The place of anarchism in socialistic evolution : $b an address delivered in ParisKropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Philosophy
The place of anarchism in socialistic evolution : $b an address delivered in Paris
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Anarchism -- History; Anarchists
What thousands of examples one could cite in support of his same idea!
Take all great enterprises such as the Suez Canal, the lines of Atlantic
steamers, the telegraph which connects us with North and South America.
Consider also that commercial organisation which enables you on rising
in the morning to find bread at the baker's--that is, if you have the
money to pay for it, which is not always the case now-a-days--meat at
the butcher's, and all other things that you want at other shops. Is
this the work of the State? It is true that we pay abominably dearly for
middlemen; this is, however, an additional reason for suppressing them,
but not for believing that we must entrust government with the care of
providing for our feeding and clothing. If we closely scan the
development of the human mind in our times we are struck by the number
of associations which spring up to meet the varied requirement of the
individual of our age--societies for study, for commerce, for pleasure
and recreation; some of them, very small, for the propagation of a
universal language or a certain method of short-hand writing; others
with large arms, such as that which has recently been established for
the defence of the English coast, or for the avoidance of lawsuits, and
so on. To make a list of the associations which exist in Europe, volumes
would be necessary, and it would be seen that there is not a single
branch of human activity with which one or other does not concern
itself. The State itself appeals to them in the discharge of its most
important function--war; it says, "We undertake to slaughter, but we
cannot take care of our victims; form a Red Cross Society to gather up
the wounded on the battle-field and to take care of them."
Let others, if they will, advocate industrial barracks or the monastery
of Authoritarian Communism, we declare that the tendency of society is
in an opposite direction. We foresee millions and millions of groups
freely constituting themselves for the satisfaction of all the varied
needs of human beings--some of these groups organised by quarter,
street, and house; others extending hands across the walls of cities,
over frontiers and oceans. All of these will be composed of human beings
who will combine freely, and after having performed their share of
productive labour will meet together, either for the purpose of
consumption, or to produce objects of art or luxury, or to advance
science in a new direction. This is the tendency of the nineteenth
century, and we follow it; we only ask to develop it freely, without any
governmental interference. Individual liberty! "Take pebbles," said
Fourrier, "put them into a box and shake them, and they will arrange
themselves in a mosaic that you could never get by entrusting to anyone
the work of arranging them harmoniously."
PART III.
Now let me pass to the third part of my subject--the most important with
respect to the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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