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Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
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Note: This text was written by Kropotkin in 1905 as an article for the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica.
ANARCHISM (from the Gr. αν, and αρχη,
contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of
life and conduct under which society is conceived without government
– harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to
law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements
concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional,
freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as
also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and
aspirations of a civilized being.In a society developed on these
lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover
all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension
so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions.
They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite
variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local,
regional, national and international temporary or more or less
permanent – for all possible purposes: production, consumption and
exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual
protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other
side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of
scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs.
Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the
contrary – as is seen in organic life at large – harmony would
(it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and
readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and
influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none
of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.
If, it is contended, society were organized on these principles,
man would not be limited in the free exercise of his powers in
productive work by a capitalist monopoly, maintained by the state;
nor would he be limited in the exercise of his will by a fear of
punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical
entities, which both lead to depression of initiative and servility
of mind. He would be guided in his actions by his own understanding,
which necessarily would bear the impression of a free action and
reaction between his own self and the ethical conceptions of his
surroundings. Man would thus be enabled to obtain the full
development of all his faculties, intellectual, artistic and moral,
without being hampered by overwork for the monopolists, or by the
servility and inertia of mind of the great number. He would thus be
able to reach full individualization, which is not possible
either under the present system of individualism, or under
any system of state socialism in the so-called Volkstaat
(popular state).
As to their economical conceptions, the anarchists, in common with
all socialists, of whom they constitute the left wing, maintain that
the now prevailing system of private ownership in land, and our
capitalist production for the sake of profits, represent a monopoly
which runs against both the principles of justice and the dictates of
utility. They are the main obstacle which prevents the successes of
modern technics from being brought into the service of all, so as to
produce general well-being. The anarchists consider the wage-system
and capitalist production altogether as an obstacle to progress. But
they point out also that the state was, and continues to be, the
chief instrument for permitting the few to monopolize the land, and
the capitalists to appropriate for themselves a quite
disproportionate share of the yearly accumulated surplus of
production.
Consequently, while combating the present monopolization of land,
and capitalism altogether, the anarchists combat with the same energy
the state, as the main support of that system. Not this or that
special form, but the state altogether, whether it be a monarchy or
even a republic governed by means of the referendum.
The state organization, having always been, both in ancient and
modern history (Macedonian empire, Roman empire, modern European
states grown up on the ruins of the autonomous cities), the
instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling
minorities, cannot be made to work for the destruction of these
monopolies. The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to
the state all the main sources of economical life – the land, the
mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on – as also the
management of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all
the functions already accumulated in its hands (education,
state-supported religions, defence of the territory, etc.), would
mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would
only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism. True progress
lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial
and functional, in the development of the spirit of local
and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to
the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the
centre to the periphery.
In common with most socialists, the anarchists recognize that,
like all evolution in nature, the slow evolution of society is
followed from time to time by periods of accelerated evolution which
are called revolutions; and they think that the era of revolutions is
not yet closed. Periods of rapid changes will follow the periods of
slow evolution, and these periods must be taken advantage of – not
for increasing and widening the powers of the state, but for reducing
them, through the organization in every township or commune of the
local groups of producers and consumers, as also the regional, and
eventually the international, federations of these groups.
In virtue of the above principles the anarchists refuse to be
party to the present state organization and to support it by infusing
fresh blood into it. They do not seek to constitute, and invite the
working men not to constitute, political parties in the parliaments.
Accordingly, since the foundation of the International Working Men’s
Association in 1864-1866, they have endeavoured to promote their
ideas directly amongst the labour organizations and to induce those
unions to a direct struggle against capital, without placing their
faith in parliamentary legislation.
The historical development of anarchism
The conception of society just sketched, and the tendency which is
its dynamic expression, have always existed in mankind, in opposition
to the governing hierarchic conception and tendency – now the one
and now the other taking the upper hand at different periods of
history. To the former tendency we owe the evolution, by the masses
themselves, of those institutions – the clan, the village
community, the guild, the free medieval city – by means of which
the masses resisted the encroachments of the conquerors and the
power-seeking minorities. The same tendency asserted itself with
great energy in the great religious movements of medieval times,
especially in the early movements of the reform and its forerunners.
At the same time it evidently found its expression in the writings of
some thinkers, since the times of Lao-tsze, although, owing to its
non-scholastic and popular origin, it obviously found less sympathy
among the scholars than the opposed tendency.
As has been pointed out by Prof. Adler in his Geschichte des
Sozialismus und Kommunismus, Aristippus (born circa 430 B.C.),
one of the founders of the Cyrenaic school, already taught that the
wise must not give up their liberty to the state, and in reply to a
question by Socrates he said that he did not desire to belong either
to the governing or the governed class. Such an attitude, however,
seems to have been dictated merely by an Epicurean attitude towards
the life of the masses.
The best exponent of anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was
Zeno (342-267 or 270 B.C.), from Crete, the founder of the Stoic
philosophy, who distinctly opposed his conception of a free community
without government to the state-utopia of Plato. He repudiated the
omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and
proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual –
remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of
self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a
corrective to it by providing man with another instinct – that of
sociability. When men are reasonable enough to follow their natural
instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute the
cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no
temples and no public worship, and use no money – free gifts taking
the place of the exchanges. Unfortunately, the writings of Zeno have
not reached us and are only known through fragmentary quotations.
However, the fact that his very wording is similar to the wording now
in use, shows how deeply is laid the tendency of human nature of
which he was the mouth-piece.
In medieval times we find the same views on the state expressed by
the illustrious bishop of Alba, Marco Girolamo Vida, in his first
dialogue De dignitate reipublicae (Ferd. Cavalli, in Men.
dell’Istituto Veneto, xiii.; Dr E. Nys, Researches in the
History of Economics). But it is especially in several early
Christian movements, beginning with the ninth century in Armenia, and
in the preachings of the early Hussites, particularly Chojecki, and
the early Anabaptists, especially Hans Denk (cf. Keller, Ein
Apostel der Wiedertäufer), that one finds the same ideas
forcibly expressed – special stress being laid of course on their
moral aspects.
Rabelais and Fénelon, in their Utopias, have also expressed
similar ideas, and they were also current in the eighteenth century
amongst the French Encyclopaedists, as may be concluded from separate
expressions occasionally met with in the writings of Rousseau, from
Diderot’s Preface to the Voyage of Bougainville,
and so on. However, in all probability such ideas could not be
developed then, owing to the rigorous censorship of the Roman
Catholic Church.
These ideas found their expression later during the great French
Revolution. While the Jacobins did all in their power to centralize
everything in the hands of the government, it appears now, from
recently published documents, that the masses of the people, in their
municipalities and ‘sections’, accomplished a considerable
constructive work. They appropriated for themselves the election of
the judges, the organization of supplies and equipment for the army,
as also for the large cities, work for the unemployed, the management
of charities, and so on. They even tried to establish a direct
correspondence between the 36,000 communes of France through the
intermediary of a special board, outside the National Assembly (cf.
Sigismund Lacroix, Actes de la commune de Paris).
It was Godwin, in his Enquiry concerning Political Justice
(2 vols., 1793), who was the first to formulate the political and
economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that
name to the ideas developed in his remarkable work. Laws, he wrote,
are not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the
product of their passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their
ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend
to cure. If and only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the
decisions in the arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen
for that purpose, real justice would gradually be evolved. As to the
state, Godwin frankly claimed its abolition. A society, he wrote, can
perfectly well exist without any government: only the communities
should be small and perfectly autonomous. Speaking of property, he
stated that the rights of every one “to every substance capable of
contributing to the benefit of a human being” must be regulated by
justice alone: the substance must go ‘to him who most wants it.”
His conclusion was communism. Godwin, however, had not the courage to
maintain his opinions. He entirely rewrote later on his chapter on
property and mitigated his communist views in the second edition of
Political Justice (8 vols., 1796).
Proudhon was the first to use, in 1840 (Qu’est-ce que la
propriété? first memoir), the name of anarchy with application
to the no-government state of society. The name of ‘anarchists’
had been freely applied during the French Revolution by the
Girondists to those revolutionaries who did not consider that the
task of the Revolution was accomplished with the overthrow of Louis
XVI, and insisted upon a series of economical measures being taken
(the abolition of feudal rights without redemption, the return to the
village communities of the communal lands enclosed since 1669, the
limitation of landed property to 120 acres, progressive income-tax,
the national organization of exchanges on a just value basis, which
already received a beginning of practical realization, and so on).
Now Proudhon advocated a society without government, and used the
word anarchy to describe it. Proudhon repudiated, as is known, all
schemes of communism, according to which mankind would be driven into
communistic monasteries or barracks, as also all the schemes of state
or state-aided socialism which were advocated by Louis Blanc and the
collectivists. When he proclaimed in his first memoir on property
that “Property is theft,” he meant only property in its present,
Roman-law, sense of “right of use and abuse”; in property-rights,
on the other hand, understood in the limited sense of possession, he
saw the best protection against the encroachments of the state. At
the same time he did not want violently to dispossess the present
owners of land, dwelling-houses, mines, factories and so on. He
preferred to attain the same end by rendering capital incapable of
earning interest; and this he proposed to obtain by means of a
national bank, based on the mutual confidence of all those who are
engaged in production, who would agree to exchange among themselves
their produces at cost-value, by means of labour cheques representing
the hours of labour required to produce every given commodity. Under
such a system, which Proudhon described as “Mutuellisme,” all the
exchanges of services would be strictly equivalent. Besides, such a
bank would be enabled to lend money without interest, levying only
something like 1 per cent, or even less, for covering the cost of
administration. Everyone being thus enabled to borrow the money that
would be required to buy a house, nobody would agree to pay any more
a yearly rent for the use of it. A general “social liquidation”
would thus be rendered easy, without violent expropriation. The same
applied to mines, railways, factories and so on.
In a society of this type the state would be useless. The chief
relations between citizens would be based on free agreement and
regulated by mere account keeping. The contests might be settled by
arbitration. A penetrating criticism of the state and all possible
forms of government, and a deep insight into all economic problems,
were well-known characteristics of Proudhon’s work.
It is worth noticing that French mutualism had its precursor in
England, in William Thompson, who began by mutualism before he became
a communist, and in his followers John Gray (A Lecture on Human
Happiness, 1825; The Social System, 1831) and J. F.
Bray (Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy, 1839). It had
also its precursor in America. Josiah Warren, who was born in 1798
(cf. W. Bailie, Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist,
Boston, 1900), and belonged to Owen’s “New Harmony,” considered
that the failure of this enterprise was chiefly due to the
suppression of individuality and the lack of initiative and
responsibility. These defects, he taught, were inherent to every
scheme based upon authority and the community of goods. He advocated,
therefore, complete individual liberty. In 1827 he opened in
Cincinnati a little country store which was the first “Equity
Store,” and which the people called “Time Store,” because it
was based on labour being exchanged hour for hour in all sorts of
produce. “Cost – the limit of price,” and consequently “no
interest,” was the motto of his store, and later on of his “Equity
Village,” near New York, which was still in existence in 1865. Mr
Keith’s “House of Equity” at Boston, founded in 1855, is also
worthy of notice.
While the economical, and especially the mutual-banking, ideas of
Proudhon found supporters and even a practical application in the
United States, his political conception of anarchy found but little
echo in France, where the christian socialism of Lamennais and the
Fourierists, and the state socialism of Louis Blanc and the followers
of Saint-Simon, were dominating. These ideas found, however, some
temporary support among the left-wing Hegelians in Germany, Moses
Hess in 1843, and Karl Grün in 1845, who advocated anarchism.
Besides, the authoritarian communism of Wilhelm Weitling having given
origin to opposition amongst the Swiss working men, Wilhelm Marr gave
expression to it in the forties.
On the other side, individualist anarchism found, also in Germany,
its fullest expression in Max Stirner (Kaspar Schmidt), whose
remarkable works (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum and
articles contributed to the Rheinische Zeitung)
remained quite overlooked until they were brought into prominence by
John Henry Mackay.
Prof. V. Basch, in a very able introduction to his interesting
book, L’lndividualisme anarchiste: Max Stirner (1904), has
shown how the development of the German philosophy from Kant to
Hegel, and “the absolute” of Schelling and the Geist of
Hegel, necessarily provoked, when the anti-Hegelian revolt began, the
preaching of the same “absolute” in the camp of the rebels. This
was done by Stirner, who advocated, not only a complete revolt
against the state and against the servitude which authoritarian
communism would impose upon men, but also the full liberation of the
individual from all social and moral bonds – the rehabilitation of
the “I”, the supremacy of the individual, complete “amoralism,”
and the “association of the egotists.” The final conclusion of
that sort of individual anarchism has been indicated by Prof. Basch.
It maintains that the aim of all superior civilization is, not to
permit all members of the community to develop in a normal
way, but to permit certain better endowed individuals “fully to
develop,” even at the cost of the happiness and the very existence
of the mass of mankind. It is thus a return towards the most common
individual ism, advocated by all the would-be superior minorities, to
which indeed man owes in his history precisely the state and the
rest, which these individualists combat. Their individualism goes so
far as to end in a negation of their own starting-point – to say
nothing of the impossibility for the individual to attain a really
full development in the conditions of oppression of the masses by the
“beautiful aristocracies.” His development would remain
unilateral. This is why this direction of thought, notwithstanding
its undoubtedly correct and useful advocacy of the full development
of each individuality, finds a hearing only in limited artistic and
literary circles.
Anarchism in the International Working Men’s Association
A general depression in the propaganda of all fractions of
socialism followed, as is known, after the defeat of the uprising of
the Paris working men in June 1848 and the fall of the Republic. All
the socialist press was gagged during the reaction period, which
lasted fully twenty years. Nevertheless, even anarchist thought began
to make some progress, namely in the writings of Bellegarrigue
(Coeurderoy), and especially Joseph Déjacque (Les Lazaréennes,
L’Humanisphère, an anarchist-communist Utopia, lately
discovered and reprinted). The socialist movement revived only after
1864, when some French working men, all “mutualists,” meeting in
London during the Universal Exhibition with English followers of
Robert Owen, founded the International Working Men’s Association.
This association developed very rapidly and adopted a policy of
direct economical struggle against capitalism, without interfering in
the political parliamentary agitation, and this policy was followed
until 1871. However, after the Franco-German War, when the
International Association was prohibited in France after the uprising
of the Commune, the German workingmen, who had received manhood
suffrage for elections to the newly constituted imperial parliament,
insisted upon modifying the tactics of the International, and began
to build up a Social Democratic political party. This soon led to a
division in the Working Men’s Association, and the Latin
federations, Spanish, Italian, Belgian and Jurassic (France could not
be represented), constituted among themselves a Federal union which
broke entirely with the Marxist general council of the International.
Within these federations developed now what may be described as
modern anarchism. After the names of “federalists” and
“anti-authoritarians” had been used for some time by these
federations the name of “anarchists,” which their adversaries
insisted upon applying to them, prevailed, and finally it was
revindicated.
Bakunin soon became the leading spirit among these Latin
federations for the development of the principles of anarchism, which
he did in a number of writings, pamphlets and letters. He demanded
the complete abolition of the state, which — he wrote — is a
product of religion, belongs to a lower state of civilization,
represents the negation of liberty, and spoils even that which it
undertakes to do for the sake of general well-being. The state was an
historically necessary evil, but its complete extinction will be,
sooner or later, equally necessary. Repudiating all legislation, even
when issuing from universal suffrage, Bakunin claimed for each
nation, each region and each commune, full autonomy, so long as it is
not a menace to its neighbours, and full independence for the
individual, adding that one becomes really free only when, and in
proportion as, all others are free. Free federations of the communes
would constitute free nations.
As to his economic conceptions, Bakunin described himself, in
common with his Federalist comrades of the International, a
“collectivist anarchist” – not in the sense of Vidal and
Pecqueur in the 1840s, or of their modern Social Democratic
followers, but to express a state of things in which all necessaries
for production are owned in common by the labour groups and the free
communes, while the ways of retribution of labour, communist or
otherwise, would be settled by each group for itself. Social
revolution, the near approach of which was foretold at that time by
all socialists, would be the means of bringing into life the new
conditions.
The Jurassic, the Spanish and the Italian federations and sections
of the International Working Men’s Association, as also the French,
the German and the American anarchist groups, were for the next years
the chief centres of anarchist thought and propaganda. They refrained
from any participation in parliamentary politics, and always kept in
close contact with the labour organizations. However, in the second
half of the eighties and the early nineties of the nineteenth
century, when the influence of the anarchists began to be felt in
strikes, in the 1st of May demonstrations, where they promoted the
idea of a general strike for an eight hours’ day, and in the
anti-militarist propaganda in the army, violent prosecutions were
directed against them, especially in the Latin countries (including
physical torture in the Barcelona Castle) and the United States (the
execution of five Chicago anarchists in 1887). Against these
prosecutions the anarchists retaliated by acts of violence which in
their turn were followed by more executions from above, and new acts
of revenge from below. This created in the general public the
impression that violence is the substance of anarchism, a view
repudiated by its supporters, who hold that in reality violence is
resorted to by all parties in proportion as their open action is
obstructed by repression, and exceptional laws render them outlaws.
Anarchism continued to develop, partly in the direction of
Proudhonian “Mutuellisme,” but chiefly as communist-anarchism, to
which a third direction, christian-anarchism, was added by Leo
Tolstoy, and a fourth, which might be ascribed as literary-anarchism,
began amongst some prominent modern writers.
The ideas of Proudhon, especially as regards mutual banking,
corresponding with those of Josiah Warren, found a considerable
following in the United States, creating quite a school, of which the
main writers are Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Greene, Lysander
Spooner (who began to write in 1850, and whose unfinished work,
Natural Law, was full of promise), and several others, whose
names will be found in Dr Nettlau’s Bibliographie de
l’anarchie.
A prominent position among the individualist anarchists in America
has been occupied by Benjamin R. Tucker, whose journal Liberty
was started in 1881 and whose conceptions are a combination of those
of Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer. Starting from the
statement that anarchists are egotists, strictly speaking, and that
every group of individuals, be it a secret league of a few persons,
or the Congress of the United States, has the right to oppress all
mankind, provided it has the power to do so, that equal liberty for
all and absolute equality ought to be the law, and “mind every one
your own business” is the unique moral law of anarchism, Tucker
goes on to prove that a general and thorough application of these
principles would be beneficial and would offer no danger, because the
powers of every individual would be limited by the exercise of the
equal rights of all others. He further indicated (following H.
Spencer) the difference which exists between the encroachment on
somebody’s rights and resistance to such an encroachment; between
domination and defence: the former being equally condemnable, whether
it be encroachment of a criminal upon an individual, or the
encroachment of one upon all others, or of all others upon one; while
resistance to encroachment is defensible and necessary. For their
self-defence, both the citizen and the group have the right to any
violence, including capital punishment. Violence is also justified
for enforcing the duty of keeping an agreement. Tucker thus follows
Spencer, and, like him, opens (in the present writer’s opinion) the
way for reconstituting under the heading of ‘defence’ all the
functions of the state. His criticism of the present state is very
searching, and his defence of the rights of the individual very
powerful. As regards his economical views B. R. Tucker follows
Proudhon.
The individualist anarchism of the American Proudhonians finds,
however, but little sympathy amongst the working masses. Those who
profess it – they are chiefly ‘intellectuals’ – soon realize
that the individualization they so highly praise is not
attainable by individual efforts, and either abandon the ranks of the
anarchists, and are driven into the liberal individualism of the
classical economist or they retire into a sort of Epicurean
a-moralism, or superman theory, similar to that of Stirner and
Nietzsche. The great bulk of the anarchist working men prefer the
anarchist-communist ideas which have gradually evolved out of the
anarchist collectivism of the International Working Men’s
Association. To this direction belong – to name only the better
known exponents of anarchism Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave, Sébastien
Faure, Emile Pouget in France; Errico Malatesta and Covelli in Italy;
R. Mella, A. Lorenzo, and the mostly unknown authors of many
excellent manifestos in Spain; John Most amongst the Germans; Spies,
Parsons and their followers in the United States, and so on; while
Domela Nieuwenhuis occupies an intermediate position in Holland. The
chief anarchist papers which have been published since 1880 also
belong to that direction; while a number of anarchists of this
direction have joined the so-called syndicalist movement – the
French name for the non-political labour movement, devoted to direct
struggle with capitalism, which has lately become so prominent in
Europe.
As one of the anarchist-communist direction, the present writer
for many years endeavoured to develop the following ideas: to show
the intimate, logical connection which exists between the modern
philosophy of natural sciences and anarchism; to put anarchism on a
scientific basis by the study of the tendencies that are apparent now
in society and may indicate its further evolution; and to work out
the basis of anarchist ethics. As regards the substance of anarchism
itself, it was Kropotkin’s aim to prove that communism – at least
partial – has more chances of being established than collectivism,
especially in communes taking the lead, and that free, or
anarchist-communism is the only form of communism that has any chance
of being accepted in civilized societies; communism and anarchy are
therefore two terms of evolution which complete each other, the one
rendering the other possible and acceptable. He has tried, moreover,
to indicate how, during a revolutionary period, a large city – if
its inhabitants have accepted the idea – could organize itself on
the lines of free communism; the city guaranteeing to every
inhabitant dwelling, food and clothing to an extent corresponding to
the comfort now available to the middle classes only, in exchange for
a half-day’s, or five-hours’ work; and how all those things which
would be considered as luxuries might be obtained by everyone if he
joins for the other half of the day all sorts of free associations
pursuing all possible aims – educational, literary, scientific,
artistic, sports and so on. In order to prove the first of these
assertions he has analysed the possibilities of agriculture and
industrial work, both being combined with brain work. And in order to
elucidate the main factors of human evolution, he has analysed the
part played in history by the popular constructive agencies of mutual
aid and the historical role of the state.
Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his
predecessors in the popular religious movements of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the
anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing
his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of the
Christ and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might
of his talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God in
Yourselves) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and
law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He
describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported
by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than a
well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the
prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred
upon men by the church, the state and the existing distribution of
property, and from the teachings of the Christ he deduces the rule of
non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His
religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments
borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that
the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the
non-religious reader alike.
It would be impossible to represent here, in a short sketch, the
penetration, on the one hand, of anarchist ideas into modern
literature, and the influence, on the other hand, which the
libertarian ideas of the best contemporary writers have exercised
upon the development of anarchism. One ought to consult the ten big
volumes of the Supplément Littéraire to the paper La
Révolte and later the Temps Nouveaux, which contain
reproductions from the works of hundreds of modern authors expressing
anarchist ideas, in order to realize how closely anarchism is
connected with all the intellectual movement of our own times. J. S.
Mill’s Liberty, Spencer’s Individual versus the
State, Marc Guyau’s Morality without Obligation or
Sanction, and Fouillée’s La morale, l’art et la
religion, the works of Multatuli (E. Douwes Dekker), Richard
Wagner’s Art and Revolution, the works of Nietzsche,
Emerson, W. Lloyd Garrison, Thoreau, Alexander Herzen, Edward
Carpenter and so on; and in the domain of fiction, the dramas of
Ibsen, the poetry of Walt Whitman, Tolstoy’s War and Peace,
Zola’s Paris and Le Travail, the latest works of
Merezhkovsky, and an infinity of works of less known authors, are
full of ideas which show how closely anarchism is interwoven with the
work that is going on in modern thought in the same direction of
enfranchisement of man from the bonds of the state as well as from
those of capitalism.
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