The individual has a right to his entire liberty, to the satisfaction of all his needs; that is understood. Only, as there exist more than a billion of individuals on the earth, with equal rights if not with equal needs, it follows that all these rights must be satisfied without encroaching on one another; otherwise that would be oppression, which would render the success of the revolution futile.
What tends greatly to befog our ideas is that this adulterate society which governs us, based upon the antagonism of interests, has made people prey upon one another, and forces them to tear each other to pieces in order to secure to themselves the possibility of living. In the existing society one must be either robber or robbed; there is no middle way. Today the one who helps a neighbor runs great risk of being duped; hence the belief, among those who do not reason, that men cannot live without fighting each other. The Anarchists, however, say that society should be based on the strictest solidarity. In that society which they wish to realize, it must not be that individual happiness, were it only in its very least important division, be attained at the expense of another individual. Personal well-being must flow from the general well-being; when an individual feels himself injured in his autonomy or in his belongings, all other individuals must feel the same injury in order that they may remedy it. So long as this ideal is not realized, so long as this goal is not reached, societies will be but arbitrary organizations, against which persons who feel themselves wronged will have the right to revolt.
If men could live isolated, if they could return to the state of nature, there would be no discussion as to how they should live: each would live as he pleased. The earth is big enough to accommodate everybody. But would the earth, if left to itself, furnish sufficient for all to live upon? This is less certain. It would probably mean ferocious war between individuals, the “struggle for existence” of the early ages, in all its fury. It would be the cycle of evolution already run through and recommencing—the stronger oppressing the weaker until superseded by the cunning, until money-value should displace force-value. If we have had to traverse this period of blood, of misery and exploitation, which is called the history of humanity, it is because man has been egoistic in the absolute sense of the word, without any corrective, without any mitigation. He has had in view from the outset of all his associations, nothing but the satisfaction of his immediate desires. Whenever he has been able to enslave a weaker fellow he has done so without scruple, seeing only the amount of work to be got out of the victim, without reflecting that the necessity of surveillance, the revolts he will have to suppress, will end, in the long run, in compelling him to perform an equally onerous labor, and that it would be better to work side by side, lending each other mutual aid.
It is thus that authority and property have succeeded in establishing themselves. Now, if we wish to overturn them, it cannot be done by beginning our past evolution over again. If this theory that the motive of the individual should be egoism pure and simple—the adoration and culture of the ego—were admitted, one would necessarily declare that the individual should launch into the melee and work to gain the means of self-gratification without concerning himself as to whether he crushes others at his side. To affirm this would be to confess that the coming revolution should be made by and for the strong, that the new society must be a perpetual conflict between individuals. If it were so we should have no reason to proclaim the idea of general enfranchisement. We should rebel against the existing society only because its capitalistic organization did not permit us likewise to possess.
It may be that among those calling themselves Anarchists there are some who regard the question from this standpoint. This would explain to us the defections and recantations of persons who, after having been most ardent, have deserted their principles to range themselves among the defenders of the existing society, because it offered them compensations. Certainly we do combat this society because it does not afford us satisfaction for all our aspirations; but we also comprehend that our own interests, rightly understood, would have this satisfaction of our needs extended to all the members of society. Man is always egoistic, he always tends to make of his ego the centre of the universe. But with the development of his intelligence he comes to understand that if his ego wishes to be satisfied there are other egos that equally wish to be satisfied, (those that have not been have made it understood that they had a right to be) whence sentimentalists and mystics have come to preach renunciation, sacrifice, devotion to one’s neighbor.
Social authority, while continuing to preach the oppression of the individual for the sake of the collectivity—this dogma has contributed to its maintenance even as much as force has—social authority has had to modify itself, to concede a larger share to individuality. For if
