For us workers the situation is clear: On one side we have the existing society with its cortege of poverty, uncertainty for the morrow, privations and sufferings without hope of allayment—a society in which we are stifled, in which our brains sicken for want of light, in which we must crush down deep into the obscurity of our being all our sentiments of beauty, goodness, justice, and love;—on the other side, the future!—An ideal of liberty, happiness, intellectual and physical satisfaction, the complete unfolding of our individuality! Our choice is made. Whatever the future revolution may bring forth, whatever happens to us, it cannot be for us worse than our present condition. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by a change. Society fetters us; well, let us overthrow it. So much the worse for those who get crushed in the fall; it will be because they tried to shelter themselves under its walls, or to cling to its rotten supports. They should have been on the side of the abolitionists.
XXII
Anarchism and Its Practicability
“Your ideas are all right in theory, but they are not practicable; men need some tangible power to govern them and force them to respect the social contract.” Such is the objection urged against us as a last resort by advocates of the present social order, when after thorough discussion we have answered their arguments and demonstrated that the worker can hope for no sensible improvement of his lot while the machinery of the present social system is preserved. “Your ideas are all right, but they are not practicable; man is not yet sufficiently developed to live in such an ideal state. In order to put them into practice human beings must first have become perfect,” is added by many other persons, undoubtedly sincere, but who misled by education and habit, see only the difficulties and are not yet sufficiently convinced of the principles to work for their realization. And in addition to these avowed adversaries and these indifferentists who may become friends, there rises up a third category of persons more dangerous than declared opponents. These latter pretend to be animated with enthusiasm for our ideas; they loudly assert that nothing can be greater, that the present organization is worthless and must vanish before the new idea, that it is the goal towards which humanity is tending, etc. “But,” they add, “it is not immediately practicable; humanity must be prepared for it, brought to understand this happy condition;” and under this pretext of being practical they seek to revive those reform projects which we have just shown to be illusory. They perpetuate existing prejudices by flattering those to whom they speak, and seek personally to profit as much as possible from the present situation; before long their ideal vanishes to make room for the instinct towards the preservation of the existing order of things. Unfortunately it is but too true that those ideas which are the end and aim of our aspirations are not immediately realizable. The number of persons who have understood them is yet too small a minority to exercise any immediate influence upon events or the course of our social organization. But is that any reason why we should not work for their realization? If one is convinced of the justice of his principles why not try to put them in practice? If everybody were to say, “It is not possible,” and passively accept the yoke of the present society, it is plain that the capitalistic order of things would still have many centuries to run.
If the first thinkers who fought the Church and the monarchy on behalf of natural ideas and independence; who faced the executioner and the scaffold in order to proclaim these, had said “it is not possible,” while dreaming of their ideal, we should, today, still be bound by mystical conceptions and seignorial rights. It is because there have always been people who were not “practical,” but singularly convinced of a truth and seeking to disseminate it, wherever they could, with all their might, that man, today, begins to be familiar with his own origin, and to get rid of his superstitions concerning divine and human authority. In one of the chapters of his really valuable book, Outlines of a Morality Without Authority or Duty, M. Guyau develops this admirable idea: “He who does not act as he thinks, thinks incompletely.” Nothing can be truer. When one is thoroughly convinced of an idea, it is impossible for him, feeling it, not to seek to spread it and endeavor to realize it. How often do disputes arise between friends over trivial matters, in which each maintains his own view without any other motive than the conviction that he is in the right of the matter. Yet to please one’s friend, or even to avoid wounding him, it would cost nothing to let him speak his mind without either approving or disapproving; since the thing he maintains is of no real importance to our convictions, why not let him have his way? And this we often do in a conversation concerning things about which we have no
