Moribund Society and Anarchy

a vast revel of gluttony, which, the orgy once over, would not be long in surrendering the insurgent: to the blows of capitalistic reaction. Happily this problem, paramount today to the workingmen whose future is rendered uncertain by more and more prolonged periods of idleness, as we admit, is not the only one which will be solved in the next revolution. Without doubt the first work of the Anarchists towards making the revolution a success, will be to seize social wealth, to call upon the disinherited to take possession of stores, machinery, and the soil; to install themselves in healthy localities, destroying the rat-holes in which they are forced to remain today. The revolutionists should destroy all the old parchments which guarantee the functioning of property; the offices of bailiffs, notaries, register of land surveys, register of deeds, the entire civil staff, should be visited and “cleaned out.” But to do all this work something more than famishing people is needed⁠—individuals, conscious of their individuality, jealous of all their rights, determined to conquer them and capable of defending them once they are acquired. This is why a question of subsistence only would be powerless to effect such a transformation; and it is also why there rise up, together with the right to subsistence which the Anarchists demand, all these questions of art, science, and philosophy, which they are forced to study, to fathom, to elucidate, and which are the cause of Anarchistic ideas embracing every branch of human science. Everywhere have arguments in favor of these ideas been found, everywhere there have risen up adherents who furnished their quota of demands, and reinforced the principles with their special knowledge. The sum of human learning is so great that the most privileged brains can appropriate only a portion; likewise the conception of Anarchism though condensed by certain minds which outline its bases and trace its program, cannot be elucidated but by the collaboration of all, by the help of each one’s knowledge. And this it is which gives it its strength, for it is the collaboration of all which enables it to sum up all human aspirations.

III

Too Abstract

“You are too abstract!” This is an objection frequently raised against the Anarchists by many people. They say that since we address ourselves to the workers we should make more fruitful propaganda if we should take up less elevated subjects. By the preceding chapters we have seen that it is the development of the ideas themselves which has drawn us into the treatment of questions not always within the scope of those whom we address; this is a fatality to which we submit and against which we can do nothing. To those who are just beginning to nibble at the social question our writings may often appear dry; this we do not deny. But can we alter the fact that the questions which we treat and which must be treated, are dry in themselves? Can we prevent the principles which we defend, linked together as they are, identified with every branch of human knowledge, from leading those who wish to elucidate them to study things they did not before deem necessary? And, moreover, has not all this preparatory work to which they would condemn us, been already performed by our predecessors, the Socialists? Do not the capitalistic classes themselves work for the demolition of their society? Are not all ambitious radicals, Socialists more or less deeply dyed, bent upon demonstrating to the workers that the present society can do nothing for them; that it must be changed?

The Anarchists therefore have only to analyze this enormous work, to coordinate it, to extract its essence. Their role is limited to proving that it is not by changing governors that the ills from which we suffer may be cured; that it is not by merely modifying the machinery of the social organism that we shall prevent it from producing those evil effects which the very bourgeois, desirous of getting into power, knows so well how to show up. But our task is complicated precisely because the ideas which we advocate are abstract. If, indeed, we were willing to content ourselves with declamations and assertions, the task would be rendered easy, both for us and for our readers. The more difficult the problems to be solved the more need is there to acquaint ourselves with arguments and logic. It is easy to say and write, “Comrades, the bosses rob us! The bourgeoisie are drunkards! Rulers are scoundrels! We must rebel, kill the capitalists, set fire to the factories!” Moreover, before anyone wrote it the exploited had sometimes killed their exploiters, the governed had revolted, the poor had rebelled against the rich; yet the situation was in nowise altered. They had changed rulers. In 1789 property changed hands; subsequently the people revolted, hoping thereby to force it to change hands again. Yet the governing continued to oppress the governed, the rich continued to live at the expense of the exploited; nothing was altered. Since it was written the people have likewise revolted, and nothing is altered. Hence it is not a question of saying or writing that the laborer is exploited; it is necessary to explain to him above all how in changing masters he does not cease to be exploited, and how, were he to put himself in his master’s place, he would in turn become an exploiter, leaving behind him the exploited who would then make against him the same complaints he now makes against those he would like to have dispossessed. It is necessary to make him understand further how the capitalistic classes have interested him in the existing society, persuaded him to defend the privileges of his exploiters while he believes himself defending his own interests in an organization which, in fact, has nothing for him but promises never to be realized.

By its organization, based upon the antagonism of interests, our bourgeois society charges itself with the task