Anarchism and Socialism Part 2

We have just said that I+I+I+etc. represents the social Utopia of Stirner. His League of Egoists is, in fact, nothing but a ma.s.s of abstract quant.i.ties. What are, what can be the basis of their union?

Their interests, answers Stirner. But what will, what can be the true basis of any given combination of their interests? Stirner says nothing about it, and he can say nothing definite since from the abstract heights on which he stands, one cannot see clearly economic reality, the mother and nurse of all the "Egos," egoistic or altruistic. Nor is it surprising that he is not able to explain clearly even this idea of the cla.s.s struggle, of which he nevertheless had a happy inkling. The "poor"

must combat the "rich." And after, when they have conquered these? Then every one of the former "poor," like every one of the former "rich,"

will combat every one of the former poor, and against every one of the former rich. There will be the war of all against all. (These are Stirner's own words.) And the rules of the "Leagues of Egoists" will be so many partial truces in this colossal and universal warfare. There is plenty of fight in this idea, but of the "realism" Max Stirner dreamed of, nothing.

But enough of the "Leagues of Egoists." A Utopian may shut his eyes to economic reality, but it forces itself upon him in spite of himself; it pursues him everywhere with the brutality of a natural force not controlled by force. The elevated regions of the abstract "I" do not save Stirner from the attacks of economic reality. He does not speak to us only of the "Individual"; his theme is "the Individual _and his property_." Now, what sort of a figure does the property of the "Individual" cut?

It goes without saying, that Stirner is little inclined to respect property as an "acquired right." "Only that property will be legally and lawfully another's which it suits _you_ should be his property. When it ceases to suit you, it has lost its legality for you, and any absolute right in it you will laugh at."[14] It is always the same tune: "For me there is nothing above myself." But his scant respect for the property of others does not prevent the "Ego" of Stirner from having the tendencies of a property-owner. The strongest argument against Communism, is, in his opinion, the consideration that Communism by abolishing individual property transforms all members of society into mere beggars. Stirner is indignant at such an iniquity.

"Communists think that the Commune should be the property-owner. On the contrary, _I_ am a property-owner, and can only agree with others as to my property. If the Commune does not do as I wish I rebel against it, and defend my property, I am the owner of property, but property _is not sacred_. Should I only be the holder of property (an allusion to Proudhon)? No, hitherto one was only a holder of property, a.s.sured of possession of a piece of land, because one left others also in possession of a piece of land; but now _everything_ belongs to me, I am the owner of _everything I need_, and can get hold of. If the Socialist says, society gives me what I need, the Egoist says, I take what I want.

If the Communists behave like beggars, the Egoist behaves like an owner of property."[15] The property of the egoist seems pretty shaky. An "Egoist," retains his property only as long as the other "Egoists" do not care to take it from him, thus transforming him into a "beggar." But the devil is not so black as he is painted. Stirner pictures the mutual relations of the "Egoist" proprietors rather as relations of exchange than of pillage. And force, to which he constantly appeals, is rather the economic force of a producer of commodities freed from the trammels which the State and "Society" in general impose, or seem to impose, upon him.

It is the soul of a producer of commodities that speaks through the mouth of Stirner. If he falls foul of the State, it is because the State does not seem to respect the "property" of the producers of commodities sufficiently. He wants _his_ property, his _whole_ property. The State makes him pay taxes; it ventures to expropriate him for the public good.

He wants a _jus utendi et abutendi_; the State says "agreed"--but adds that there are abuses and abuses. Then Stirner cries "stop thief!" "I am the enemy of the State," says he, "which is always fluctuating between the alternative: He or I.... With the State there is no property, _i.e._, no individual property, only State property. Only through the State have I what I have, as it is only through the State that I am what I am. My private property is only what the State leaves me of its own, while it deprives other citizens of it: that is State property." So down with the State and long live full and complete individual property!

Stirner translated into German J. B. Say's "Traite D'Economie Politique Pratique" (Leipsic, 1845-46). And although he also translated Adam Smith, he was never able to get beyond the narrow circle of the ordinary bourgeois economic ideas. His "League of Egoists" is only the Utopia of a petty bourgeois in revolt. In this sense one may say he has spoken the last word of bourgeois individualism.

Stirner has also a third merit--that of the courage of his opinions, of having carried through to the very end his individualist theories. He is the most intrepid, the most consequent of the Anarchists. By his side Proudhon, whom Kropotkin, like all the present day Anarchists, takes for the father of Anarchism, is but a straight-laced Philistine.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] See pages 295-305 of the 1841 edition.

[8] "The Individual and his Property."

[9] "Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum." 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1882, pp. 35-36.

(American translation: "The Ego and his Own." New York: 1907.)

[10] Ibid. Pp. 7-8.

[11] Ibid. pp. 196-197.

[12] Ibid. p. 200.

[13] "The Holy Family, or Criticism of Critical Criticism, against Bruno Bauer and Company."

[14] Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum.

[15] Ibid. p. 266.

CHAPTER IV

PROUDHON

If Stirner combats Feuerbach, the "immortal" Proudhon imitates Kant.

"What Kant did some sixty years ago for religion, what he did earlier for certainty of certainties; what others before him had attempted to do for happiness or supreme good, the 'Voice of the People' proposes to do for the Government," pompously declares "the father of Anarchism." Let us examine his methods and their results.

According to Proudhon, before Kant, the believer and the philosopher moved "by an irresistible impulse," asked themselves, "What is G.o.d?"

They then asked themselves "Which, of all religions, is the best?" "In fact, if there does exist a Being superior to Humanity, there must also exist a system of the relations between this Being and Humanity. What then is this system? The search for the best religion is the second step that the human mind takes in reason and in faith. Kant gave up these insoluble questions. He no longer asked himself what is G.o.d, and which is the best religion, he set about explaining the origin and development of the Idea of G.o.d; he undertook to work out the biography of this idea." And the results he attained were as great as they were unexpected. "What we seek, what we see, in G.o.d, as Malebranche said ...

is our own Ideal, the pure essence of Humanity.... The human soul does not become conscious of its Ego through premeditated contemplation, as the psychologists put it; the soul perceives something outside itself, as if it were a different Being face to face with itself, and it is this inverted image which it calls G.o.d. Thus morality, justice, order, law, are no longer things revealed from above, imposed upon our free will by a so-called Creator, unknown and ununderstandable; they are things that are proper and essential to us as our faculties and our organs, as our flesh and our blood. In two words religion and society are synonymous terms, man is as sacred to himself as if he were G.o.d."

Belief in authority is as primitive, as universal as belief in G.o.d.

Whenever men are grouped together in societies there is authority, the beginning of a government. From time immemorial men have asked themselves, What is authority? Which is the best form of government? And replies to these questions have been sought for in vain. There are as many governments as there are religions, as many political theories as systems of philosophy. Is there any way of putting an end to this interminable and barren controversy? Any means of escape from this _impa.s.se_! a.s.suredly! We have only to follow the example of Kant. We have only to ask ourselves whence comes this idea of authority, of government? We have only to get all the information we can upon the legitimacy of the political idea. Once safe on this ground and the question solves itself with extraordinary ease.

"Like religion, government is a manifestation of social spontaneity, a preparation of humanity for a higher condition."

"What humanity seeks in religion and calls G.o.d, is itself." "What the citizen seeks in Government and calls king, emperor, or president, is again himself, is liberty." "Outside humanity there is no G.o.d; the theological concept has no meaning:--outside liberty no government, the political concept has no value."

So much for the "biography" of the political idea. Once grasped it must enlighten us upon the question as to which is the best form of government.

"The best form of government, like the most perfect of religions, taken in a literal sense, is a contradictory idea. The problem is not to discover how we shall be best governed, but how we shall be most free.

Liberty commensurate and identical with Order,--this is the only reality of government and politics. How shall this absolute liberty, synonymous with order, be brought about? We shall be taught this by the a.n.a.lysis of the various formulas of authority. For all the rest we no more admit the governing of man by man than the exploitation of man by man."[16]

We have now climbed to the topmost heights of Proudhon's political philosophy. It is from this that the fresh and vivifying stream of his Anarchist thought flows. Before we follow the somewhat tortuous course of this stream let us glance back at the way we have climbed.

We fancied we were following Kant. We were mistaken. In his "Critique of Pure Reason" Kant has demonstrated the impossibility of proving the existence of G.o.d, because everything outside experience must escape us absolutely. In his "Critique of Practical Reason" Kant admitted the existence of G.o.d in the name of morality. But he has never declared that G.o.d was a topsy-turvy image of our own soul. What Proudhon attributes to Kant, indubitably belongs to Feuerbach. Thus it is in the footsteps of the latter that we have been treading, while roughly tracing out the "biography" of the political Idea. So that Proudhon brings us back to the very starting point of our most unsentimental journey with Stirner.

No matter. Let us once more return to the reasoning of Feuerbach.

It is only itself that humanity seeks in religion. It is only himself, it is liberty that the citizen seeks in Government.... Then the very essence of the citizen is liberty? Let us a.s.sume this is true, but let us also note that our French "Kant" has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to prove the "legitimacy" of such an "Idea." Nor is this all.

What is this liberty which we are a.s.suming to be the essence of the citizen? Is it political liberty which ought in the nature of things to be the main object of his attention? Not a bit of it! To a.s.sume this would be to make of the "citizen" an "authoritarian" democrat.

It is the _absolute liberty of the individual_, which is at the same time _commensurate and identical with_ Order, that our citizen seeks in Government. In other words, it is the Anarchism of Proudhon which is the essence of the "citizen." It is impossible to make a more pleasing discovery, but the "biography" of this discovery gives us pause. We have been trying to demolish every argument in favour of the Idea of Authority, as Kant demolished every proof of the existence of G.o.d. To attain this end we have--imitating Feuerbach to some extent, according to whom man adored his own Being in G.o.d--a.s.sumed that it is liberty which the citizen seeks in Government. And as to liberty we have in a trice transformed this into "absolute" liberty, into Anarchist liberty.

Eins, zwei, drei; Geschwindigkeit ist keine Hexerei![17]

Since the "citizen" only seeks "absolute" liberty in Government the State is nothing but a fiction ("this fiction of a superior person, called the 'State'"), and all those formulas of government for which people and citizens have been cutting one another's throats for the last sixty centuries, are but the "phantasmagoria of our brain, which it would be the first duty of free reason to relegate to the museums and libraries." Which is another charming discovery made _en pa.s.sant_. So that the political history of humanity has, "for sixty centuries," had no other motive power than a phantasmagoria of our brain!

To say that man adores in G.o.d his own essence is to indicate the _origin_ of religion, but it is not to work out its "biography." To write the biography of religion is to write its history, explaining the evolution of this essence of man which found expression in it. Feuerbach did not do this--could not do it. Proudhon, trying to imitate Feuerbach, was very far from recognising the insufficiency of his point of view.

All Proudhon has done is to take Feuerbach for Kant, and to ape his Kant-Feuerbach in a most pitiful manner. Having heard that Divinity was but a fiction, he concluded that the State is also a figment: since G.o.d does not exist, how can the State exist? Proudhon wished to combat the State and began by declaring it non-existent. And the readers of the "Voix du Peuple" applauded, and the opponents of M. Proudhon were alarmed at the profundity of his philosophy! Truly a tragi-comedy!

It is hardly necessary for modern readers to add that in taking the State for a fiction we make it altogether impossible to understand its "essence" or to explain its historical evolution. And this was what happened to Proudhon.

"In every society I distinguish two kinds of const.i.tution," says he; "the one which I call _social_, the other which is its _political_ const.i.tution; the first innate in humanity, liberal, necessary, its development consisting above all in weakening, and gradually eliminating the second, which is essentially fact.i.tious, restrictive, and transitory. The social const.i.tution is nothing but the equilibration of interests based upon free contract and the organisation of the economic forces, which, generally speaking, are labour, division of labour, collective force, compet.i.tion, commerce, money, machinery, credit, property, equality in transactions, reciprocity of guarantees, etc. The principle of the political const.i.tution is authority. Its forms are: distinction of cla.s.ses, separation of powers, administrative centralisation, the judicial hierarchy, the representation of sovereignty by elections, etc. The political const.i.tution was conceived and gradually completed in the interest of order, for want of a social const.i.tution, the rules and principles of which could only be discovered as a result of long experience, and are even to-day the object of Socialist controversy. These two const.i.tutions, as it is easy to see, are by nature absolutely different and even incompatible: but as it is the fate of the political const.i.tution to constantly call forth and produce the social const.i.tution something of the latter enters into the former, which, soon becoming inadequate, appears contradictory and odious, is forced from concession to concession to its final abrogation."[18]

The social const.i.tution is innate in humanity, necessary. Yet it could only be discovered as the result of long experience, and for want of it humanity had to invent the political const.i.tution. Is not this an entirely Utopian conception of human nature, and of the social organisation peculiar to it? Are we not coming back to the standpoint of Morelly who said that humanity in the course of its history has always been "outside nature?" No--there is no need to come back to this standpoint, for with Proudhon we have never, for a single instant, got away from it. While looking down upon the Utopians searching after "the best form of government," Proudhon does not by any means censure the Utopian point of view. He only scoffs at the small perspicacity of men who did not divine that the best political organisation is the absence of all political organisation, is the social organisation, proper to human nature, necessary, immanent in humanity.

The nature of this social const.i.tution is absolutely different from, and even incompatible with, that of the political const.i.tution. Nevertheless it is the fate of the political const.i.tution to constantly call forth and produce the social const.i.tution. This is tremendously confusing! Yet one might get out of the difficulty by a.s.suming that what Proudhon meant to say was that the political const.i.tutions act upon the evolution of the social const.i.tution. But then we are inevitably met by the question.

Is not the political const.i.tution in its turn rooted--as even Guizot admitted--in the social const.i.tution of a country? According to our author _no_; the more emphatically _no_, that the social organisation, the true and only one, is only a thing of the future, for want of which poor humanity has "invented" the political const.i.tution. Moreover, the "Political Const.i.tution" of Proudhon covers an immense domain, embracing even "cla.s.s distinctions," and therefore "non-organised" property, property as it ought not to be, property as it is to-day. And since the whole of this political const.i.tution has been invented as a mere stop-gap until the advent of the anarchist organisation of society, it is evident that all human history must have been one huge blunder. The State is no longer exactly a fiction as Proudhon maintained in 1848; "the governmental formulas" for which people and citizens have been cutting one another's throats for sixty centuries are no longer a "mere phantasmagoria of our brain," as the same Proudhon believed at this same period; but these formulas, like the State itself, like every political const.i.tution, are but the product of human ignorance, the mother of all fictions and phantasmagorias. At bottom it is always the same. The main point is that Anarchist ("social") organisation could only be discovered as the result of "many experiences." The reader will see how much this is to be regretted.

The political const.i.tution has an unquestionable influence upon the social organisation; at any rate it calls it forth, for such is its "fate" as revealed by Proudhon, master of Kantian philosophy and social organisation. The most logical conclusion to be drawn therefrom is that the partisans of social organisation must make use of the political const.i.tution in order to attain their end. But logical as this deduction is, it is not to the taste of our author. For him it is but a phantasmagoria of our brain. To make use of the political const.i.tution is to offer a burnt offering to the terrible G.o.d of authority, to take part in the struggle of parties. Proudhon will have none of this. "No more parties," he says; "no more authority, absolute liberty of the man and the citizen--in three words, such is our political and social profession of faith."[19]

Every cla.s.s-struggle is a political struggle. Whosoever repudiates the political struggle by this very act, gives up all part and lot in the cla.s.s-struggle. And so it was with Proudhon. From the beginning of the Revolution of 1848 he preached the reconciliation of cla.s.ses. Here _e.g._, is a pa.s.sage from the Circular which he addressed to his electors in Doubs, which is dated 3rd April of this same year: "The social question is there; you cannot escape from it. To solve it we must have men who combine extreme Radicalism of mind with extreme Conservatism of mind. Workers, hold out your hands to your employers; and you, employers, do not deliberately repulse the advances of those who were your wage-earners."

The man whom Proudhon believed to combine this extreme Radicalism of mind with extreme Conservatism of mind, was himself--P. J. Proudhon.

There was, on the one hand, at the bottom of this belief, a "fiction,"

common to all Utopians who imagine they can rise above cla.s.ses and their struggles, and navely think that the whole of the future history of humanity will be confined to the peaceful propagation of their new gospel. On the other hand, this tendency to combine Radicalism and Conservatism shows conclusively the very "essence" of the "Father of Anarchy."