In short, then, Democracy does not give majorities absolute power,
nor does it enable them to reduce minorities to ciphers. Such limited
power of coercing minorities as majorities must possess, is not given
to them by Democracy any more than it can be taken away from them by
Anarchism. A couple of men are stronger than one: that is all. There
are only two ways of neutralizing this natural fact. One is to convince
men of the immorality of abusing the majority power, and then to make
them moral enough to refrain from doing it on that account. The other
is to realize Lytton's fancy of _vril_ by inventing a means by which
each individual will be able to destroy all his fellows with a flash
of thought, so that the majority may have as much reason to fear the
individual as he to fear the majority. No method of doing either is
to be found in Individualist or Communist Anarchism: consequently
these systems, as far as the evils of majority tyranny are concerned,
are no better than the Social-Democratic program of adult suffrage
with maintenance of representatives and payment of polling expenses
from public funds--faulty devices enough, no doubt, but capable
of accomplishing all that is humanly possible at present to make
the State representative of the nation; to make the administration
trustworthy; and to secure the utmost power to each individual and
consequently to minorities. What better can we have whilst collective
action is inevitable? Indeed, in the mouths of the really able
Anarchists, Anarchism means simply the utmost attainable thoroughness
of Democracy. Kropotkine, for example, speaks of free development from
the simple to the composite by "the free union of free groups"; and his
illustrations are "the societies for study, for commerce, for pleasure
and recreation" which have sprung up to meet the varied requirements of
the individual of our age. But in every one of these societies there is
government by a council elected annually by a majority of voters; so
that Kropotkine is not at all afraid of the democratic machinery and
the majority power. Mr. Tucker speaks of "voluntary association," but
gives no illustrations, and indeed avows that "Anarchists are simply
unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats." He says, indeed, that "if the
individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is
tyranny"; but if governing oneself means doing what one pleases without
regard to the interests of neighbors, then the individual has flatly no
such right. If he has no such right, the interference of his neighbors
to make him behave socially, though it is "external government," is
not tyranny; and even if it were they would not refrain from it on
that account. On the other hand, if governing oneself means compelling
oneself to act with a due regard to the interests of the neighbors,
then it is a right which men are proved incapable of exercising without
external government. Either way, the phrase comes to nothing; for it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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