I have not reserved any expressions of praise for the small part of the
book which comes after the compiled chapters, because it calls for none.
All Eltzbacher's weak points come out in this concluding summary; the
best that can be said for it is that it deserves careful attention, and
that the author continues to be oftener right than wrong. But now that
he has gathered all his knowledge he wants it to amount to omniscience,
and most imprudently shuts his eyes to the places where there is nothing
under his feet. He charges men with error for not using in his sense a
term whose definition he has not undertaken to determine. He accepts all
too unquestioningly such statements as fit most conveniently into his
scheme of method. His most glaring offence in this direction is his
classification of the Anarchist-Communist doctrines as mere prediction
and not the expression of a will or demand or approval or disapproval of
anything, simply because the fashionableness of evolutionism and of
fatalism has led the leaders of that school to prefer to state their
doctrine in terms of prediction. Eltzbacher has forgotten to compare his
judgment with the actions of the men he judges; _solvitur ambulando_; if
Kropotkin's proposition were merely predictive and not pragmatic, it
would have less trouble with the police than it has. Again, he does one
of the most indiscreet things that are possible to a votary of strict
method when he asserts repeatedly that he has listed not merely all that
is to be found but all that could possibly exist under a certain
category. For instance, he declares that every possible affirmative
doctrine of property must be either private property, or common property
in the wherewithal for production and private property in the
wherewithal for consumption, or common property. Why should not a scheme
of common property in the things that are wanted by all men and private
property in the things that are wanted only by some men have as high a
rank in the classification as has Eltzbacher's second class? A look at
the quotations from Kropotkin will show that I have not drawn much on my
own ingenuity in conceiving such a scheme as supposable. He claims to
have listed all the standpoints from which Anarchism has been or can be
propounded or judged, yet he has omitted legitimism, the doctrine that a
political authority which is to claim our respect and obedience must
appear to have originated by a legitimate foundation and not by
usurpation. The great part that legitimism has played in history is
notorious; and it lends itself very readily to the Anarchist's purpose,
since some governments are so well known to have originated in
usurpation and others are so easily suspected of it. Nay, legitimism is
in fact a potent factor in shaping the most up-to-date Anarchism of our
time; for it is largely concerned in Lysander Spooner's doctrine of
juries, of which some slight account is given in Eltzbacher's quotations
from Tucker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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