tol ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 37 stoi believed, or as to where his idealism led He accepted the teachings of the New Testament as a basis for society, but floundered in the application so much that it is not known whether he even believed in a future life. A child can understand Bakunin; gun-powder, giant-powder; the overthrow of kings, princes, presidents, judges, all in authority; "Activity!" Nihilism,* the Red Terror: Not, he says, for the sake of taking human life but of necessity in the attack on things, on relations, on fixed conditions. It has been denied that Bakunin was an original thinker, but I am inclined to believe that he was capable of constructive thought; at any rate he had a ferocious intellect. In middle life he was a cosmopolitan drifter, had been in this country, and because of his turbulence, had been under sentence of death in three different nations. The point is that he gave to Anarchism its spirit of assassination with what effect is witnessed by the long line of assaults from that upon Czar Alexander II. in 1881, down to the removal of Premier Stolypin in 1911.* A quar*The Russian dramatist, Turgenev, was the first to use the word, Nihilism; it occurs in his book Fathers and Sons. Russia has hard elements to deal with and Jewish news are not always fair. *Of course the later writings of such Paris editors as Jean Greve and Elise Reclus have had an irritating effect on Dynamic Anarchists contemplating crime.In addition to assassinations mentioned in the text may be cited the assault on Empress Elizabeth of Austria; 38 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM relsome man, dictatorial and dogmatic Bakunin forced a fight with Karl Marx, getting himself expelled from the International Workingman's Association. This occurred in 1872 and was the result of a long line of intrigue and complication. It destroyed the association. Socialists, then known as Communists, never have been given full credit for thus delivering themselves from the Anarchists. Indeed the two movements are confused in the public mind. Kropotkin is too fair and too verbose to convince anybody. He overwhelms and confuses the reader with his great learning. His Conquest for Bread is one of the most alluring but impractical Utopias ever written. He says that Revolution is an excess of Evolution and performs the same function in the social world that a thunder-storm does in the physical. He assumes that the units of his communism would be nearly perfect. But why quibble about Communism? No Anarchist favors or can favor an enforced Communism. All Anarchists would and must favor a voluntary Communism. The test comes upon authority. So that as propaganda a great part of Kropotkin's book is taken up with a mere fiction. Still Kropotkin must be on Sadi Carnot, President of the French Republic; Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain; Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovich of Russia; Chief of Police Shippy of Chicago; Edward VII of England, Kaisers Wilhelm I and II, and scores of minor homicides. ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 39 reckoned with because he represents a growing type, indeed the growing type. Besides he is a prolific contributor to Revolte and other anarchistic publications.-What a group of faces including Marx and one other have we here? Strong physiognomy is strangely fascinating to most men. Here it is. Look into a picture of Leo Tolstoi,-you see something more than the face of a man. Personality of a type confronts you. Character speaks. Stripped of conventionality, of artifice, of make-believe,-here we have a man in smock and common workman's shoes, whose very nose is unforgetable,-a picture known to three-fourths of the people in the United States, not one in a million of whom ever saw him. With the accent placed upon that of Mikhail Bakunin, these five pictures, save for the streak of vanity which betrays itself in the face of Marx, are all similar. Note the sweep of those five foreheads shaggy crowneld. Note the life-lines as though an order issued, "Beware!" Note the outlines stout and stocky. Even their whiskers rampant, un-sheared, and un-withstood,-after Walt Whitman and Willian Cullen Bryant, nothing like it has been produced in the United States. With this group of five styled Intellectuals, now compare the pictures of that other group of five sentenced to the gallows for homicide in Haymarket Square. The latter scowling of 40 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM visage as though nursing disappointment, sinister of aspect, weak outlines, no joy in the struggle of life, no spirit for the conquest of honors and competence:-There's your contrast. And to be reassured, look into the faces of other Dynamic Anarchists: Poor, weak Leon Czolgosz sneaking a revolver; Sato Caserio with a stiletto in his sleeve; Vaillant with a bomb under his coat. No, this's no heroism. The hero strikes in front and above the belt: It's assassination and it's weakness in disguise. Some of them have been students and in students' garb disguised their infernal machines as books. Some have been banished out of the country and some have been imprisoned in the country. They have been shot, whipped, guillotined, garroted, hung, and sent to the electric chair. Some of them have blown their own heads off: Now how account for this? Simply enough-Fanaticism. Yea, and weakness enamored of strength, strength of the Imperial Five. The greatest of all Anarchists, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was born a generation later, in the same town that Charles Fourier was, namely, in I809, in Basancon, France. It seems probable that the speculations and experiments of the great Communist might have made some impression upon the mind and given some direction to the thought of his. young townsman, but I find ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 41 no trace of this in the works of Proudhon unless on the theory of contraries. Few men have been less alike. M. Proudhon was a profound thinker and worked out the most nearly rational of any anarchist system. He made property the cornerstone of his system, or rather the absence of property as we understand it. He is not understood in America. Proudhon did not attack property per se. It is the power of property he attacked, its abuse and not its use. On this point he says: What I have been seeking since 184o, in defining property and what I wish to-day, as I have repeated over and over again till I am tired, is certainly not abolition of property. For this would be to fall back to Communism against which I protest with all my strength. What I demand from property is a balance.* It must be remembered that in Proudhon's day and country, the atmosphere of Feudalism had not entirely disappeared. The adages of French law drawn from the civil law rested largely on manorial estates. In England, under the common law, even to-day, large tracts of land are held out of use and, by producing no income, escape taxation. The writer remembers hearing *Proudhon defines Liberty also as a balance, citing the root word, lirra. 42 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM Bradlaugh, on a certain occasion, bring one of his speeches to a mighty climax: "If the plow can't go through those lands, the bayonet will!" It must be remembered, too, that Proudhon born of peasant parents; sharing the French peasant's passion for land; knowing this peasant's industry, economy, honesty, and hard lot; then seeing special rights of great landed estates vested in what had been a nobility and these estates used for pleasure rather than production, -these were the conditions under which Proudhon gave expression to his theories concerning property. Primarily he attacked the power of real property and having an analytical mind, he stopped not until he came to the ultimate conclusions of his argument: Grant his premises and it is difficult to avoid his conclusions. These premises are laid in primary and fundamental conditions. He postulates his theory on what he calls "natural justice" and defines Justice in terms of equality. He defines social order, justice, and equality as synonymous: There I find his infirmity just as I find a contradiction in Liberty and Equality, two terms in the French trinity, slogan of the Revolution. Having now tried to get the perspective and surroundings of M. Proudhon, it may be well, before calling upon him to speak for himself, to give in a few lines, the important facts of his life: As a boy he learned the printer's trade ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 43 and thus worked himself through the academy in his native town. Taking a prize essay he was made a pensioner of this academy and, under a rule that each year he must submit a thesis, he wrote and filed What Is Property? with the answer that it is Theft. This thesis came near losing him his honor and pension. It is interesting to note that that great document which anticipated Darwinian evolution and the Economic Interpretation of History and to this day is read closely by every student of economic science, was written at the age of thirty-one. M. Proudhon finally found his way to Paris, where his writings, more than once, got him into jail; they got him into the Chamber of Deputies also and mixed him up with M. Blanc in the revolution of 1848. He established what he called the Bank of the People, which rested on fiat certificates and of course failed. He died in 1865. Charles A. Dana c6mmented favorably on this bank. M. Proudhon was a family man and thoroughly honest, radical but not a revolutionist.* *Proudhon's prayer: O God of Liberty! God of Equality Thou who didst place in my heart the sentiment of justice, before my reason could comprehend it, hear my ardent prayer! Thou hast dictated all that I have written; Thou hast shaped my thought; Thou hast directed my studies; Thou hast weaned my mind from curiosity and my heart from attachment, that I may publish Thy truth to the master and the slave. I have spoken with what force and talent Thou hast given me; it is thine to finish the work. Thou 44 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM He knew that his doctrine, if workable at all, could be only after a long period of education and preparation. My notion is that he became so intense and so surcharged that his mind was unconsciously, slightly out of balance. Be that as it may his is the only character which has made a lasting impression on the thinking world of a systematic Anarchy which rests upon either reason or good conscience. The prayer in the footnote is the closing and the following paragraph is the opening of What is Property? If I were asked the following question: What is slavery? and should answer in one word, it is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is Robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first? knowest whether I seek my welfare or Thy glory, O God of Liberty Ah! perish my memory and let humanity be free. Let me see from my obscurity the people at last instructed; let noble teachers enlighten them; let generous spirits guide them * * * Then great and small, wise and foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffible eternity; and, singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God of Liberty and Equality ITS COOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 45 Then at page 42: The Roman law defined property as the right to use and abuse one's own within the limits of law. A justification of the word abuse has been attempted, on the ground that it signifies, not senseless and immoral abuse but only absolute domain. Vain distinction! For may not the proprietor, if he choose, allow his crops to rot under foot; sow his field with salt; milk his cows in the sand; change his vineyard into a desert, and his vegetable garden into a park? Do these things constitute abuse or not? In the matter of property use and abuse are necessarily indistinguishable. At page 43 Proudhon defines property, pure and simple, as the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing. He makes a distinction between possession and property giving sanction to the former without the right to alienate and cutting off all rights by prescription: From the distinction between possession and property arise two sorts of rights: The right in a thing (jus in re) and the right to a thing (jus ad rem). * * * With me who, as a laborer, have a right to the products of Nature and my own industry,and who, as a wage-worker, enjoy none of them,-it is by virtue of the right to the thing that I demand admittance to the right in the thing. In these quotations the reader may have caught a glimpse of a method of reasoning often adopt 46 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM ed by M. Proudhon. His book appears to be full of contradictions and confusing paradoxes. The reason is that he argues a proposition to a conclusion, then takes the negative proposition and argues that to a conclusion, then reconciles the two conclusions in a third which he adopts. Thus our author appears, at times, to be on opposites sides of the same question. At page 49 he lays down this ethical principle: In the exercise of your own rights do not encroach upon the rights of another. * * * Page 52: If property is a natural, absolute, imprescriptable right, why, in all ages, has there been so much speculation as to its origin?-This is one of its distinguishing characteristics. The origin of a natural right! Good God! who ever inquired into the origin of the rights of liberty, security, equality? They exist by the same right that we exist. By law property can exist without a proprietor, like quality without a substance. Whatever may be thought of "natural rights," as matter of fact, there are no natural rights in a primitive state. The red tooth, fang, horn, claw, and hoof is the only arbiter: Might is the only tribunal. The lion never bothers his head about whose is the kid he devours. Neither does he care which wolf gets the offal. Were it not for the lioness he would kill even his own young. But in an ideal state, the state which the race ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 47 will attain ultimately, natural rights will prevail in toto. No doubt the primitive, human child became faintly altruistic from regard for its mother. Under pressure, this altruism broadened into morality. Right and duty (the ought implanted in the human heart) asserted themselves. Under pressure, this morality broadened into spirituality. In this long process authority takes form in the State,-Law is the child of the State and Liberty is the child of Law. Authority, under a despot, may harden like a solid; under a republic it may soften like a liquid. In all these struggles toward the conception of a Supreme Intelligence* and the ideal state, persistence must be toward Truth, else this society of ours long since would have fallen into chaos: I think here is an un-observed fact underlying Darwinism. From this I regard Proudhon as having placed his state of "natural rights" at the wrong end of civilization's struggle: We did not start with the Golden Rule and it will be a long time before all of us apply it. As to the origin of property, I hold that the principle of its right is in ourselves. The principle did not originate in convention or law but convention and law recognized the principle. The first primitive man who used *Frederick the Great said to Voltaire: Man is an intelligent being produced by Nature then Nature must be intelligent. To produce without Intelligence, beings who posess it:-Is that thinkable? 48 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM the cutting edge of a newly-broken stone, appropriated that stone as his tool and then by instinct grew up the implied agreement: You protect my property and I'll protect yours. (Had Rousseau used the words common consent instead of contrat social, he would have been more nearly right.) And that tool, property, and the sense of ought are the foundation of all our advances. At page 54: 'The theatre,' says Cicero, 'is common to all; nevertheless the place that each one occupies is called his own; that is it is a place possessed but not appropriated.' At page 52 is announced the basic principle of all M. Proudhon's reasoning: Equality is an absolute right, because without equality, there is no society. Then on page 130-2 he goes into a wonderful analysis of Functions and Relations which have to do with Equality. Property and Equality are incompatible. Page 91: A man who should be prohibited from walking in the highways, from resting in the fields, from taking shelter in caves, from lighting fires, from picking berries, from gathering herbs, and boiling water in a bit of baked clay,-such a man could not live. Consequently the earth-like water, air, and light-is primarily an object of necessity which each has a right to use freely, without infringing another's right. * * * Page 67: Man needs to labor in order to live; consequently he needs tools to work with and materials to work upon. His needs to produce constitute his ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 49 right to produce. Now this right is guaranteed to him by his fellows with whom he makes an agreement to that effect. One hundred thousand men settle in a large country like France with no inhabitants: Each man has a right to one one-millionth of the land. If the number of possessors increase, each portion diminishes in consequence; so that if the number of inhabitants rises to thirty-four millions each one will have a right only to one thirty-fourmillionth. Now so regulate the police system and the government, labor, exchange, inheritance, etc., that the means of labor shall be shared by all equally, and that each individual shall be free; and then society will be perfect. * * * Page 87: Each one may harness his goat to the brean, drive his cattle to pasture, sow a corner of a field, and bake his bread by his own fireside. Proudhon, as a rule reasoned from principles to facts and seldom from facts to principles. Nevertheless, his deductions involve him in the rankest absurdities. The above is an instance: He seizes the very essence of Socialism to sustain Anarchism. In another place (page 161) he says that: "Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Socialism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak." Page 271: What is the form of government in the future? I hear some of my young readers reply: 'Why how can you ask such a question? You are a repub So PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM lican.' A republican! Yes; but that word signifies nothing. Res publica; that is the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs no matter under what form of government-may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans.-'Well, you are a democrat?'-No.-'What! you would have a monarchy?'-No.-'A constitutionalist?'-God forbid!-'You are then an aristocrat?'-Not at all.-'You want a mixed government?'-Still less.-'What are you then?'-I am an Anarchist. The man who said that also said that the man of talent should receive no more in the way of reward than the stupid man, on the ground that the gratitude of the stupid should balance the generosity of the favored. Socialism to the core. The humane element of Proudhon's doctrine is brought out in what he calls equite in chapter V. Chapter IV sets out ten methods by which property exploits production; rent, profit, and interest are three of the ten. The other seven methods are speculative. Proudhon failed to realize that "inequality of external possessions may indeed be abolished by slavery, but inequality of personal endowment, never! Doctor Schaeffle, the Austrian publicist, says that the contest between different social strata and between different individuals, between greater and lesser personalities can not cease. To this I wish to add that the man who plants a cherry-tree and wishes to en ITS GOOD SIDE, ITS VERY BAD 5I joy the usufruct must be guaranteed an exclusive right to the ground, otherwise his right to the fruit is mockery. Necessity. But the worst that can be said of M. Proudhon is that his premises made him see things in the dark so that "white cows looked black." This brief on Anarchism would not be complete without citing the reader to the works of Doctor Osgood, of Columbia University; Doctor Eltzbacher, the Halle professor; and to Doctor Ritchie, the Edinburgh logician. I now produce a quotation or two from Bebel to show that Utopia of the Socialist is identical with Utopia of the Anarchist: With the passing away of class-rule, the State will cease gradually to exist, as sure as religion ceases to exist when belief in superior beings and occult powers is no longer met with. * * * The time would come when every man would carry a box of chemicals in his pocket from which he would satisfy his need of nourishment in albumens, fat, and hydrates of carbon, regardless of time and seasons, of rain and drought, of frost, hail, and insects. Bebel is acknowledged to be the greatest living expounder of Socialism. The above extracts are taken from the latest edition (1910) of his book Woman and Socialism. See Bax also. 52 PHILOSOPHIC ANARCHISM. Now I hold that inequality like competition and emulation is a great blessing; all, however. need tempering in the spirit of that great Mystic, the Author of Authority, in whose words I find the more beautiful sanction: But the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory.