“Bad as it is, society still ensures a relative degree of security, a certain rate of progress, which a revolution might sacrifice. Let us,” say they, “seek gradually to improve what we have; slowly, indeed, but surely.” If we answer them that there are people who suffer, perish, through this so-called security, this so-called civilization, they do not hesitate to admit that the capitalist class is ignoble in its exploitation; that by its rapacity it justifies the revolt of the exploited; some even admit that the revolution is inevitable, “but,” they add, “it is to be regretted, for the revolt may be defeated and ourselves thrown backward. Doubtless,” they say, “it is very easy to establish the diagnosis of a disease, but to cure it, is another thing; and the difficulties are very much greater in sociology, for we are still in the infancy of the science concerning it. The rational and experimental method only can lead to any results, and Anarchism is in no sense scientific; it is a pure speculation emanating from praiseworthy sentiments but based upon no experimentation.”
At first sight this reasoning seems logical; it is indeed true that when the disease is known only by its effects one cannot determine its real causes; but after its starting-point is actually known, its therapeutics is easy. If up till then there has been hesitation, trying first this remedy and then that, it is because the effects of such remedies upon such and such a conjunction of physical troubles were known; but as different causes may occasion the same pathological disturbance, it followed that what was good in one case was ineffectual or injurious in another. This is the reason why medicine in our days is rather empirical research than real science when it is a question of curing. It is also the reason why in social therapeutics, in which the same hiatuses, the same ignorance have existed, revolutions have broken out which have come to nothing, reforms have been attempted which yielded no results—reforms fluctuating from one system to another, without preventing the growth of misery, without stopping the exploitation of the masses. The effects were sought to be destroyed without troubling as to the causes which produced them, and which allowed them to continue; the governmental label was changed, certain purifications of the official staff were effected, and afterward there was much astonishment because the evils complained of, and which it was supposed would thus be gotten rid of, reappeared more vigorous than ever, after an insignificant interruption, and resumed their normal course as if nothing had happened.
Nowadays it is understood in medicine that the best way of combating disease is to prevent it, by suppressing, through a thorough understanding of hygiene, the causes which engender it. The Anarchists are attempting to effect the same operation in social hygiene. They have sought for the causes of the diseases from which human society is suffering, traced them to their sources, renounced universal panaceas—which they leave to political charlatans—and fortified with the knowledge gained from the comparative study of systems in operation and proposed reforms, they proclaim to the people:—
“The evils from which you suffer flow from the vicious organization of society, authority and property are the motors of all this enginery which is crushing you; in vain will you change the wheels, replace them, alter them—their function is to grind you in their whirling teeth; you will be ground as long as you do not destroy them together with the principles whence they derive their strength, authority and property. Get rid of the causes if you do not want to experience the effects.”
In physiology, when, after considerable groping in darkness the causes of a disease which up till then had been known only by its effects, are at length discovered, it may happen that the method of curing it is completely reversed; what had before been forbidden to the patient may now be prescribed for him, and what had been prescribed before may now be forbidden. In politics this is called a revolution. It happens that the innovators are treated as madmen and visionaries by the regulars; they are accused of putting the patient’s life in danger, of disregarding a mass of hypotheses, each one more convincing than the other. And these clamors pursue them until repeated results compel those who have no confidence save in the formulas of the past to be silent. The physician who experiments with a new method, does on a small scale what the Anarchists want to do on a large scale with our entire society; when he leaves the beaten paths of routine to apply the new data he must not heed the outcries of retrogrades, if he be certain of his science, his studies, his observations. It is the same in sociology. Is it the fault of the Anarchists if society is so organized that people cannot do what they please without running against a prohibitory law or coming in conflict with a central power which claims to know what is wanted better than the persons interested, to furnish them with what it deems useful for them and deny them what it judges harmful? Society has been so organized that people cannot get out of it without overthrowing it; let the bourgeoisie not complain if in order to be free people dream first of breaking down what stands in their way.
In order to experiment one must go from theory to practice, and even in the most carefully established
