Max Nettlau (1865-1944)

Biography

Born in Neuwaldegg, Austria 1865, died in Amsterdam 1944; anarchist historian, collector and scholar; studied philology and Celtic (dissertation ‘Beiträge zur cymrischen Grammatik‘, 1887); lived partly in Vienna, partly in London and traveled all over Europe to collect and to save historical documents on anarchism and socialism and for his studies; member of the Socialist League 1885-1890, active in the Torch and Freedom group; wrote historical works on anarchism with invaluable information and theoretical studies; printed by autocopyist his biography of Mikhail Bakunin, 3 vols. 1896-1900, and published Bibliographie de l’anarchie 1897; lost during the inflation after the First World War the money he had inherited, and lived in poverty in Vienna; continued to collect and to publish e.g. biographies of Errico Malatesta and Elisée Reclus, and a History of Anarchism in 7 volumes; sold his immense collection (books, periodicals, archives, documents) to the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in 1935 and lived in Amsterdam after the ‘Anschluss’.

Bibliography

Die historische Entwickelung des Anarchismus
The Evolution of Anarchism
A Short History of Anarchism
Anarchisten und Syndikalisten. Part I & Part II
Freedom and Spain and the World : Writings on Bakunin
Der Anarchismus von Proudhon zu Kropotkin : Seine historishe Entwicklung in den Jahren 1859-1880

Reading

Max Nettlau: PANARCHY : A Forgotten Idea of 1860

For a long time I have been fascinated by the thought how wonderful it would be if at last, in public opinion on the succession of political and social institutions, the fateful term “one after another” would be replaced through the very simple and self-evident “simultaneously.”

“Down with the State!” and “Only upon the ruins of the State. . .” express emotions and wishes of many but it seems that only the cool “Opt out of the State” (No. 2 of “The Socialist”) can help them towards their realization.

When a new scientific insight appears, then those convinced of it do simply proceed upon it, without wanting to persuade the old professors who do not intend to follow it or to force them to accept the new way or to slay them: Quite on their own, they will fall behind, diminish in reputation and dry up – if only the new method is full of life. Indeed, in many cases, maliciousness and stupidity will put many obstacles in the road of the new idea. That is the reason why hard struggles must be fought for unconditional mutual tolerance, until it is finally achieved. Only from then on will everything proceed automatically, science will bloom and advance, because the necessary foundation for every progress, namely experimental freedom and free research have been achieved.

One should by no means attempt to “bring everything under one hat.” Even the State did not achieve that. The socialists and the anarchists slipped away from its power. And we would not be any more successful with such an attempt, for the statists do still exist (are one of the facts of our reality). Besides, it should rather please us not to have to drag a die-hard cripple of the State into our free society. The frequently discussed question: “What ought to be done with the reactionaries, who cannot adapt to liberty?”, would thereby be very simply solved: They may retain their State, as long as they want it. But for us it would become unimportant. Over us it would have no more power than the eccentric ideas of a sect which are of interest to no one else. Thus it will happen, sooner or later. Freedom will break a path for itself, everywhere.

Once, while we were on a steamer on Lake Como, a teacher from Milan boarded the ship with a large class. She wanted all the kids to sit down and rushed from one group to the other, ordering them to sit. However, barely had she turned her back upon any of the groups when most of the group stood up again and whenever she attempted to survey all of them, believing at last to have finished with her labor, she found them standing up and around, in the same disorder as before. Instead of now becoming more severe with them, the young woman laughed herself about it and left the children in peace. Most of them soon sat down anyhow, on their own initiative. This is just a harmless example to demonstrate that everything, which is left to itself, solves itself best.

Consequently and as an aside: Before the idea of MUTUAL TOLERANCE in political and social affairs will break its path, we could do nothing better than to prepare ourselves for it – by realizing it in our own daily living and thinking. How often do we still act contrary to it?

These words are intended to demonstrate how much I have fallen in love with this idea and to make others understand my pleasure to have found a forgotten essay of a pioneer of this idea, an idea which is not talked about much in our literature. However, one must admit that the struggle it is engaged in was really forced upon it.

I am speaking of the article “PANARCHIE” by P.E. De Puydt in the REVUE TRIMESTRIELLE (Brussels), July 1860, pages 222 to 245. The author, who was so far unknown to me and about whom I did not care in order not to disturb my impression of his ideas, does probably stand apart from the social movements. But he has a clear vision of the extent to which the present political system, according to which ALL have to submit to one government, constituted upon a majority decision or otherwise, flies right into the face of the simplest requirements for liberty.

Without identifying with his own proposal in any way, or attempting to achieve completeness, I want to summarize his views and quote some details.

One will feel closer to his idea if one replaces in one’ s mind the word “government” , which he always uses, by “social organization,” especially since he himself proclaims the coexistence of all governmental forms up to and including “even the AN-ARCHY of Mr. Proudhon“, each form for those who are really interested in it.

The author declares himself for the teachings of the political economy of “LAISSEZ-FAIRE, LAISSEZ PASSER” (the Manchester School of free competition without state intervention). There are no half-truths. From this he concludes that the law of free competition, LAISSEZ-FAIRE, LAISSEZ PASSER, does not only apply to the industrial and commercial relationships but would have to be brought to its breakthrough in the political sphere. .

Some say that there is too much freedom, the others, that there is not enough freedom. In reality, the fundamental freedom is missing, precisely the one needed, the freedom to be free or not free, according to one’s choice. Everybody decides this question for himself and since there are as many opinions, as there are human beings, the mix-up, called politics, results. The freedom of one party is the negation of the freedom of the others. The best government functions never in accordance with the will of all. There are victors and defeated, suppressors in the name of the present law and insurgents in the name of freedom.

Do I want to propose my own system? Not at all! I am an advocate of all systems, i. e. of all forms of government that find followers.

Every system is like a block of flats in which the proprietor and the main tenants have the best accommodations and feel well off. The others, for whom there is not sufficient space in it, are dissatisfied. I hate the destroyers as much as the tyrants. The dissatisfied ones should go their own way, but without destroying the building. What does not please them may give pleasure to their neighbours.

Should they emigrate instead, to seek for themselves, anywhere in the world, another government? Not at all. Nor should people be deported, here and there, in accordance with their opinions. “I wish them to continue living in coexistence, wherever one happens to be or elsewhere, if one wants to, but without a struggle, like brothers, each freely speaking his mind and each subordinating himself only to those powers personally elected or accepted by him.

Let us come to the subject. “Nothing develops and lasts that is not based upon liberty. Nothing that exists maintains itself and functions successfully except through the free play of all its active components. Otherwise, there will be loss of energy through friction, rapid wear of the cog-wheels, too many breakages and accidents. Therefore, I demand for each and every element of human society (individual) the liberty to associate with others, according to his choice and congeniality, to function only in accordance with his capabilities, in other words, the absolute right to select the political society in which they want to live and to depend only upon it.”

Today the republican attempts to overthrow the existing form of the State in order to establish his ideal of the State. He is opposed as an enemy by all monarchists and others not interested in his ideal. Instead, according to the idea of the author, one should proceed in a way which corresponds to legal separation or divorce in family relationships. He proposes a similar divorce option for politics, one which would harm no one .

One wants to be politically separated? Nothing is more simple than to go one’s own way – but without infringing the rights and opinions of others, who, on their side, would just have to make a little bit of room and would have to leave the others full liberty to realize their own system.

In practice, the machinery of the civil registry office would suffice. In each municipality a new office would be opened for the POLITICAL MEMBERSHIP of individuals with GOVERNMENTS. The adults would let themselves be entered, according to their discretion, in the lists of the monarchy, of the republic, etc.

From then on they remain untouched by the governmental systems of others. Each system organizes itself, has its own representatives, laws, judges, taxes, regardless of whether there are two or ten such organizations next to each other.

For the differences that might arise between these organisms, arbitration courts will suffice, as between befriended peoples.

There will, probably, be many affairs common to all organisms, which can be settled by mutual agreements, as was, for instance, the relationship between the Swiss cantons and of the American States with their federations.

There may be people who do not want to fit into any of these organisms. These may propagate their ideas and attempt to increase the numbers of their followers until they have achieved an independent budget, i. e. can pay for what they want to have in their own way. Up to then, they would have to belong to one of the existing organisms. That would be merely a financial matter.

Freedom must be so extensive that it includes the right not to be free. Consequently, clericalism and absolutism for those who do not want it any other way.

There will be free competition between the governmental systems. The governments will have to reform themselves in order to secure to themselves followers and clients.

What is involved is merely a simple declaration at the local Office for Political Membership and without having to part with one’s dressing gown and slippers, one may transfer from the republic to the monarchy, from parliamentarianism to autocracy, from oligarchy to democracy or even to the anarchy of Mr. Proudhon, according to one’s own discretion.

“You are dissatisfied with your government? Take another one for yourself” – without an insurrection or revolution and without any unrest – simply by a walk to the Office for Political Membership. The old governments may continue to exist until the freedom to experiment, here proposed, will lead to their decline and fall.

Only one thing is demanded: free choice. Free choice, competition – these will, one day, be the mottos of the political world.

Wouldn’t that lead to an unbearable chaos? One should merely remember the times when one throttled each other in religious wars. What became of these deadly hatreds? The progress of the human spirit has swept it away like the wind does with the last leaves of autumn. The religions, in whose names the stakes and torture were operating, do nowadays coexist peacefully, side by side. Especially there wherever several of them coexist, each of them is more than otherwise concerned about its dignity and purity. Should what was possible in this sphere, in spite of all hindrances, not be likewise possible in the sphere of politics?

Nowadays, while governments only exist under exclusion of all other powers, each party dominates after having thrown down its opponents and the majority suppresses the minority, it is inevitable that the minorities, the suppressed, grumble and intrigue on their side and wait for the moment of revenge, for the finally achieved power. But when all coercion is abolished, when every adult has at any time a completely free choice for himself, then every fruitless struggle will become impossible.

While governments are subjected to the principle of free experimentation, to free competition, they will improve and perfect themselves on their own. No more aloofness, up in the clouds, which only hides their emptiness. Success for them will entirely depend upon them doing it better and cheaper than the others do.

The energies, presently lost in fruitless labors, friction and resistance, will unite themselves in order to promote progress and happiness of man, in unforeseen and wonderful ways.

Upon the objection that after all these experiments with governments of all kinds, one would, finally, return to a single one, the perfect one, the author remarks that even if that were the case, this general agreement would have been achieved through the free play of all forces. But that could happen only in afar away future, “when the function of government, with general agreement, is reduced to its most simple expression.” In the meantime, people are of a different mind, and have so varied customs that only this multiplicity of governments is possible.

One seeks excitement and struggle, the other wants rest, this one needs encouragement and aid, the other, a genius, tolerates no direction. One wishes for a republic, submission and renunciation, the other desires the absolute monarchy with its pomp and splendour. This orator wants a parliament, the silent one, there, condemns all the babblers. There are strong minds and weak heads, ambitious ones and simple and contented people. There are as many characters as there are persons, as many needs as there are different natures. How could all of them be satisfied by a single form of government? The contented ones will be in a minority . Even a perfect government would find its opposition.

In the proposed system, on the other hand, all disagreements would be merely squabbles at home, with divorce as the ultimate solution.

Governments would compete with each other and those who associated themselves to their government, would be especially loyal to it because it would correspond to their own ideas .

How would one sort all these different people out? – I believe in “the sovereign power of freedom to establish peace among men.” I cannot foresee the day and the hour of this concord. My idea is like a seed thrown into the wind. Who has in former times thought of freedom of conscience and who would question it today?

For its practical realization one might, for instance, set the minimum period for membership, in one form of government, at one year.

Each group would find and collect its followers whenever it needs them, like a church does for its members and a share company for its share holders.

Would this coexistence of many governmental organisms lead to a flood of public servants and a corresponding waste of energies? This objection is important; however, once such an excess is felt, it will be done away with. Only the truly viable organisms will persist, the others will perish from enfeeblement.

Will the presently ruling dynasties and parties ever agree to such a proposal? It would be in their interest to do so. They would be better off with less members but all of these volunteers completely subordinating themselves. No coercion would be necessary against them, no soldiers, no gendarmes, no policemen. There would be neither conspiracies nor usurpations. Each and no one would be legitimate.

A government might today go into liquidation and, later on, when it can find more followers, it can re-establish itself, by a simple constitutional act, like a share company.

The small fees to be paid for the registration would support the offices for political membership. It would be a simple mechanism, one that could be led by a child and that, nevertheless, would correspond to all requirements.

All this is so simple and correct that I am convinced that no one will want to know anything about this.

Man, being man . . .

Compiled by Romano Krauth
Published by anarchy-movement.org, no longer online as of 2006

Federica Montseny (1905-1994)

Biography

Federica Montseny was born in Madrid, Spain, on 12th February, 1905. Her parents were the co-editors of the anarchists journal, La Revista Blanca (1898-1905). In 1912 the family returned to Catalonia and farmed land just outside Barcelona. Later they established a company that specialized in publishing libertarian literature.

Montseny joined the anarchist labor union, National Confederation of Trabajo (CNT). As well as working in the family publishing business she contributed articles to anarchist journals such as Solidaridad Obrera, Tierra y Libertad and Nueva Senda. In her writings Montseny called for women’s emancipation in Spain.

In 1921 Miguel Primo de Rivera banned the CNT. It now became an underground organization and in 1927 Montseny joined the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI).

The Antifascist Militias Committee was set up in Barcelona on 24th July 1936. The committee immediately sent Buenaventura Durruti and 3,000 Anarchists to Aragón in an attempt to take the Nationalist held Saragossa. At the same time Montseny established another anarchist militia, the Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty).

In the first few weeks of the Spanish Civil War an estimated 100,000 men joined Anarcho-Syndicalists militias. Anarchists also established the Iron Column, many of whose 3,000 members were former prisoners. In Guadalajara, Cipriano Mera, leader of the CNT construction workers in Madrid, formed the Rosal Column.

In November 1936 Francisco Largo Caballero appointed Montseny as Minister of Health. In doing so, she became the first woman in Spanish history to be a cabinet minister. Over the next few months Montseny accomplished a series of reforms that included the introduction of sex education, family planning and the legalization of abortion.

During the Spanish Civil War the National Confederation of Trabajo (CNT), the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) and the Worker’s Party (POUM) played an important role in running Barcelona. This brought them into conflict with other left-wing groups in the city including the Union General de Trabajadores (UGT), the Catalan Socialist Party (PSUC) and the Communist Party (PCE).

On the 3rd May 1937, Rodriguez Salas, the Chief of Police, ordered the Civil Guard and the Assault Guard to take over the Telephone Exchange, which had been operated by the CNT since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Members of the CNT in the Telephone Exchange were armed and refused to give up the building. Members of the CNT, FAI and POUM became convinced that this was the start of an attack on them by the UGT, PSUC and the PCE and that night barricades were built all over the city.

Fighting broke out on the 4th May. Later that day the anarchist ministers, Federica Montseny and Juan Garcia Oliver, arrived in Barcelona and attempted to negotiate a ceasefire. When this proved to be unsuccessful, Juan Negrin, Vicente Uribe and Jesus Hernández called on Francisco Largo Caballero to use government troops to takeover the city. Largo Caballero also came under pressure from Luis Companys, the leader of the PSUC, not to take this action, fearing that this would breach Catalan autonomy.

On 6th May death squads assassinated a number of prominent anarchists in their homes. The following day over 6,000 Assault Guards arrived from Valencia and gradually took control of Barcelona. It is estimated that about 400 people were killed during what became known as the May Riots.

These events in Barcelona severely damaged the Popular Front government. Communist members of the Cabinet were highly critical of the way Francisco Largo Caballero handled the May Riots. President Manuel Azaña agreed and on 17th May he asked Juan Negrin to form a new government. Montseny, along with other anarchist ministers, Juan Garcia Oliver, Juan López and Juan Peiró now resigned from the government.

Negrin’s government now attempted to bring the Anarchist Brigades under the control of the Republican Army. At first the Anarcho-Syndicalists resisted and attempted to retain hegemony over their units. This proved impossible when the government made the decision to only pay and supply militias that subjected themselves to unified command and structure.

Negrin also began appointing members of the Communist Party (PCE) to important military and civilian posts. This included Marcelino Fernandez, a communist, to head the Carabineros. Communists were also given control of propaganda, finance and foreign affairs. The socialist, Luis Araquistain, described Negrin’s government as the “most cynical and despotic in Spanish history.”

At the end of the Spanish Civil War Montseny fled to France. She now led the National Confederation of Trabajo (CNT) in exile until her arrest in 1942. She was imprisoned in Perigueux and Limoges during the Second World War and was not released until the liberation of France in 1944.

Montseny moved to Toulouse where she published the anarchist newspaper, L’Espoir. Unlike most other exiles, she decided not to return home after the death of General Francisco Franco and the re-introduction of democracy in Spain. Federica Montseny died in 1994.

Bibliography

La Victoria
“Heroínas” in Bordonada, Angeles Ena
María Silva: “La libertaria”
Qué es el anarquismo?
El éxodo: Pasión y muerte de los espanoles en el exilio
Seis anos de mi vida (1939-1945)

Reading

Federica Montseny: Spain and Russia

“In Spain the Anarchists will not be treated as they are in Russia.” When Fascism is destroyed, the Revolution, carried out by the people, will be real. In Cataluna, for instance, there is not the slightest chance left to re-establish private property, because all archives and property-titles have been burnt, and all proprietors who have not lost their lives have left their property in the hands of the workers’ organizations.

In Cataluna the Revolution is already a fact. The land has been collectivized. In the villages, Supply Committees are organizing the exchange of products from village to village, from district to district, from region to region. Thus the use of money has become almost superfluous. The activity of the Anarchists has been so fertile that no one would even dare to suggest a similar treatment meted out to our comrades in Soviet Russia. There, too, the Anarchists tried to realize their ideas, as for instance, in the Ukrainia, where libertarian communism had been attempted. But, lacking numeric strength, they were excluded from the responsible direction of the Revolution, though they fought on every front as well as in the rear. After the establishment of the Red dictatorship, the Army and Cheka, created to fight the enemy, were used against the Anarchists, who were pursued with fire and sword.

But we here in Cataluna, have done practical work, we have participated in everything, we are everywhere. Thus we have brought about a Revolution in Spain. We have machine-guns rifles and cannons.

. . . We are ready to fight, to construct, to realize the demands of the people. We want the unity of all anti-Fascists, but at the same time we demand respect for those who are fighting, and we are opposing political maneuvers. May the others give in like we do. Situations are different everywhere. If in Cataluna to-day a syndicate proclaims a slogan, it is already carried out. This form of economic construction is one of the fundamentals of our fight against Fascism. The people themselves, and only the people, determine the rhythm of our fight. Never will the Anarchists in Spain be made to suffer as they have been and are in Russia.

Compiled by Romano Krauth

Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812-1886)

Biography
Stephen Pearl Andrews, lawyer, abolitionist, individual anarchist and education innovator, was born on March 22, 1812, at Templeton, Massachusetts. He went to Louisiana at age 18 and studied and practiced law there; appalled by slavery, he became an abolitionist. Having moved to Texas in 1839, he and his family were almost killed because of his abolitionist lectures and had to flee 1843. He went off to England where he failed at his scheme to raise funds to free slaves in America. But he became interested in Pitman’s new shorthand writing system and on his return to the USA he taught and wrote about this new passion while continuing his abolitionist lectures. He also became interested in phonetics and the study of foreign languages, eventually learning 30 including Chinese. By the end of the 1840s he began to focus his energies on utopian communities, establishing Modern Times in Islip, NY, (1851), and then Unity Home in New York City (1857). By the 1860s he was propounding an ideal society called Pantarchy, and from this he moved on to a philosophy he called “universology,” which stressed the unity of all knowledge and activities. The last two decades of his life saw him at the center of many of the progressive social reform circles in New York City. Andrews died on May 21, 1886.

Bibliography
Cost the Limit of Price
The Constitution of Government in the Sovereignty of the Individual
The Science of Society
The Sovereignty of the Individual Principles of Nature,
Original Physiocracy, the New Order of Government
The Pantarchy
The Basic Outline of Universology
The Labor Dollar
Elements of Universology
The New Civilization

Reading

Stephen Pearl Andrews: To the Editor of the New York Tribune

SIR: During some five or six years past, and especially of late, the Newspaper Press has made free use of my name in connection with what it denominates the Doctrine of Free Love. Every variety of interpretation has been put upon my opinions, usually the least favorable which the imagination of the writer could devise, with a view, apparently, of cultivating still further the natural prejudice existing in the public mind against any one bold enough to agitate the delicate and difficult question of the true relations of the sexes, and the legitimate role which the Passions were intended to play in the economy of the Universe. During the same period, I have allowed the Press to make what havoc it pleased of my reputation, uttering no word of explanation or reply, for the reason that neither Press nor People were, as I believe, prepared to do justice in the premises, and I preferred to “bide my time,” rather than seek or accept the stinted half justice which I might, perhaps, have supplicated and obtained. Most or all of my co-doctrinaires have pursued the same course. Two results have followed. First, in the absence of any readiness on the part of the public to know the truth on the subject, false, extravagant and ridiculous notions have flooded the country in its stead; secondly, in the absence of any opportunity for a judicious popular advocacy of Social Freedom, and despite abuse, the doctrine itself has made unprecedented progress, until at this day its advocates are numbered by thousands, while there are included among them an unusual proportion of the wealthy, intelligent and refined.

America, and through it, the world, have been recently startled, shocked and horrified even, by the announcement of a new freedom, the Freedom of Love. It may be well to reflect that every new idea, fraught with any genuine greatness or value, has, in other times, startled, shocked and horrified the public in whose ears it was first uttered, and to inquire whether we, in one day, may not be, perchance, repeating the same ridiculous farce, the nightmare of the world’s infancy, the panic of ignorance and “verdancy,” with which the race has always hitherto accorded a reception to every new dispensation of truth.

Is there anything to terrify the imagination in the idea of Freedom? Is not freedom already recognized and worshipped as a goddess, and her image stamped upon the coin of the realm? Is it Love that is viewed as a monster, whose very name paralyzes with fear? There are ancient writings, not a little revered among us, which declare that “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” and again, that “God is Love.” How, then, does it happen that Free Love, of the Freedom of Loving Hearts, should be a word of terror to mankind, so that the world forgets her propriety, and is made to misbehave herself, with unseemly alarm, at the mere mention of an entymological combination the elements of which, uttered separately, fall with the soothing cadence of a lullaby upon the same excitable nerves.

Free Love is simply the antithesis of enslaved Love. This is equally true in all the senses of which the word is susceptible, whether confined to the amative and sentimental relation of the sexes, or enlarged to signify the whole affectional nature of man.

In beginning an agitation for the emancipation of the human race from the tyranny which prescribes what it is lawful for them to fell, the writer of this intended the freedom of the whole range of the affections, and adopted, as the technicality to express that idea, the term “Freedom of the Affections.” . . .

Without restraining the meaning of the word to the relations of the sexes, it is admitted that those relations are included and mainly intended by it, and that the freedom proposed contemplates the entire abolition of the institution of Marriage as a legal tie to be maintained and perpetuated by force.

The first popular objection to Free Love, to be anticipated as existing in the public mind, is the prevalent belief that the Bible has prescribed an indissoluble monogamy, or the life-marriage of one man and one woman, as the only form of the union of the sexes which God approves. This belief results from the interpretation which some of the words of Christ in relation to marriage have almost uniformly received. . . . The Scriptures have been held, at various periods with equal unanimity, to teach that the sun revolves around the earth; that kings reign of divine right, and must not, for any cause, be resisted; and that the world was created in six literal days. With the progress of astronomy, politics and geology, each of these convictions has given way before the scientific discovery of adverse facts and principles. . . .

In this country; and in this age, we have, in one sphere of social affairs, a successful and triumphant practical illustration of the theory that the recognition of the rights of the individual is the talisman of order and harmony in society. . . . Not only is he permitted “to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience,” but, equally, to neglect or refuse to worship Him altogether; and the result is peace and fraternity; in the place of the inquisition, the burning fagot and war.

For one, I reject and repudiate the interference of the State in my morals, precisely as I do the interference of the church to prescribe my religious deportment or believe. The outrage on human rights is in my view no less in kind to assume to determine whom men and women may love, and what manifestation they may make of that sentiment, than it is to burn them at Geneva or Smithfield for heretical practice or faith.

Such, then, is Free Love—neither more nor less. It is simply a branch or single application of the larger doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual. It decides absolutely nothing with regard to the form or continuity of the love relation. Whosoever believes that the parties immediately concerned are the proper parties to determine the form and duration of that relation; whosoever wishes to discard legislative enactments, and adopt a “higher law” as the appropriate regulator of affairs of the heart, is, a Free Lovite, no matter what he expects will be the result as the operation of that law.

The attempt to degrade Free Love into the partisanship of an unbridled licentiousness is partly the result of an honest confusion of ideas, and partly the effect of natures conscious as yet of no greater elevation of sentiment in themselves than the promptings of unregulated desire. This fog will rapidly disappear . . .

[T]he second grand objection to freedom in this application, an objection also founded upon a popular religious dogma—namely, the belief that man is, in himself, radically bad. Under this belief the passions, especially, are abused as infernal and diabolical. No belief ever held by mankind is so essentially anti-progressives as this. . . .

The third and last grand objection to Amorous Liberty relates to the maintenance and culture of Children. This objection assumes that the isolated family offers the only mode of properly caring for offspring. The family, as now constituted, is, in fact, a very hot-bed of selfishness, which, while it provides for one’s own children badly enough, permits the children of others, equally good, to starve at one’s door, with the comfortable assurance that the responsibility belongs with someone else. A grand social revolutions is soon to occur. In this generation THE PEOPLE float in palaces upon their rivers and bays; in the next they will live in palaces upon land. Then the nursery will be a Unitary Institution, scientifically organized and adapted to the new social state. Let the reader refer, upon this subject, to a tract called “The Baby World.”

Finally, the words Free and Freedom are everywhere honored, except in the connections “Free Niggers,” “Free Women,” “Free Thinking” and “Free Love.” They are scoffed at in those relations because they stand opposed to Tyrannies that are still respectable—Slavery, Marriage and the Authority of the Church. When Tyranny of all kinds shall have disappeared, Freedom of all kinds will be revered, and none will be ashamed to confess that they believe in the Freedom of Love.

Compiled by Romano Krauth

John Arthur Andrews (1865-1903)

Biography

J.A. Andrews is probably the most important of the group which came together in the Melbourne Anarchist Club. He certainly has the best chance of being judged as such by literary people, since he has left more material (a lot of it unpublished or published under pseudonyms) than any of the others. His was a wide-ranging imagination and he had by far the strongest intellect. He was a gifted theoretician, poet, inventor and historian.

Bibliography

Handbook of Anarchy
Anarchy
State Education
Revolution and Physical Force
Manifesto to Australian Workers
Authority, Law and the State
On Decision Making
The Social Question not a ‘Class’ Question

Reading

John Arthur Andrews: A Handbook of Anarchy

Anarchy is freedom. The literal meaning of the word “free” is to love or like; thus when we say that a man is free we imply that he is “to like,” that is, he has only to like in order to decide what he will do, or try to do. Among the things which people in general like, is to avoid hurting others, and as sometimes to do a particular thing which one would like would come in conflict with this, it becomes a matter for consideration which course one likes the best. From this people have roughly set out certain particular things which they supposed, so far as they could see, that they would prefer not to do towards others saying that as it was their wish to save each other from harm: they would mutually defend each other against anyone who did those things. This was law, which at first existed without any Governments since the mere solidarity and fellow-feeling of the people sufficed to carry it out. But they erred through short-sightedness, for they could not see further than the conditions and circumstances they were most familiar with, and not only are the general conditions of life constantly changing, but the individual circumstances under any general conditions are of almost infinite variability. Consequently when they assumed that certain things were as a matter of course opposed to their general purpose of sparing each other suffering, they overlooked the fact that there are “two sides to a question,” and that the real aspect of a case might be the very opposite of what they stood pledged in advance to regard it, as circumstances alone give every action its bearing. Had they not established the law, they would have taken part in the unbiased guidance of the same natural sympathies as were at the root of the law; but having created the law, they had to consider, not what part they would like to take according to the realities, but which part the law pledged them to. As a consequence of which, it would happen that when some person, let us say Alfred, did something slightly to the disadvantage of another, say Arthur, but which, in the nature of the circumstances, every unbiased observer would hold him absolutely justified in doing, they would, in the false light of the law, look on it as a crime; while the law would, through being all on Arthur’s side, and, so to speak, patting his immediate grievance on the back, lead him into the most narrowly selfish and exclusive view of the matter. Thus by degrees, as conditions changed partly from natural evolution and partly from the deliberate exertions of the most cunning to bend the circumstances into the shape that would give them most advantage of the law, the effects showed themselves in the division of society into two classes – those to whom, on the whole, the restrictions of law operated as circumstantial advantages over and against the others; and these others, who were, on the whole, disadvantaged and subordinated by the operation of the same restrictions. Those who received the advantage were naturally weeded down to consist of the most assertive of those whom chance or cunning had at any time favored, and came to look on the unequal operation of law as the expression of mysterious “rights,” invented, after the law had unconsciously created them, by way of apology for their own existence, and of making it appear that law, instead of unintentionally originating them, had itself come into existence for the express purpose of protecting them; and new laws were piled sky-high and Governments established to compel the observance of the vested interests thus set up. When the resulting evils have at some stage become intolerable, those below have from time to time revolted, either to bring things back to a fresh start, or to put the framing and administration of laws into the hands of supposedly impartial persons, or to take them directly into their own hands – expecting to thus remedy the evil, which, however, as pointed out, is in the very nature of law as imposing fallacies upon conduct; and out of falsehood as the source of social relations can come only the piling up of social lies, which, translated into material conditions, mean tyranny, slavery, and misery. No two occurrences are exactly alike in their causes and their effects, and the essence of law is that it takes all cases which have a single, and it may be the least important, point in resemblance, and directs them to be treated, in kind if not in degree, on the same footing. And as under no conceivable condition of society is wrong impossible, the effect of law is necessarily to create a vested interest in an wrongs possible to occur in conformity with the modes it crystallizes, for all who are in a position to profit by them at the expense of those who will suffer, and thus to constitute the latter mere cattle for the former; while freedom, by preserving the social elasticity, although it cannot prevent wrongs of a purely personal character from occurring if the elements are present, admits of no such wholesale wrong being foisted upon and over- shadowing society. The moment when, instead of considering what they would really like best to do under the actual circumstances confronting them, people in their ignorance turned their will to work out the dictates of a rule, that moment they ceased to be free; and the fact that they adopted the rule of their own accord, could no more alter the nature of their condition, than the fact of a man having voluntarily chained himself up could prevent the resulting fact of his physical bondage. The free man cannot owe obedience or support either to a personal ruler or to the fallacious exactions of any sort of superstition. The recognition of this fact is signified in expressing freedom by the word “Anarchy,” which means literally “un-rule,” or lawlessness.

Now what is lawlessness? It is usually held up as the equivalent of all wickedness. But let us see.

Right and wrong are simply good and harm. We define as right whatever ministers to the pleasure which we find in others’ welfare without depriving us of a greater amount of pleasure in our own being, and which those whom it is safe for us to associate with find reciprocally in our welfare; wrong that which acts oppositely. Our whole nervous structure makes it a physiological fact that we share in the joys and sufferings of each other. This is true of almost all animals that have a nervous system, but in man so especially that a healthy individual feels to some extent the pleasures and woes of even the animals of other species with which he associates. But from a protective natural process, this susceptibility is closed where vital interests are in conflict. We share no grief in the death-agony of a tiger or a human enemy whose life would threaten our own or make it insupportable. Then, since law in the nature of things takes away the exercise of fellow-feeling by which that feeling is developed, substituting, instead, comparison with codes, and since by building on false generalization it creates antagonistic interests, which cannot be adhered to without consequently closing up the bodily avenues of love for one’s neighbor as for oneself, it is law that is a hideous creator of wickedness. It would moreover be as rational to allege that an honest man should not object to being chained up to prevent him from stealing, as that he should not object to being a bond-slave in his conduct to prevent him from doing wrong, and a bond-slave he is when he has to conform his actions to an imposed code to the exclusion of his own judgment of what accords with reason and human sentiment. The whole of law is exactly on a par with the contention of the rabid teetotalers who affirm that because one man may do wrong in drinking alcohol, everyone should be forbidden to drink it. Because a certain act committed by a person whose moral nature is deficient, or who is not sufficiently thoughtful in his conduct, may probably be, under those circumstances, an unjust act, moral and considerate men are to be forbidden to do that act under any circumstances! It is the same. And a man does, or abstains from doing, something, for one of two reasons: either because he concludes that this conduct is the most appropriate, or because such is the rule or law. The conduct may answer to both reasons, but the motive can be only one of them; if a man does a thing because he thinks it fitting, he does so whether it is in accord with law or not, and if he does it because such is the law, he does it whether it is fitting or not. This is regarding law as a moral standard of conduct. Rules are all very well in their place as foundations for thoroughly optional special doings, and confined to the limited sphere of a circumscribed purpose, such as defining the structure of a game, the fun of which consists in seeing what can be done under specified limitations, and where the rule exists in the capacity of an assumed natural quality in an imaginary world which we can enter or leave at will; but as affecting doings in the real world, which are founded on facts that cannot be abrogated in that connection, they are wholly out of place. Our everyday affairs might just as well be regulated by the rules of cricket or draughts as by property or other law; it is only a matter of depending on the complications to which the peculiar limitations of the game give rise, for our material prosperity or adversity. As to the dread of penalty, everyone has to beware how he awakens resentment, but the question here is, will it wake on natural and reasonable, or on artificial and arbitrary grounds? If the latter, its moral value for arousing the morally dull to the fact that other people’s feet ache when trodden on, is destroyed; especially when the aggrieved – directly or through sympathy – are forbidden to exercise their resentment, and instead of the aggriever being taught a lesson as between man and man, he is punished by strangers in the name of an impersonal power for breach of discipline; not for wronging others, for the law gives to all who can use the law to that purpose, the privilege of wronging others: but for doing a wrong, or for that matter a right, in a forbidden way. This brings us to the point: to judge the rights and wrongs of any case correctly and deal with it intelligently, it must be treated on its own circumstances, and not by conventionalities and codes; then, is this to be done by the parties consciously affected, or by officials endowed with the monopolistic privilege of doing so? To be governed signifies that someone else has the choice of your conduct and attitude towards others’ conduct, and you have not.

“Oh! but,” we are told, “if you did away with Government there would be a horrible state of things; the world would become one vast field of chaotic rapine and slaughter!” What else is it now? If, however, there are so many people who are only restrained by law and authority from waging war on the wretched, helpless others, it is rather surprising for them to have gone on allowing the weak helpless good to govern them and keep them from doing what they would like. If such exist, it is because the existence of law is protecting them from the risks of their disposition; and Nature demands a slaughter for the purification of the world from the living abortions and inhuman monstrosities that have been preserved through law from the doom which humanity, in its own defence, should have meted out to them. Let it be slaughter, then, if such indeed it would, but let me be free to try and slaughter whom I like to slaughter, and every other whom he likes to slaughter, and not be butcher-slaves massacring as somebody else pleases, and when that slaughter stops because there is nobody left alive that anybody else left alive would like to kill, the survivors will be only such as are capable and desirous of living together in peace and harmony. Let us have it, by all means, as soon as the people learn to abandon law – let those who can and wish to live in helpful brotherhood, or at least in peace and concord, exterminate their enemies, and have, even if it is only for a few generations, a life worth living! They can do it, for if wickedness were naturally pleasing to the bulk of mankind, they would not wish for law “to suppress evil.” But in the absence of law, all the social feelings would, of a psychological necessity, be enormously awakened, and I believe that when people learn to throw away the superstition of law, with its consequence of their stiffened and distorted attitude towards each other, many and indeed the most of those who are under existing conditions social enemies, will rise naturally to the glory of peace and good will. Men’s mutual mistrust has furnished, in the various forms of law – rules, statutes, property, authority – the means for its own justification; so also their mutual confidence will not fail, in Liberty, to justify itself.

In the absence of law the one consideration taken by people as to their own or each others’ welfare, must be in the broadest sense the bearing of their respective needs, feelings and purposes. For those who refuse this consideration to others, there can only be war, and it is war now, only that the war is against those who refuse to give the false consideration demanded by rules, instead of the true consideration called for by real circumstances. But this war is not waged by the classes who profit by the vested interests in the subjection of their fellows which law in its very nature has created for the crafty and tyrannical. It is the people’s own force which through their delusion is turned against such of them as dare to infringe the rules of their bondage. And what the people’s own force can do blindly and irrationally, at the bidding and for the purposes of their oppressors, it can do consciously and intelligently, of free will, and for the people’s own purposes. Who are all the police, soldiers, judges, goalers and so on, but people like anyone else, and picked very much at random? So far as their position does not corrupt them, they are conscientiously endeavouring to administer and defend laws which nobody can understand, and they are privileged interferers, (since the hands of the people at large are tied) and tempted to curry favor with their “superiors” and the classes in whose interest they mainly exist. Surely then people in general here, there and every- where, can far better administer and defend the principles of humanity, which every ordinary person can understand, and with a full sense of mutual responsibility undestroyed by privilege and unbiased by servile dependence!

Anarchy is no blind dogma of non-interference, as it is sometimes misrepresented to be; I would even take a man by force and compel him to work for me, if occasion required – for instance, if my life or yours depended on the prompt repairing of an engine and his labor was necessary to its accomplishment, and he refused to help voluntarily; and I think every reasonable man would justify me in standing over that fellow with a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other till that engine was in working order – just as I think that nobody would justify me in interfering with him even by procuring his voluntary assistance, when I should obviously entail less hardship on myself and others by leaving him alone than on him by so interfering. Neither as it as others misrepresent it, a condition in which the first to do as he likes is privileged, and other people must not do as they like in opposing him. It is simply and purely the substitution of the real for the conventional as the guide of conduct. Substitute the free choice of conduct by all humanity according to their respective needs for action, in place of having some ordinary persons endowed with monopolies of this and that portion of the choice of conduct and resulting destinies of the rest; substitute the enlightened instincts of self-preservation and fellow-feeling together as the standard of morality, in place of obedience; and if not all people are competent for such a life, those of not less than average intelligence and good will certainly are, and they are the community; the others are its enemies.

Read Bakounine‘s GOD & THE STATE.

Property is law in restraint of use and possession, and conferring on the person in whose favour the restriction is declared, authority over his fellow-beings to arbitrarily forbid or impose his own terms for, their use of particular things. The more a man owns, the more he owns you. Like other law in the beginning, it was instituted with good intentions, the idea being to secure to each person undisturbed possession of the things which habitually he resorted to or had reasonable expectation of using for the satisfaction of his needs. In freedom, of course, there will be no ownership, but secure all the good aimed at by the latter, without its evil. The moral sense of people at large will, to the utmost of what reasonable and humane men can do, ensure and defend to each the undisturbed opportunity to gratify his purposes with the things he has provided or placed himself in access to for that end; otherwise give him friendly help; and justify him equally with anyone else in such latitude with the means provided for other people’s purposes as emergency may render desirable, so long as he displays as much regard for others’ convenience as the relative importance and urgency of his needs will enable.

In the absence of Property, capitalism, wages and prices, money, barter, etc., will necessarily be extinguished, since they depend on property for their very existence.

Just here let us consider buying and selling, and the commercial principle generally, together with the division of labor that we now have in connection with them. What is the difference between a woman selling to a man the use of her sexual organs, and one person selling to another person the use of some other part of the body, such as the arm or the brain? Or what is the difference between a woman exacting from a man a price for the use of certain “resources” for his gratification, and one person exacting from another person a price for the use of certain other resources which the former can provide – such as a pair of boots or a load of firewood? I can see no moral difference between one transaction and the other. Our innate sentiment for the welfare of the race teaches us that if a woman admits a man for the mere satisfaction of her own animal passion, it is natural and not in itself immoral; and if she does so in pursuance of a special affection it is usually positively moral, in as much as such affection ordinarily guides to the coupling most advantageous for the beneficial breeding of her species. But to pair without desire is repugnant to our feelings, and rightly so, as it impairs the quality of propagation. Does not also the use of the other organs without, or in excess of, desire, impair the quality of their operation? The artist, the author, the poet, know that when they have to resort to “pot-boiling” drudgery, it renders it more difficult for them to produce good work. Where there is a real natural prompting, whether the craving of a faculty for exercise, or the suggestiveness of appropriate conditions, the gratification of that prompting is a pleasure; and the being who would demand compensation for being pleased, is repugnant to all our instincts of self-preservation. The whole system of the habitual female prostitute is in a state of chronic derangement. What else can be said of the man who spends all his time in overworking one faculty to the level of a mere mechanical automaton, and shutting his energies off from the rest? Our body is too delicate a mechanism to be tampered with in this way. The whole man would be healthier and more vigorous and competent for a greater variety of exercise and due proportioning of action to the measure in which the different faculties exist in his structure. And again, a person does not in general like to do something for the sake of mere exercise; unless he is, as the saying is, bursting to get it off him, he wants first some reason, some purpose in view. The amateur who is brimful of energy seeking an outlet in the direction, say, of photography or the cultivation of flowers, does not want to compile an album or fill a garden which no eyes but his shall ever behold. The scientist, the philosopher, the poet, the author, these would soon weary, though rewarded with every outward luxury, were they cut off from others whose lives and interests to weave into their work, and for whose pleasure and advancement to make their conceptions and investigations. Even the hard-up swagman goes his way gloomily while he is alone, and asks for tucker seldom, but when two such come together, neither one shirks this most distasteful work, because it is for his innate as well as himself. And the swagman who exercises his bushmanship in discovering water or a good camping place, constructing a shelter, improving the bill of fare, making a knife or a billy from old waste, etc., feels, because his doings have a direct purpose, an immediate connection with the needs and welfare of him and his mates, a zest and relish of living such as he never experiences when, in employment, he spends his time doing something that so far as he is concerned might just as well be anything else, and receiving money with which he buys enjoyments that have no logical connection with his efforts.

Production and distribution would be effected in a condition of Anarchy on the same free and pleasurable lines as the various things necessary among a party of friends on a holiday excursion. Suppose that you and some of your comrades went on a holiday camping-out expedition in some remote part. Each would bring as far as possible what he or she would require, and what would be handy to others who might not have it, everything would be at disposal for the most equal and harmonious satisfaction of all the wants of everyone. The same principle would prevail in your doings; thus one group might go fishing, some because they liked both angling and eating fish; others who liked angling but did not care for eating fish; others who did not care particularly for angling, but wanted to make sure of the fish either for themselves or for friends with a taste for it. Other groups would go shooting, exploring, etc., in like manner. Another group would probably stay at the main camp, some because the work of camp fitting was most attractive to them, some because they felt for the time being more interest in that than in anything else, or knew that others felt so. Then when the other groups returned, and the party sat down to supper, it would be simply, who would like fish? who would like game? etc. so long as there was enough of the particular article for each who cared for it to have a share worth eating; if there was not enough for this, then some would stand out of their own accord, and if the deficiency was considerable you would leave the fish, if that was what was short, to those among the fishers who caught it and next to them those among the unsuccessful fishers, who had fished in the hope of eating fish, or the non-fishers for whom most personally and particularly any of the anglers had gone to the task of fishing. Then, too, one of you might do something to provide for his own convenience; two more might do different things for each other; a fourth might attend to something for a fifth, while the fifth did something for a sixth, and the sixth for someone else; one who had no occasion for assistance would help another who had, and there would be no thought of taking formal recognisances for the return of the compliment, or keeping accounts of the things done for each other, nor would the person who wanted something done go to another who could not do it, and offer to permit him to cat three meals on condition of having the thing done, and that one go to another and offer him leave to eat a quarter of a meal to do it, another a quarter to record the transaction, another a slice for introducing the party who wanted the thing done, and other slices to divers individuals to stand ready with guns to enforce the arrangement! The day after, all these groups and combinations might be changed; some vanished, some composed partly or wholly of new persons, others sprung up new. Nor would there be any persons privileged to rule in these combinations; if indeed anyone was accepted as guide or director in anything you would only take his instructions as advice, and if you did not approve of them, if it was your affair you would go on in your way, if his affair leave him to his way.

Now suppose news came to hand of a flood or war, that would cut you off from the outer world for some time, you would keep on in exactly the same way, only you would build more substantial shelters and take more elaborate means for supplying your wants from the resources around you, and there would be wants that you would experience on a long stay, that could have been passed over for a short one, and the things on which your energies would be directed, but not the nature of your relations towards each other, would be modified. You would still be the party of friends, and the ways of property and law would have no place among you. And now supposing that your stay was prolonged indefinitely, do you think that you would want to change all this, and map things out, saying, “this is for me exclusively,” and “that is for him exclusively,” to go each for himself against the rest, and lay out a commercial system, jealously measuring everything by which one benefited another, and demanding liquidated security for a reward as a condition of doing it? No! Whatever difference there might be in the things to be undertaken for supplying your respective needs, you would conduct yourselves in the same free and happy way as when you first set out. And the fruits of your toil and skill, and of your way of life, would soon be comfort for all such as the few have by the woe of the many now.

Read W[illiam]. Morris’s NEWS from NOWHERE.

If quarrels or difficulties arose, you would adjust them freely like all other matters. Why should you pick out a few and bind yourselves that what they call right shall be right, and what they call wrong shall be wrong? People whose conduct is chosen for them are “selfish,” because the only thing left them to think on is the immediate convenience or inconvenience of the result. People who choose their conduct for themselves exercise their social feelings in doing so, and are satisfied with any sacrifices they make to please their sympathies.

If a dispute arises among associates, it does not follow that the majority should prevail. Perhaps both majority and minority can carry out their views independently. The majority may be barely more than indifferent, while the minority are very decided, and in practice it may please the individuals of the majority best to give way. Or the question may be sunk, or new ideas conceived, or new persons enlisted. Unless materially impossible, as in the case of a ship in mid-ocean whose further course has been called in question, where there is nothing for it but to stay on board, it should generally be optional with everyone whether to remain associated with what others decide on – though extraordinary emergencies might justify the majority in coercing the minority, or the minority in coercing the majority, if possible. It is all a matter for common sense to adjust without being trammeled by formalities and legalities.

An agent, delegate or representative in any matter would only be that of those who procured him to act. In dealing with another person’s representative everyone is aware that he may be a misrepresentative, and would in Anarchy know therefore that he shared with the party “represented,” the risk of the representative being false. The “represented” would be perfectly justified in repudiation if the representative had designedly or inadvertently committed them to something unreasonable or foreign to their purpose in sending him; or in so far as one fair man would justify another in revoking a promise made even personally, if the circumstances had materially varied in the meantime. A promise or agreement is simply an expression of definite intention, for the guidance of others concerned, and the whole moral question upon it is one of mutual sparing of inconvenience.

The relations of the sexes will be on the same footing of freedom. Here there are always two persons whose choice in the matter would require to be mutual. All persons are not alike sexually. Some are monogamous, others polygamous; some mating, others roving, but all these can find partners who can take them as they are, and the mating person forced against nature to go from one to another, the rover kept to one, the monogamist forced to consort habitually with several during the same period and the polygamist prevented from doing so, each loses respect for the other sex, and treats a sex-partner as a mere machine for gratifying his or her sensuality.

Hence, freedom tends to purity. Though ordinarily, the habitual sex partnership is accompanied by a domestic one, it is not essential or uniformly desirable. Seducing a person to quit or ignore an existing sexual partnership is, other things being equal, an act that would call forth the contempt of the lawless, on account of its inconsiderate character towards the other partner.

Children would not be the chattel slaves of the parents as they are now. They would be to all on the same footing as any other feeble and inexperienced stranger who might arrive and become the guest of the community. It would at once be recognized as monstrous to order such a stranger about, saying, “Do this because you are told.” A child may be rightfully coerced, to avoid more serious harm to itself or others, but without authority, as you would force a friend who was drinking too much and behaving foolishly – nor for the mere whim of the parents or anyone else, but with full responsibility to everyone’s sense of fairness and right.

As older people would have leisure to let the society and wants of childhood enter more into their lives than at present … and encourage the natural tendency of children to take the affairs of their elder friends into their lives . . . children would pick up writing, reading, and all material knowledge as they acquire speech or the knowledge of games. Special classes conducted by those whom it would please to so exercise their faculties, and cooperative classes of students, such as our scientific societies really are, are natural and obvious means for closer study.

The nature of Anarchy being now understood, how is this state, so desirable, to be realized? It cannot be imposed; it must come by enlightenment and individual reform. Each must purify his own life from all taint of the evil, and have courage to ignore what is imposed, as the Catholics did before pagan and Protestant persecutors, Protestants before Catholic persecutors, and Atheists in face of both; as science has conquered religious persecution while the sects are still contending, so Anarchy, the applied science of society, will make its way with a rapidity and power impossible to barren creeds. In the spirit of the living faith that works its truth to sight, dwells, and there alone, the hope with the glory of Victory.

John Arthur Andrews: The Anarchist Movement

To adequately understand any movement requires a clear conception of its fundamental idea; and, therefore, I shall begin with the basic idea of Anarchy. In the search of mankind after truth on which to found happiness, the question naturally arose, “What is happiness?” And while many strange speculations were being made on the subject, someone looking nearer home for a solution than the rest, discovered the very simple fact that “happiness” is a synonym for doing and being just as one likes, and not otherwise. It also occurred to some such inquirer that while others may very well suggest, the only person competent to decide as to what one really likes is oneself. These truisms being now brought to mind, it was an obvious inference that general happiness meant a condition in which each person should do and be as he or she liked and not otherwise. And, therefore, among the numerous searchers for a road to such happiness as social conditions may ensure, some presently conceived that the way was simply and purely the liberty of each to shape the course of his or her life, from event to event, and from moment to moment, as his or her nature would, under all circumstances, prompt.

It was also seen that the differences in rank, position, wealth, etc., observed in the existing world, were all effectual restrictions upon such freedom of some for the benefit of others, and, therefore, as an essential corollary of liberty, was formulated equality.

It was furthermore apparent, on the one hand, that the full and equal liberty of each in the initiative could only be preserved in the result by harmony between respective individual inclinations; and, on the other hand, that sympathy, peace, and harmony were the general ideals of humanity’s desire, and liked as blessings, while enmity, strife, and discord were disliked by mankind in common as evils, and, therefore, a further corollary was fraternity.

But as some natures were so ill-balanced as to prefer such immediate personal advantages as they might be able to obtain at the sacrifice of fraternity, at the abandonment of equality, and even at the destruction of other people’s liberty, it was evident that under the circumstances those others would – whenever the limit of fraternal forbearance was reached – like to resist or even to retaliate; hence the liberty of those who were fit for the general liberty demanded not submission, but struggle.

That whereas it had previously been sought to cope with the matter by placing all under restraint from certain acts conventionally accepted as breaches by some of the liberty of others, this policy had only resulted in enabling the crafty to evade its purpose, and, by the very restraints imposed to prevent individual tyranny, to bind the good and law-abiding under their sway.

That on the contrary the liberty of the good demanded the liberty of the bad to begin a quarrel, and the liberty of the good to resist individually as they saw fit and when they saw fit.

That liberty could only be conserved by liberty and might, not by law.

That liberty was not conferred, but adopted; not given, but taken.

That equality was denied by the creation of any position of rule.

That equality was denied by any rule that affected unequally persons of different inclinations, and that called upon society to support or repress the act for the rule’s sake instead of leaving each equally free to do so according to his inclination for the action’s sake.

That this was also an invasion of liberty, and of fraternity.

That fraternity was invaded by the mistrust that placed all in subjection from the dread of a few; by the mistrust that deprived the many of dealing with their own grievances at their discretion; and by the resulting conversion of the rule (inevitable from its nature as a rule) into an engine for the perpetuation of the evils it had failed to cope with or had indeed fostered; and also by the accordance to rulers and persons privileged through any rule, of powers thereby essentially forbidden to the remainder.

That common sense was violated by the folly which – mistrusting all, though they should be neither privileged nor goaded by restriction – dreamed of security by reposing confidence in some whom, by these privileges and restrictions and inequalities, it had placed in a better position to abuse that confidence; while others, by the same means, were placed in a worse position to withstand such abuse than anyone would have been in simple liberty.

Those who recognised these facts called themselves Anarchists.

This was nearly 200 years ago. The ideas were summarised in the encyclopaedias of the time, and then dropped out of general notice; but they were really never extinguished. When Proudhon brought them into publicity in the earlier half of the present century, they were held in a more advanced form than that ingenious philosopher presented them in by men whose names the researches of Anarchist historians are gradually bringing to light, such as Desjacques. But they were first extensively promulgated in a crude and undeveloped shape, it is true, shortly after the birth of the “International.” It was not till about 1883 that they were largely popularised in the form of a scientifically elaborated theory. Most of the progress in extension among the public, and a good deal of that in the development of the ideas, have been effected since that year.

No great movement ever sprang up without a variety of offshoots, and those of Anarchism were numerous, the most important being the Collectivists, the Individualists, and the Communists. The latter, of whom I am one, repudiates ownership in any shape or form, and, as will hereafter appear, thereby necessarily repudiate all authority and government. The original “Collectivists” are, except in Spain, almost merged in the Communist party, which has become definitely the main shoot. The “Individualists”, or, more strictly, “Proprietists”, believe in ownership as essential, in their view, to liberty, but repudiate rent, interest, and profit. They are divided into the two Boston schools, believing in ownership defined as an exclusive right of each producer to the products of his labour, based on his productivity; and the second, or Anglo- Australian school, who base this estimate on the duration of labour.

This I discovered to afford something like a positive summary of my negative conclusions, and I joined the movement. A paper, Honesty, was commenced in 1887 at Melbourne, with Andrade as editor, and soon afterwards the Australian Radical, at Hamilton, N.S.W., adopted the principles. In 1888 Andrade and a majority of the club discarded their Boston economics, and advocated instead the time basis for the reward of labour, which, being regarded by the Bostonites as a “Socialistic” attack upon the sacredness of ownership in one’s products, led to a warm controversy. I therefore resolved to make an exhaustive logical analysis of the subject from several starting points, and at the end of the process perceived the scientific basis and definition of communism, which I thereafter advocated. I also became a revolutionist, and half a dozen of us started our propaganda at once, all being public speakers and three active writers. Since then we have had exciting times, dull times, anxious times, too, when the country quivered on the verge of a revolution that we should have had to support while thinking it premature on account of the small diffusion of Anarchism, or do violence to our sympathies – while we should have been but as a drop in the bucket; and, after all, probably been suppressed for our name and views, with a bloody hand by the Socialist and ready-to-be Socialist would-be rulers, who were waiting for such a contingency to gratify their ambition. But through all we have gone, steadily increasing, and there are now numerous Communist-Anarchists in all the colonies, and at least a dozen Barnes propagandists at work far and wide.

A little space for personal correction. I know nothing of the present Smithfield group, and some of the literature circulated was written and produced by the primitive processes mentioned, altogether independently of me. My only connection with any other Anarchists is that of friendly correspondence and such co-operation in the propaganda as is occasionally practicable. We are all acting individually, on our separate convictions, which some of us have helped each other to develop, or to elaborate, but which each of us would have had in the main if the others had never existed. Even were it otherwise, to truly grasp an idea requires the exercise of a capacity equal and akin to that used in its first conception, all that stands to the credit of the discoverer being a certain amount of energy which inclination or accident directed upon the preliminary search. The feeling that actuates a true comprehended is, when analysed, really joy that the circumstances occasioning the discovery have revealed to him, in the discoverer, someone in certain respects equal to him, the comprehender. Nor can any higher compliment be paid by man to man, for to no greater extent can one appreciate another than he is equal to that other, and to assert one’s own inferiority is to damn the hopes latent in any idea that equals to equals can communicate. He who is looked on as a Messiah may well despair. His thoughts and aims will only be misconstrued and perverted. Buddha and Jesus had great thoughts and noble aims, but, unfortunately, they were Messiahs, and the Buddhism and Christianity that came from their work they would turn from in mingled horror and contempt. Anarchy has no Messiahs, for it comes not to death but to life.

All authority is slave owning, all subordination is slavery. The absolute monarch and the absolute slave-owner are to their underlings one and the same. The owner is king of his slave, the monarch owner of his subject. The constituting privilege of each is that of commanding the actions of his victims as he, the ruler, chooses, and quite irrespectively of the desire or needs of those whom he oppresses. And it does not matter if this privilege is vested in one man or in a multitude, nor how it becomes conferred.

When England sold Heligoland to Germany the Heligolanders were sold as readily as the slaves on a transferred cotton plantation. The buyer of a factory buys as really, to the extent of the owner’s authority, the operatives. Nor does it matter how the privilege is limited or conditioned. Being one and the same under either name, when you subtract an equal amount of ownership and from rule, the remainder is equally rule and equally ownership in both cases.

And as to the ownership of things, it is nothing but the authority of the owner over all who do not own what he owns, to dictate as to whether and why they may use it. Liberty gives no privilege, either to one side or the other. Were the State non-existent, and ownership remained, each owner would evidently possess – as does the State for its own property – all the privileges which Government arrogates to itself for the conservation of ownership. And it is enough to look at the power of the propertied class to know that the privilege over the thing owned is also a despotic privilege over one’s fellow-beings. Communism (or the abolition of ownership and all its derivatives of prices, wages, money, and the enforced prostitution of brain and muscle known as professional or wage service, piecework, contract, etc.) is therefore essential to Anarchy (the abolition of authority) and Anarchy to Communism. The processes of making the change to these principles as the groundwork of society we know as the Revolution.

Freedom is inseparable from truth. If the master of a negro gang, accustomed to their bondage from their birth, and utterly untaught, should tell them “You are free”, should explain to them that they were to do as they liked and only as they liked, the poor fellows would not know enough of their own natures to make any notable difference except by indulgence in mere brute revelry; if he gave a command it would probably be obeyed, at least, if addressed to the crowd, or at most they would drift into barbaric servitude to the black chiefs. If carefully tutored in the idea of duty, which masters wish slaves to have, and conscientious, they would continue in effect his slaves unless he himself by escape, or forcible rebellion, could prevent them. It follows, therefore, as a corollary that freedom, even if given, must be taken, or it is a gift of pearls to swine; it is created by taking it and, save by chance, must be known before it can be taken. Hence the first essential to Anarchy is Anarchism; the second, the will; and the third, the strength, to be free whether helped or oppressed. The will exists, but depending primarily on the conjunction of intensity of perception with the faculty of desire, can be cultivated to a far higher degree by knowledge. The strength also exists, and it depends on knowledge and enlightened will to be available. The Anarchist movement is, therefore, primarily for the purpose of exposing all forms of subjection and all things that tend to the defeasance of individuality. But as it is not to be supposed that people who know the truth are going to remain in subjection if they can avoid it, and habituate themselves to passive submission while waiting for their masters to take the initiative in offering freedom – what we have to do is forcibly cease being coerced – that is to say, ignore the system altogether, and act as if Anarchy existed. At first this can only be done in small matters but as our strength increases we shall find that by each doing as he likes as much as he can, he soon can as much as he likes. Our aim is not to coerce those who disagree with us, but by a sufficient number of the people ceasing to be coerced, to reduce the former to the necessity of either dropping naturally into the new conditions, or consciously attempting to make others work for them by main force, which very few of them would do if they could. In order to effect this we desire, not a military revolution, but an industrial disorganisation ……

Certain cases will arise where human sympathy is outraged beyond the power of endurance, and vengeance will result. But we consider that when this occurs on the part of men with average sympathies, everyone on even the other side will be able to see that there was blame where the vengeance fell. It must be remembered in palliation of excesses that are almost inseparable from a revolutionary period, that suffering breeds exasperation, and as we recognise this fact, it prompts us to a policy of the utmost consideration for the individuals at the same time as we exercise the utmost defiance to every feature of the system they wish (to our injury) to conserve.

The decentralisation of industry, the direction of invention to facilitate production in general by individuals or small groups, either for their needs of consumption or for pleasure, the amateur system of production for exchange, etc., whereby the lie may be given to the current idea that “to produce is to suffer, to consume is to enjoy” (which seemingly actuates the Socialists), and each may be enabled in all things to do as he likes and because he likes, from the outline of our constructive aspirations in an economic direction. Anything different would contain the germs of new inequality and rule. Friendship and alliance of tastes and of needs will produce just the right sort and amount of co-operation where it 1S required.

Such are the principles, methods and aims of the Anarchist movement, not only in Australia, but everywhere. If they are true, if they are desirable, it only needs their acceptance by the people to make them practicable.

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Compiled by Romano Krauth
This page, with minor modifications, from anarchy-movement.org which went offline in 2006

Sebastien Faure (1858-1942)

Biography

Auguste Louis Sebastien Faure was born in 1858 into a middle-class Catholic family in Saint-Etienne (near Lyon in central France). He was very well educated at Jesuit schools and intended for the priesthood, but after his father’s death he went into the insurance business. After military service, he spent a year in England. He married and moved to Bordeaux (in south-western France). He soon lost his faith and became a socialist. He stood unsuccessfully as a candidate of the Parti Ouvrier (the Marxist Workers Party) in the Gironde in the 1885 election, but under the influence of Peter Kropotkin, Elise Reclus and Joseph Tortelier he moved towards anarchism.

In 1888 he broke with the socialists, settled in Paris, and devoted the rest of his life to a career as a full-time propagandist for anarchism. He and his wife separated, though they were reconciled many years later. He became a very active writer and speaker, earning a living from giving lectures all over the country.

He never pretended to be an original thinker, but he was an effective popularizer of other people’s ideas. He took a moderate line in the movement, and advocated an eclectic approach which attempted to unite all tendencies. He wasn’t convinced by the new syndicalist movement of the late 1890s, but was an active trade unionist himself. He wasn’t an individualist, but took individualism seriously. He didn’t support violent methods, but sympathized with those who used them. He was by no means a mere armchair theorist, but was frequently searched, arrested or prosecuted and occasionally imprisoned for his activities.

At first he was closely associated with Louise Michel, but he soon became a major figure in his own right, and one of the best-known anarchists in the country. In 1894 he was one of the defendants in the Trial of the Thirty, when the French authorities tried unsuccessfully to suppress the anarchist movement by implicating its leaders in criminal conspiracies, and was acquitted. He was involved in several papers at various times in several parts of France, the most important of which was Le Libertaire (The Libertarian), which he started with Louise Michel in November 1895 and which appeared weekly on and off until June 1914. He was active in the Dreyfusard movement, replacing Le Libertaire with the daily Journal du Peuple during 1899. He also produced Le Quotidien (The Daily) in Lyon during 1901-1902. From 1903 he was active in the birth-control movement. From 1904 to 1917 he ran a libertarian school called La Ruche (The Beehive) at Rambouillet (near Paris).

He was a moderate opponent of the First World War, and issued a manifesto Vers la Paix (Towards Peace) at the end of 1914. He produced a general left-wing weekly Ce qu’il faut dire (What Must Be Said) from April 1916 to December 1917. In 1918 and 1921 he served short prison sentences for sexual offences involving young girls; this damaged but didn’t destroy his career.

After the war he revived Le Libertaire, which continued from 1919 until 1939. In 1921 he led the reaction in the French anarchist movement against the growing Communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union. In January 1922 he began La Revue Anarchiste (Anarchist Review), the leading monthly magazine of the French anarchist movement between the world wars. In the late 1920s he opposed the sectarianism both of the authoritarian Platformists and of their critics, and advocated what he called an `Anarchist Synthesis’ in which individualism, libertarian communism and anarcho-syndicalism could co-exist. In 1927 he led a secession from the national Union Anarchiste, and in 1928 he helped to found the Association des Federalistes Anarchistes and to begin its paper, La Voix Libertaire (Libertarian Voice), which lasted from 1928 until 1939. He was reconciled with the national organization and Le Libertaire in 1934. During the 1930s he took part in the peace movement as a prominent member of the International League of Fighters for Peace. In 1940 he took refuge from the war in Royan (near Bordeaux), where he died in 1942.

[From The Raven, Freedom Press]

Bibliography

La Douleur universelle: Philosophie libertaire
Medicastres: Philosophie libertaire
Mon communisme: Le bonheur universel
L’Imposture religieuse
Encyclopedie Anarchiste
Douze preuves de l’inexistence de Dieu

Texts

Sebastien Faure: Twelve Proofs of the Non-Existence of God

DOES GOD EXIST?

There are two ways of studying and trying to solve the problem of the inexistence of god. One way is that of eliminating the hypothesis god from the field of plausible and necessary conjectures by a clear, precise explanation of a positive system of the universe, its origin, its successive evolutions, and its final scope. But such an explanation would make the idea of god useless, and would destroy beforehand the whole metaphysical edifice upon which it has been placed by spiritual philosophers and theologians.

However, taking into consideration the present status of human knowledge and duly confining ourselves to that which is demonstrable and has been demonstrated, verifiable and has been verified, we have to admit that there is neither such an explanation nor such a system of the universe.

Of course, there are certain ingenious hypotheses not at all unreasonable; there are various systems, more or less plausible, based on a quantity of facts and observations which give them a very impressing character of probability. Frankly, these systems and suppositions could face the arguments of the theists with some advantage. But, in truth, on this point we have only hypotheses since each being is free to accord his preference for this or that system, the solution of the problem — for the present, at least — thust viewed, appears to be held in reserve.

The adepts of all religions are so sure of the advantage they derive from examining the problem thus presented that they constantly try to bring it all back to this very point. If they do not get the honors of the fight on this ground — the only one on which they can yet stand fairly well — it is still possible for them to keep the doubt in the minds of their religious brothers. The doubt! A capital point for the co-religionists.

In this hand to hand scuffle where the two opposing theses belabor eachother, the theists receive some blows and also deliver some. Poorly or well, they defend themselves. Although the results of the debate are somehow uncertain, the mob, the believers — even if they have been put with their shoulders to the wall — could still claim victory. This is a thing which they do not fail to do with an impudence that has always been peculiar to them. And this comedy succeeds in maintaining the immense majority of the flock under the staff of the shepherd. That is all these “bad shepherds” wish to do.

PUTTING THE PROBLEM WITHIN ITS PRECISE TERMS.

Nevertheless, my friends, there is a second way of studying and trying to solve the problem of the inexistance of god. It consists of the examination of the existence of that god which all religions offer for our adoration.

Where would you find a single, reflective, sensible man who would admit this god who, we are told, could exist free of every mystery — as if nothing about him would be unknown, as if we had received all his secrets, as if his thoughts had been fully divined? Yet, they dare say of him, “he did this, he did that. He said this, and he said that. For this reason he spoke; to that end he acted. These things he permits, those things he does not. These actions he will reward, and those he will punish. That he did and this he wants because he is infinitely wise, infinitely just, infinitely powerful and infinitely good.”

Alas! Here is a god who makes himself known. He leaves the empire of inaccessibility, dispels the clouds which encircle him, descends from the summits, converses with the mortals, confides his thoughts and his will and charges some with the propagation of his laws and his doctrines. Not only that, but he asks them to represent him down here and gives them full power of doing and undoing in heaven and on earth.

This god is not the god-might, the god-intelligence, the god-will, the god-energy who — like everything that is will, intelligence, power, and energy — can be, from time to time and according to circumstances, indifferently good or bad, useful or harmful, just or iniquitous, merciful or cruel. Oh no! This is the god about whom all is perfection and whose existence is and can be compatible — since he is perfectly good, just, wise, powerful, merciful — only in a state of things of which he would be the author and by which his infinite justice, wisdom, power, goodness, and mercifulness would be affirmed. You all know this god. He is the living and personal god to whom temples are erected, for whom prayers are given and in whose honor sacrifices are made, whom all the clergy and the priesthood of every religious denomination on earth pretend to represent.

He is not the mysterious principle, the unknown, nor is he enigmatic might, impenetrable power, incomprehensible intelligence, inexplicable energy, the hypothesis to which the human mind resorts because it lacks the power to explain the “hows” and “whys” of things. He is not the speculative god of metaphysicians, but the god that has been profusely described and detailed to us by his “representatives”. He is, I shall repeat, the god of all religions. Since we are in France, I shall say that he is the god of that religion which has dominated our history for fifteen centuries: that is, the christian religion. This god I deny, but I am willing to discuss the subject. If we are to derive some positive gains and get some practical results from this lecture, it is befitting to study and analyze the facts involved in the issue.

Who is this god?

Since his procurators on earth have been so polite as to depict him to us with such an abundance of details, let us treasure this gentility and let us examine him at close range. Let us put him through the microscope. To properly discuss the subject, it is necessary to be well acquainted with it.

This is the god who, with a powerful and fecund gesture, made everything from nothing, who called the emptiness into being, who, of his own will, substituted movement for inertia and universal life for universal death. He is the creator!

This is the god who, having completed his gesture of creation — rather than re-entering his centuries-old inactivity and remaining indifferent to that which he had created — is concerned with his own work, takes interest in it, administers and governs it. He is the governor-providence!

This is the god who, like a supreme tribunal, calls us unto him after death and passes judgment according to our deeds, establishes the measurement of bad and good actions and then imposes, as a last resort and without appeal, the sentence which will make us for centuries to come the happiest or the most unfortunate of beings. He is the justiciary-judge!

It is obvious that this god possesses all these attributes and that he does not possess them merely to an exceptional degree, he possesses them to an infinite degree. Therefore, he is not only just, but infinite justice; not only good but infinite goodness; not only merciful, but infinite mercy; he is not only powerful, but infinite power; not only wise, but infinite wisdom.

Once more, this god I deny, and with twelve proofs — where one would suffice — I shall undertake to demonstrate the impossibility of his existence.

DIVIDING THE SUBJECT.

Here is the order in which I shall present my arguments. I shall divide them into three groups. The first will mainly deal with god the creator and will consist of six arguments; the second will be concerned chiefly with god the governor or providence and will consist of four arguments; the third and last group will deal with god the judge or justiciary and will consist of two arguments. So we shall have six arguments against god the creator, four against god the governor and two against god the judge. These will be the twelve proofs of the inexistance of god.

Now that you know the plan of my exposition, it will be easier for you to follow its elucidation.

Against God the Creator.

THE CREATIVE ACT IS INADMISSIBLE.

What do we understand by the word “creating”? What does “to create” mean?

Does it mean, perhaps, to take some scattered separate but existing materials, and, by utilizing certain experimental principles or applying certain rules, bring them together, re-group, fix and coordinate them in such a way as to make something out of them?

No! This does not mean “to create”. For example; can one say that a house has been “created”? No! It has been built. Has a piece of furniture been “created”? No! It has been made. And, again, has a book been “created”? No! It has been compiled; printed.

Therefore, taking some existing materials and making something out of them is not creating.

What, then, does “to create” mean?

To create! Verily, I find myself in difficulty in explaining that which cannot be explained, in defining that which cannot be defined. Nevertheless, I shall try to make myself understood.

To create is to extract something from nothing and with this very nothing to do something: it is to call the void into being. Now, I think that we cannot find a single person endowed with reason who could conceive of and admit that something can be extracted from nothing, that nothing can be turned into something.

Just take a mathematician, the most expert of calculators; give him a gigantic blackboard, and ask him to write some zeros and then some more zeros. Let him add and multiply to his heart’s content; let him indulge in all the operations of mathematics. He will never succeed in extracting one single unit from all those zeros.

Nothing is just nothing; with nothing you can do nothing, and the famous aphorism of Lucretius — Ex Nihilo Nihil — remains an expression of manifest certainty and evidence.

The creative act is inadmissible; an absurdity.

To create, then, is a mystical religious expression which can be of use only to those persons who are pleased to believe that which they cannot comprehend and on whom faith exerts an imposition conversely proportional to their lack of comprehension. But to any intelligent man, to any observer for whom words have value only in the measure that they represent a reality or a possibility, to create is an expression void of sense.

The hypothesis of the creator, then, is loath to reason. The being-creator does not exist; he cannot exist!

“PURE SPIRIT” COULD NOT HAVE DETERMINED THE UNIVERSE.

To the believers who, in spite of reason, persist in admitting the possibility of creation, I shall say that, at any rate, it is impossible to attribute that creation to their god.

Their god is “pure spirit”. And I say that the pure spirit — the immaterial — could not have determined the universe — the material. This I say for the following reasons.

The pure spirit is separated from the universe not merely by a difference of degree and quantity, but by a differece of nature and quality. The pure spirit is not and cannot be an amplification of the universe, and the universe is not and cannot be a reduction of the pure spirit. The difference here is not only a distinction but an antithesis; an antithesis of nature: essential, fundamental, irreducible, absolute.

Between the pure spirit and the universe there is not only a more or less deep ditch that could perchance be jumped over or filled, but there is an abyss whose depth and extension are such that nobody, try as he may, will ever succeed in filling or leaping over.

I challenge the most subtle philosopher, the most expert of mathematicians to establish whatever relation possible — although in the case of cause and effect the relation should be very close — between pure spirit and the universe. The pure spirit does not tolerate any material compromise; it does not bear form, body, matter, proportion, extension, duration, depth, surface, volume, color, sound, density. On the contrary, in the universe all is form, body, matter, proportion, extension, duration, depth, surface, volume, color, sound, density.

How can one admit that the latter was determined by the former?

It is impossible!

At this point of my demonstration, I shall draw the following conclusion to the two preceding arguments:

We have seen that the hypothesis of a power truly creative is inadmissible; we have also seen that, although persisting in the belief in that power, we could not possibly admit that the universe, which is essentially material, could have been determined by the essentially immaterial pure spirit. If you believers are so obstinate as to affirm that your god is the creator of the universe, I shall hold myself justified in asking you where the matter was originally found.

Now, then, one of two things; Matter was either out of god or in god, and you believers cannot find a third place for it. In the first case, that is, if it was out of god, it means that god did not need to create matter because it already existed; rather, it was co-existing, concurrent with him. Therefore, your god is not creator.

In the second case, that is, if matter was not out of god, it was in god. Therefore, I conclude: first, that god is not pure spirit, since he carried within him a particle of matter. And what a particle! The whole matter of our material worlds! Second, that god, carrying matter within him, did not have to create it because it already existed; he merely had to let it out. Therefore, creation ceases to be a true creative deed and is reduced to a simple act of exteriorization. In either case, there was no creation.

PERFECTION CANNOT DETERMINE IMPERFECTION.

Were I to ask a believer the question, “Can imperfection generate perfection?” I am sure he would answer, “No” without any hesitation or fear of erring. Well, I likewise say that perfection cannot determine imperfection, and for identical reasons my proposition is as strong as the preceding one. Here, again, between perfection and imperfection, there is not only a difference of degree and quantity but a difference of quality and nature — an essential, fundamental, irreducible, and absolute antithesis. Here, again, we have not only a more or less deep ditch, but an immeasurable and deep abyss which nobody could possibly fill or leap.

Perfection is absolute; Imperfection is relative. Compared with perfection, that which is relative and contingent is nothing. Compared with perfection, relativity has no value and does not exist. And it is not within the power of any philosopher or mathematician to establish any relation whatsoever between that which is relative and that which is absolute. Such a relation is then impossible — especially when it need be of the rigorous and precise kind which should unite the principle of cause and effect.

It is, therefore, impossible that perfection should determine imperfection.

Vice versa: there is a direct relation — a fatal and somehow mathematical one — between the work and its artificer; the value of the work is measured by the value of the artificer. As you will know a tree by the fruit it bears, so will you judge the artificer by his work.

If I am to peruse a poorly written work, full of grammatical errors, in which sentences are badly constructed, where the style is poor and neglected, wherein the ideas are common and the quotations incorrect, I certainly would not think of attributing so ugly a page of literature to an embosser of phrases, to a master of letters.

If I rest my eyes on an ill-made design in which the lines are wrongly drawn, the rules of proportion and perspective violated, I surely shall not attribute so rudimentary a scrawl to a professor, an artist, a master. Without the slightest hesitation, I shall say that it is the work of a novice, an apprentice, a child. And I am sure I would make no mistake, for so clearly does the work bear the stamp of its artificer that from it you can judge its author.

Now, then, nature is beautiful; the universe is magnificent. I, as much as anyone else, admire the splendors of this everlasting natural spectacle. Nevertheless, no matter how enthusiastic I am about nature’s charms, whatever may be my homage to it, I cannot say that the universe is perfect, irreproachable and faultless. Nobody dares hold such an opinion.

The universe is, then, an imperfect work. I can consequently say that between the work and its author there is always a rigorous, strict, mathematical relation. The universe is an imperfect work; its author, therefore, cannot be but imperfect.

This syllogism hurls the attribute of imperfection at the believers’ god, and implicitly denies him. I can yet pursue a different line of reasoning: either god is not the artificer of the universe (and I express my own conviction), or, if you persist in affirming that he is, the universe being an imperfect work, your god is also imperfect.

As you can see, syllogism or dilemma, the conclusion remains the same. Perfection cannot determine imperfection.

THE ACTIVE, NECESSARY, ETERNAL BEING COULD NOT HAVE BEEN AT ANY MOMENT INACTIVE, USELESS.

If god does exist, he must be eternal, active, necessary.

Eternal? He is so by definition. This is his reason for being. He cannot be conceived enclosed within limit of time; he cannot be imagined as having a beginning and an ending, as an appearing and disappearing being. He exists with time.

Active? Why, yes. He cannot be otherwise since his activity — so the believers say — has been confirmed by the most colossal majestic act: the creation of the worlds.

Necessary? Since without him there would be nothing; since he is the author of everything, the initial fire from which everything gushed, the unique and first source from which all has been derived; since he, alone and self-sufficient, had it dependent upon his will that either nothing or everything should be; he is so and cannot be otherwise.

He is, therefore, eternal, active, and necessary.

I then assume, and shall also show, that if he is eternal, active and necessary, he must be eternally active and eternally necessary. Consequently, he could not have been at any moment inactive or unnecessary. This shows, finally, that he has never created.

To say that god is not eternally active is to admit that he has not always been active, that he became so, that he began to be active, that before being so he was not. Since his activity was manifested through his act of creation, it is the same as admitting that during the billions of years possibly preceding creation, god was inactive.

To say that god is not eternally necessary is to admit that he has not always been necessary, that he became so, that he began to be so, that before being necessary he was not so. Since the creation proclaims and testifies to the necessity of god, we must also admit that during the billions of years possibly preceding creation god was useless.

God was useless!

God was idle and lazy!

God was superfluous and unnecessary!

What a bad situation for the being essentially active and essentially necessary! We must admit, then, that at all times god has been active and necessary. But, then, he could not have created since the idea of creation absolutely implies the idea of a beginning. Something that begins could not have eternally existed. There necessarily must have been a time when before coming into being, the thing did not exist. No matter how short or long the time preceding the created thing may be, it cannot be ignored.

The results are:

Either god is not eternally active and eternally necessary, and in this case he became so with creation. If it is so, god, before creation, did not possess the two attributes of activity and necessity. Such a god was incomplete; a fragment of a god, nothing more. And to become active and necessary, to complete himself, he had to create.

Or god is eternally active and eternally necessary, and in this case he has been creating eternally; the creation has always been going on. The universe has never begun; it existed all the time; it is eternal like god, it is god himself, and he is lost in it.

If this is so, the universe never had any beginning; it has not been created.

Therefore, in the first case, god, before creation, was neither active nor necessary; he was incomplete — that is, imperfect — and, then, he does not exist. In the second case, god, being eternally active and eternally necessary, has not become so, and therefore, he has not created.

It is impossible to conclude otherwise.

THE IMMUTABLE BEING COULD NOT HAVE CREATED.

If god exists, he is immutable. He does not change; he cannot change.

While in nature everything goes through modification, metamorphosis, transformation, change, and nothing is definite, god, a fixed and immutable point through time and space, is not subject to any modification, does not and cannot know any change whatsoever. He is today what he was yesterday; he will be tomorrow what he is today. Think as you may of god in the far-gone centuries or think of him in the centuries to come; he is constantly identical to himself.

God is immutable!

I claim that if he has created, he is not immutable, because in such a case he has changed twice.

If I decide that I want something, I change. It is evident that a change that has brought about this desire to want has taken place within me. If I want today that which I did not want yesterday, it is because certain circumstances around me or within me determined that wanting. This new wanting within me constitutes a modification: there is no doubt about this. It is unquestionable. Likewise, to act or determine oneself to act is to modify oneself. Through and through, it is certain that this double modification — wanting and acting — is especially notable and marked when the point in question is of a more serious resolution and a more important action.

“God has created”, you say. Let it be so. But then he has changed twice: first when he took a determination to create, and secondly when, putting in execution this determination, he performed the creative act. If he changed twice, he is not immutable, and if he is not immutable, he is not god; there is no god.

The immutable being could not have created.

GOD COULD NOT HAVE CREATED WITHOUT A MOTIVE: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DISCERN ONE.

From whatever side you consider creation, it remains inexplicable, enigmatic, void of sense.

Evidently, if god has created, it is impossible to admit that he performed this grand act — whose consequences had to be fatally proportionate to the act itself, i.e. incalculable — without having been determined by a prime reason.

What can this reason be? What motive could have induced him to create? By what incentive could he have been moved? What desire had betaken him? What was the prefixed design? What aim did he want to reach? What was the proposed end?

Multiply queries and questions in this order; turn the problem as you may; consider it under any aspect, and I dare you to solve it in a manner other than with a great deal of subtlety and meaningless prattle.

Take a child brought up in the christian religion. His catechism and his religion teach him that he has been created by god. Now let us suppose that the child should put this question to himself: “Why has god created and brought me into the world?” He will not succeed in finding a serious and reasonable answer.

Since the child has faith in the experience and knowledge of his teachers and is convinced that they possess particular faculties and special intelligence, let us suppose that he will go to them for an explanation. Because of the character of sacredness and holiness with which priests and ministers encircle themselves, it is logical to believe that they should be better acquainted with the revealed truth. Yet, it is clear that when the child asks them why God has created and brought him into the world, they will not be able to give him a sensible and plausible answer to the simple question. In truth, there is none.

Let us press the question. Let us delve deeply into the problem. Let us examine god before creation. Let us take him in his absolute sense. He is alone, self-sufficient, and perfectly wise, happy and powerful. Nothing can improve his wisdom; nothing can increase his happiness; nothing can strengthen his power.

Such a god cannot experience any desire because his happiness is infinite; he cannot look toward any aim because nothing is lacking in his perfection; he cannot formulate any plans because nothing can increase his power; he cannot be determined to want anything because he has no need for anything.

Go ahead, you deep philosophers, you subtle thinkers, you able theologians, go ahead and answer this child who is questioning you; tell him why god has created and brought him into the world. I am sure you can only answer that god’s designs are impenetrable, and you will hold this answer sufficient. But it would be much wiser for you not to give any answer at all because an answer from you on this matter would mean the ruin of your system and the crumbling of your beloved god. There is only one logical and unrelenting conclusion: if god has created, he has done so without a motive, without an end, without knowing why.

Do you know, my friends, where the consequences of such a conclusion would forcibly take us? To this point:

The difference between the actions of a man endowed with reason and those of a man struck by insanity, that which indicates the responsibility of the former and the irresponsibility of the latter, is the fact that the sane man always knows — or, at any rate, can always know — the motives which have prompted and determined his action. For example, in the case of an important deed whose consequences might involve serious responsibilities, it suffices for the sane man to make a thorough examination of his own conscience, to reconstruct in his mind the series of events that took place, to live again this past hour so that he can discern the mechanism of the movements which determined his actions.

He is not always proud of the motives that urged him; he is often ashamed of the reasons that moved him to action. But, be they vile or generous, noble or ignoble, he always succeeds in discovering those reasons.

An insane person, on the contrary, acts without knowing why, and after having completed his deed, no matter how full of consequences, he cannot account for it. You can press him with as many questions as you can think of, but the poor wretch will only babble a few disconnected phrases and you will never succeed in pulling him out of his incoherences.

Therefore, what distinguishes the deeds of a sane person from those of an insane one is the fact that the deeds of the former can be explained, have a reason for being; their cause and scope, their origin and end can be determined. Those of the latter have no explanation, have no apparent reason for being; the insane himself is unable to determine the scope and the end of his own deeds.

Well, then, if god has created without an aim, without a motive, he has acted like an insane man, and creation is an act of insanity.

TWO CAPITAL OBJECTIONS.

To get it over with the god of creation, it seems to me indispensable to examine two objections.

In this matter I have an abundance of objections, so that when I mention “two objections” to be examined, I refer to two of them that are considered both classical and capital. Their importance is derived from the fact that with the habit of intelligent discussion the rest of the objections can easily be brought within the realm of these two.

First Objection:

“GOD ESCAPES YOUR COMPREHENSION”.

They say:

“You have no right to talk about god the way you do. You present us with a god-caricature systematically reduced to the proportion which your comprehension is only capable of according. The god which you present is not ours. Our god you cannot conceive because he overtakes you; he escapes your comprehension. Knoweth ye! that whatever in the way of might, wisdom, and knowledge might appear fantastic and immense even for the most powerful man is only child’s play to our god. Do not forget that humanity could not move on the same level with divinity. Remember that it is as impossible for man to comprehend god’s ways as it is impossible for minerals to imagine the ways of vegetables, for vegetables to conceive of the ways of animals, and for animals to understand the ways of men.

“God rises to heights that you could never overtake and occupies summits inaccessible to you”.

“Knoweth ye! that no matter how magnificent human intelligence may be, no matter how great an effort it may realize, no matter how persistent the effort may be, human intelligence will never rise up to god. Finally, remember that, however great a man’s mind might be, it is finite, and consequently, cannot conceive the infinite.

“Have, then, enough loyalty and modesty to confess that it is impossible for you to comprehend and explain god. However, the fact that you can neither comprehend nor explain god does not give you, as of consequence, the right to deny him.”

And here is my answer to the theists.

You are giving me, my good sirs, some advice on loyalty with which I am very well inclined to conform. You are calling me down for the legitimate modesty becoming to the humble mortal I happen to be. Loyalty and Modesty! >From neither do I like to depart.

So you say that god overtakes me, that he escapes my comprehension? So be it. I shall admit that and also that the finite can never conceive nor explain the infinite: this last contention is so true and so evident that I have no desire to oppose it. Up to this point, then, we are in full accord, and I hope you are satisfied.

Only, gentlemen, on my turn, permit me to give you the same advice on loyalty; please, allow that I call you down for the same modesty. Are you not human as am I? Does not god overtake you as he does me? Doesn’t god escape your comprehension as much as he does mine? Or have you the pretense of moving on the same level with divinity? Have you the affrontery of thinking with the foolishness of stating that with a simple flap of a wing you have reached those summits occupied by god? Are you so presumptuous as to affirm that your finite mind has embraced the infinite?

I do not want to offend you, gentlemen, by believing that you are tainted by this extravagant vanity.

You have, then, as I had, the loyalty and the modesty to confess that if it is impossible for me to comprehend and explain god, you also hit against the same impossibility. And, finally, be sincere enough to admit that if the fact that I cannot concieve and explain god does not give me the right to deny him, the very same fact, which also holds true for you, does not give you the right to affirm him!

Do not think for a moment, gentlemen, that we are now on equal conditions. It was you who first affirmed the existance of god, and you should first withdraw your affirmation. Would I ever have thought of denying god if, when I was yet a child, it had not been imposed upon me to believe in him; if, when an adult, I had not heard it affirmed all around me; if I had not constantly seen churches and temples erected and dedicated to god? It is your affirmation that provokes and justifies my denials.

Cease to affirm, and I shall cease to deny!

Second Objection:

“THERE IS NO EFFECT WITHOUT A CAUSE”.

This second objection seems to be quite dangerous. Many consider it almost indisputable. It originates from the spiritualist philosophers.

These gentlemen say in a self-assuring manner: “There is no effect without a cause; the universe is an effect; then, this effect has a cause which we call god.”

This argument is well-represented; it seems well construed and solidly based.

It all depends, however, on proving whether it really is so.

This form of exposition is called a syllogism. A syllogism is an argument consisting of three propositions, the first two being called the major and minor premises and the third called consequence or conclusion.

For a syllogism to be impregnable, two conditions are necessary:

1) the major and minor premises must be exact;
2) the third proposition, the conclusion, must be logically derived from the preceding premises.

If the syllogism brought forth by the spiritualist philosophers embodies these two conditions, it really is indisputable, and all that would be left for me to do would be to bow in recognition; if it lacks one of these two conditions, however, the syllogism is void, valueless, and the whole argument falls short.

In order to establish the soundness of the syllogism, let us examine the three propositions which constitute it. The first proposition is a major premise: “There is no effect without a cause.”

Philosophers, you are right. There is no effect without a cause: nothing can be more exact than this. There is not, there cannot be any effect without a cause. Effect is nothing else but the following, the continuation, the end of a cause. When you say effect, you say cause as well; the idea effect immediately and necessarily calls for the idea cause. Would it be otherwise, the effect without a cause should be an effect from nothing. This is absurd. Therefore, we agree on this proposition.

The second proposition is the following: “The universe is an effect.” Ah! but here I ask you to reflect; I demand some elucidations. On what do you base so sure and definite an affirmation? What is the phenomenon or the aggregation of phenomena, what is the observation or sum of observations which warrant so categorical a statement?

First of all, do we know the universe well enough? Have we studied, scanned, examined and understood the universe in such a manner that would permit us to be so definite about it? Have we penetrated its inward parts? Have we explored the infinite spaces? Have we descended to the oceans’ depths? Have we ascended every summit? Do we know all the things within the domain of the universe? Have we pulled all the veils, penetrated all mysteries, solved all enigmas? Have we seen all, touched all, felt all, observed all? Have we nothing else to discover, nothing else to learn? In short, are we in a position to give a formal appraisal, a definite opinion, a certain decision about the universe?

Nobody can answer all these questions affirmatively. We would have to pity deeply the fool or the insane man who would dare to pretend complete knowledge of the universe.

The universe! In other words, not only the humble planet which we inhabit and on which we drag our miserable carcasses, not only the millions of known stars and planets which are a part of our solar system, but also the other numerous worlds whose existence we either know or suppose, whose number, distance, and extensions are yet incalculable.

Were I to say, “The universe is a cause,” I would surely provoke the cries and protests of the believers. And yet my statement would be no more crazy than theirs. My temerity would be equal to theirs; that’s all.

If I observer the universe as man’s acquired knowledge permits me, I see something like an incredibly complex and entangled whole, an inextricable and colossal piling up of causes and effects which determine, link, succeed, repeat, and penetrate themselves. I see that the whole forms a kind of endless chain whose links are steadfastly bound. I notice that each of these links are, from time to time, cause and effect: effect of the cause which determined it, and cause of the effect which follows it.

Who can say: “Here is the first link, the link-cause”? Who can say: “Here is the last link, the link-effect”? And who can say, “There is necessarily a first-cause, a last-effect”?

The second proposition, “the universe is an effect,” therefore, lacks the indispensible condition of exactness. Consequently the famous syllogism has no value.

I add that even if this second proposition would be exact, before accepting the conclusion, it should be definitely proved that the universe is an effect of a prime cause, of the causes’ cause, of a causeless cause, of the eternal cause.

Unmoved and without worry, I shall wait for this demonstration. This demonstration has been tried many times, but has never been successful. We can easily say that this demonstration will never be established seriously, positively, and scientifically.

Finally, I add that even if the entire syllogism would be correct, it would be easy for me to turn it against the thesis of the god-creator and in favor of my contention.

Let us prove it:

— There is no effect without a cause?
— All right.
— Now, the universe is an effect?
— Agreed!
— Then this effect has a cause and it is this cause which we call god?
— Let it be so.

But, my good theists, do not proclaim your triumph yet. Listen to me attentively.

If it is evident that there is no effect without a cause, it is also plainly evident that there is no cause without an effect. There is not, there cannot be a cause without an effect. When you say “cause”, you say “effect”; the idea of a cause necessarily implies and immediately calls for the idea effect. Otherwise, the cause would be a cause of nothing, and it would be as absurd as an effect of nothing would be. Therefore, it is well agreed that there is no cause without an effect.

Now, then, you say that the cause of the universe-effect is god. Therefore, it is proper to say that the effect of the god-cause is the universe.

It is impossible to separate the effect from the cause, but it is equally impossible to separate the cause from the effect.

Finally, you affirm that the god-cause is eternal, and I conclude that the universe-effect is also equally eternal because to an eternal cause must, necessarily, correspond an eternal effect. Otherwise, during the billions of years which perhaps preceded the creation of the universe, god would have been a cause without an effect — an impossibility, a cause of nothing — an absurdity. Consequently, god being eternal, the universe is also so; if the universe is eternal, it means that it has never been created. Is that clear?

Against God the Governor or Providence.

THE GOVERNOR DENIES THE CREATOR.

There are those — and they are legion — who obstinately persist in believing. I understand that strictly speaking one can believe in either a perfect creator or a necessary governor, but it seems impossible that anybody can reasonably believe in both at the same time. These two perfect beings categorically exclude eachother. To affirm one is to deny the other; to proclaim the perfection of the first is to confess the uselessness of the second; to proclaim the necessity of the second is to deny the perfection of the first. In other words, one can believe in the perfection of one or in the necessity of the other, but it is unreasonable to believe in the perfection of both. One has to choose.

If the universe had been created by god, it would have been a perfect work; if in its entirety and in its minor details this work would have come out without defects; if the mechanism of this gigantic creation would have been faultless; if its movement would have appeared to be so perfect as to prevent any fear of unbalance and damage; if, in short, the work would be worthy of this incomparable artist called god, the necessity of a governor would not be felt in any way.

Once the first initial thumb stroke had been given, once the formidable machine had been set in motion, the only thing to do would have been to leave the work to itself with no fear of possible accidents.

What would be the use of this engineer, of this mechanic whose task is to watch, to direct this machine and to intervene for repairs and corrections after it had been set in motion? The engineer would have been useless and the mechanic superfluous. Therefore, in this case, we would have had no governor.

If the governor exists, it is because his presence, his surveillance, and his intervention are indispensable. The necessity of a governor is a challenge and an insult to the creator; his intervention shows the clumsiness, the incapacity and the impotence of the creator.

The governor denies the perfection of the creator.

THE MULTIPLICITY OF GODS IS PROOF THAT NONE EXISTS.

The god-governor is and must be powerful and just: infinitely powerful and infinitely just.

We assume that the multiplicity of religions proves that he is lacking in both power and justice. Let us put aside the defunct gods, the abolished cults, the extinct religions which are counted by thousands. Let us be concerned only with the existing religions.

According to the most reliable of calculations, there are today 800 different religions, claiming the domination of the 1600 millions of consciences living on our planet. It is doubtless that every one of these religions claims for itself the right to represent and possess the only true, authentic, indisputable and unique god and that the rest of the gods are bootlegged, false, ridiculous, deserving to be dutifully combatted and destroyed.

We shall add that if instead of 800 there would be only 10 or even two religions, our contention would hold true just the same. We repeat, then, that the multiplicity of gods proves the existence of none, because it certifies that god lacks power and justice.

A powerful god could have spoken to all as easily as to a few; he could have revealed himself to all instead of to a few, without any additional effort.

A man, however powerful, can reveal himself only to a limited number of people; his vocal cords have only a limited strength. But god…? God could speak to a multitude as easily as he could speak to a small group. When the voice of god rises high, its echo should resound over the four cardinal points. God’s word ignores distance and obstacles; it crosses the oceans, ascends the summits and overtakes space without a shade of difficulty.

Since he chose — as religion affirms — to speak to humanity, to reveal himself, to confide his plans to them, to indicate his will and let his laws be known, he could have spoken to all of them rather than to a handful of privileged ones. The fact that some deny and ignore him and others oppose him with rival gods indicates that he has not done so.

Is it not wise, under the circumstances, to think that god never spoke to anybody, and that his supposed multiple revelations are nothing more than multiple impostures? Or that if he spoke only to some, it was because he could not speak to all? This being so, I accuse him of impotence, and where this accusation does not apply, I accuse him of injustice.

In fact, what would you think of this god who reveals himself to some and at the same time hides from others? What would you think of this god who speaks to some and remains silent toward others? Do not forget that his representatives affirm that he is the father, and that all of us, without discrimination, are the beloved children of this father who reigns in heaven.

What would you think, then, of this father who tenderly frees some privileged ones from the anguishes of doubt and the tortures of hesitancy by revealing himself to them and at the same time deliberately dooms the immense majority of his children to the torment of uncertainty? What would you think of this father who to some of his children reveals himself in the full sparkling splendor of his majesty and for the others remains encircled in complete darkness? What would you think of this father, who, while exacting worship, reverence and adoration from all his children, lets only a few chosen ones understand the words of truth and deliberately refuses the same favor to others?

If you maintain that such a father is a good and just one, do not blame me for holding a diverse opinion.

The multiplicity of religions proclaims that god lacks power and justice. On the other hand, according to the believers, god must be infinitely just and powerful. If one of these two attributes is missing, god is not perfect. If god is not perfect, he does not exist. The multiplicity of gods proves that none exists.

GOD IS NOT INFINITELY GOOD: HELL PROVES IT.

God-governor or providence is and must be infinitely good, infinitely merciful.

The existence of hell, however, proves that he is not.

Follow my reasoning attentively: since god is free, he could very well not have created us; yet he created us. Since god is omnipotent, he could have created all of us good; instead he has created us both bad and good. Since god is good, he could admit all of us into heaven after our deaths and be satisfied with the trials and tribulations we undergo on earth. Since god is just, he could admit to heaven those of us who are worthy and refuse admission to the perverse ones. But rather than damn the latter to hell, he could mercifully destroy them after death. We presume that he who can create can also destroy; he who can give life can also deprive it.

Let us see. You are not gods. You are neither infinitely good nor infinitely merciful. Nevertheless, I am certain that if you could save a fellow human being a tear, a trial, a sorrow, you would do it gladly. Yet you are not infinitely good or infinitely merciful. Are you, then, better and more merciful than the god of the christians? After all, hell exists. The church teaches that it does. In fact, hell is the dreadful vision which frightens the children, the elders, and the timid souls; it is the specter which is evoked at the bed of the hopelessly sick whom the coming of death deprives of energy and lucidity.

Well, then, the christian god, the same one who is supposed to be the god of piety, forgiveness, indulgence, goodness and mercy tosses — and forever — some of his own children into this dreadful abode spiked with cruel tortures and ineffable torments.

What a good, merciful father!

You know the words of the scripture: “…For many be called, but few chosen.” And, if I am not mistaken, the number of the chosen ones will be small and that of the damned large. This statement is so cruel and monstruous that many attempts have been made to change or modify its meaning.

It does not matter. Hell exists, and it is evident that — regardless of the number — the condemned will suffer these atrocious tortures. Let us see who will benefit from these tortures. The chosen ones? Evidently not. By definition the chosen ones will be the just, the good, the virtuous who love and understand, and it is impossible to believe that their inexpressible happiness could be increased by the sufferings of their own brothers.

Would the beneficiaries be the damned ones themselves? No, because the church affirms that the tortures of the unfortunates will last unto the centuries to come and will never decrease. Who then? Aside from the chosen and the damned ones there is no one else but god.

Would god, then, be the only one to benefit from the tortures inflicted upon the damned ones? Would this infinitely good and merciful father sadistically gloat over the agonies of his own children? If this be the case, I would look upon this god as the most ferocious executioner, the most implacable torturer. Hell bears proof that god is neither good nor merciful. The existence of a merciful god is incompatible with the existence of hell.

Either there is no hell, or god is not infinitely good and merciful.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.

The problem of evil gives me the fourth and last argument against the god-governor, and, at the same time, my first argument against the god-judge.

I am not saying that the existence of evil — physical and moral — is incompatible with the existence of god. I shall say, though, that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of a god infinitely good and powerful.

This argument is known, if not for anything else, for the numerous but nevertheless sterile refutations of which it has been the subject.

This argument is attributed to Epicurus; it is, therefore, over twenty centuries old, but age has not deprived it of its vigor.

Here it is. Evil exists. All sensitive beings know its pain. God, who knows everything, cannot ignore it. Then, one of these two things is true:

Either god would like to suppress evil and cannot do it;
Or god could suppress evil and does not want to do so.

In the first instance, god appears sympathetic toward our sorrows and our trials and would want to destroy evil so that happiness would reign on earth. In this case, god shows himself as good, but he cannot destroy evil. Therefore, he is not omnipotent.

In the second instance, God could destroy evil. Since he is omnipotent, his willingness to destroy evil should suffice. But he does not want to do so. Therefore, he is not infinitely good.

In one instance god is powerful but not good; in the other he is good but not powerful.

Now, for god to exist, it is not sufficient for him to have one of these two qualities; he must have both. This contention has never been refuted, but it has been disputed. Here is a fair example of such disputations:

“You present the problem of evil erroneously and wrongly hold god responsible for it. Certainly evil exists, but the responsibility for it must be given to man. God did not want man to be an automaton, a machine functioning mechanically. God, in creating man, gave him freedom and he generously left him the faculty of using this freedom as he pleased. If man wastes his freedom in an odious and criminal manner, it is unjust to blame god for it. A sense of equity demands that man be held responsible.”

This is the classical disputation.

What is it worth? Nothing. Let me explain. First of all, we need to differentiate between moral and physical evils.

Under physical evil we can enumerate sickness, pains, accidents, old age and its trail of infirmities, death

Compiled by Romano Krauth

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Paul Karl Feyerabend
Biography

Paul Feyerabend having studied science at the University of Vienna, moved into philosophy for his doctoral thesis, made a name for himself both as an expositor and (later) as a critic of Karl Popper’s `critical rationalism’, and went on to become one of this century’s most famous philosophers of science. An imaginative maverick, he became a critic of philosophy of science itself, particularly of `rationalist’ attempts to lay down or discover rules of scientific method.

Bibliography

Against Method

Science in a Free Society

Farewell to Reason

Knowledge, Science and Relativism

Reading

Paul Karl Feyerabend: Against method
(excerpt)

The hallmark of political anarchism is its opposition to the established order of things: to the state, its institutions, the ideologies that support and glorify these institutions. The established order must be destroyed so that human spontaneity may come to the fore and exercise its right of freely initiating action, of freely choosing what it thinks is best. Occasionally one wishes to overcome not just some social circumstances but the entire physical world which is seen as being corrupt, unreal, transient, and of no importance. This religious or eschatological anarchism denies not only social laws, but moral, physical and perceptual laws as well and it envisages a mode of existence that is no longer tied to the body, its reactions, and its needs. Violence whether political or spiritual, plays an important role in almost all forms of anarchism. Violence is necessary to overcome the impediments erected by a well-organised society, or by one’s own modes of behaviour (perception, thought, etc.), and it is beneficial for the individual, for it releases one’s energies and makes one realize the powers at one’s disposal. Free associations where everyone does what best suits their talents replace the petrified institutions of the day, no function must be allowed to become fixed – ‘the commander of yesterday can become a subordinate of tomorrow. Teaching is to be based on curiosity and not on command, the ‘teacher’ is called upon to further this curiosity and not to rely on any fixed method. Spontaneity reigns supreme, in thought (perception) as well as in action.

One of the remarkable characteristics of post-enlightenment political anarchism is its faith in the “natural reason’ of the human race and its respect for science. This respect is only rarely an opportunistic move – one recognizes an ally and compliments him to keep him happy. Most of the time it is based on the genuine conviction that pure unadulterated science gives a true account of man and the world and produces powerful ideological weapons in the fight against the sham orders of the day.

Today this naive and almost childlike trust in science is endangered by two developments.

The first development is the rise of new kinds of scientific institutions. As opposed to its immediate predecessor, late 20th-century science has given up all philosophical pretensions and has become a powerful business that shapes the mentality of its practitioners. Good payment, good standing with the boss and the colleagues in their ‘unit’ are the chief aims of these human ants who excel in the solution of tiny problems but who cannot make sense of anything transcending their domain of competence. Humanitarian considerations are at a minimum and so is any form of progressiveness that goes beyond local improvements. The most glorious achievements of the past are used not as instruments of enlightenment but as means of intimidation as is seen from some recent debates concerning the theory of evolution. Let somebody make a great step forward – and the profession is bound to turn it into a club for beating people into submission.

The second development concerns the alleged authority of the products of this ever-changing enterprise. Scientific laws were once thought to be well established and irrevocable. The scientist discovers facts and laws and constantly increases the amount of safe and indubitable knowledge. Today we have recognized, mainly as a result of the work of Mill, Mach, Boltzmann, Duhem and others, that science cannot give any such guarantees. Scientific laws can be revised, they often turn out to be not just locally incorrect but entirely false, making assertions about entities that never existed. There are revolutions that leave no stone unturned, no principle unchallenged. Unpleasant in appearance, untrust worthy in its results, science has ceased to be an ally of the anarchist and has become a problem. Should he abandon it ? Should he use it ? What should he do with it? That is the question. Epistemological anarchism gives an answer to this question. It is in line with the remaining tenets of anarchism and it removes the last hardened elements.

Epistemological anarchism differs both from scepticism and from political (religious) anarchism. While the sceptic either regards every view as equally good, or as equally bad, or desists from making such judgements altogether, the epistemological anarchist has no compunction to defend the most trite, or the most outrageous statement. While the political or the religious anarchist wants to remove a certain form of life, the epistemological anarchist may want to defend it, for he has no everlasting loyalty to, and no everlasting aversion against, any institution or any ideology. Like the Dadaist, whom he resembles much more than he resembles the political anarchist, he ‘not only has no programme, [he is] against all programmes’, though he will on occasions be the most vociferous defender of the status quo, or of his opponents: ‘to be a true Dadaist, one must also be an anti-Dadaist’. His aims remain stable, or change as a result of argument, or of boredom, or of a conversion experience, or to impress a mistress, and so on. Given some aim, he may try to approach it with the help of organized groups, or alone; he may use reason, emotion, ridicule, an ‘attitude of serious concern” and whatever other means have been invented by humans to get the better of their fellow men. His favourite pastime is to confuse rationalists by inventing compelling reasons for unreasonable doctrines. There is no view, however ‘absurd’ or ‘immoral’, he refuses to consider or to act upon, and no method is regarded as indispensable. The one thing he opposes positively and absolutely are universal standards, universal laws, universal ideas such as ‘Truth”, ‘Reason”, ‘Justice’, ‘Love’ and the behaviour they bring along, though he does not deny that it is often good policy to act as if such laws (such standards, such ideas) existed, and as if he believed in them. He may approach the religious anarchist in his opposition to science and the material world, he may outdo any Nobel Prize winner in his vigorous defence of scientific purity. He has no objection to regarding the fabric of the world as described by science and revealed by his senses as a chimera that either conceals a deeper and, perhaps, spiritual reality, or as a mere web of dreams that reveals, and conceals, nothing. He takes great interest in procedures, phenomena and experiences such as those reported by Carlos Castaneda, which indicate that perceptions can be arranged in highly unusual ways and that the choice of a particular arrangement as corresponding to reality’, while not arbitrary (it almost always depends on traditions), is certainly not more ‘rational’ or more ‘objective’ than the choice of another arrangement: Rabbi Akiba, who in ecstatic trance rises from one celestial sphere to the next and still higher and who finally comes face to face with God in all his Splendour, makes genuine observations once we decide to accept his way of life as a measure of reality, and his mind is as independent of his body as the chosen observations tell him. Applying this point of view to a specific subject such as science, the epistemological anarchist finds that its accepted development (e.g. from the Closed World to the ‘Infinite Universe’) occurred only because the practitioners unwittingly used his philosophy within the confines of their trade – they succeeded because they did not permit themselves to be bound by ‘laws of reason’, ‘stand ards of rationality”, or ‘immutable laws of nature’. Underneath all this outrage lies his conviction that man will cease to be a slave and gain a dignity that is more than an exercise in cautious conformism only when he becomes capable of stepping outside the most fundamental categories and convictions, including those which allegedly make him human. ‘The realisation that reason and anti-reason, sense and nonsense, design and chance, consciousness and unconsciousness [and, I would add, humanitarianism and anti-humanitarianism] belong together as a necessary part of a whole – this was the central message of Dada,’ writes Hans Richter. The epistemological anarchist agrees, though he would not express himself in such a constipated manner.

Compiled by Romano Krauth

The Spanish Revolution, intro by Russell Blackwell

Introduction by Russell Blackwell to the Greenwood reprint of The Spanish Revolution Volumes 1-2, 1936-1937. The Spanish Revolution was was the English Language newspaper of the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista–P.O.U.M.).

Introduction

by Russell Blackwell

The workers of Spain were the first in Europe to fight back seriously against the advance of fascism. Their struggle, with its revolutionary overtones, aroused the admiration of radicals and liberals of all countries. Large numbers of refugees from Italy, Germany, Greece and elsewhere, who had been living precariously as exiles in France, Belgium and other countries, flocked to Spain to participate in the fight for freedom. Thousands of anti-Fascists of every radical tendency in the Western world gravitated to the scene of revolutionary action.

Upon their arrival in Spain, most of these people associated themselves with the Spanish organization with which they felt the closest identification. Anarchists from many countries came to the support of the embattled Spanish Libertarian movement. Many independent Marxists and other unaffiliated radicals joined the militias of the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.). The Communist parties throughout Europe and the Americas recruited thousands of volunteers, not all of them Stalinists, for service in their International Brigades.

The inability of the Republic in its five years of existence to really solve any of the basic social problems of the country had caused the Spanish workers to become disillusioned with democratic processes. The remains of feudalism were still considerable in Spain, and the army and the Church were still powerful political forces. Everything, it seemed, still remained to be done to bring Spain fully into the twentieth century. The bulk of the working class was organized in unions of Anarcho-Syndicalist and Socialist orientation, and the conditions for a complete social transformation existed.

Only positive revolutionary objectives can account for the militancy of the workers in opposing the military-Fascist-clerical uprising. Although the Left had won a clear victory at the polls in February, 1936, republican politicians abdicated the struggle against the army rebellion when it broke out and in most cases refused to arm the workers against their own army. Hence, in those areas where the workers had been able to defeat the military, revolutionary committees of a united-front character were established for administration and defense. In most of Spain, the republican government had in effect ceased to exist and had been replaced by a network of revolutionary committees. The various liberal capitalist parties had in the main resigned themselves to playing a subordinate role, accepting the inevitability of a social revolution.

Against this background it was at first only the Communist Party and its satellite in Catalonia-the Unified Socialist Party (P.S.U.C.)-which declared that this was not a social revolution but simply a war of democracy against fascism. The Stalinists opposed all of the revolutionary steps that were taken by the workers and their mass organizations, attempting to direct the struggle into purely military and parliamentary channels. This was the line of Stalin’s Third International in the interests of the then current foreign policy of the Soviet Union, a policy that was primarily interested in seeking alliances with the Western democracies against the rising threat of Hitlerism. Russian military aid was the lever that enabled Stalinism to become a major influence in spite of its original numerical weakness. Political blackmail was used shamelessly to impose the Stalinist will on the other anti-Fascist parties and organizations.

The Spanish Socialist Workers Party and its trade union counterpart, the General Union of Workers (U.G.T.), were torn by internal dissension during the whole revolutionary and civil war period. The Stalinists played the various Socialist factions against each other. At each juncture they were able to influence one or more tendencies against the others. In the early stages they attempted to use Largo Caballero, whose group had the largest mass following. Eventually they wound up associated with the extreme right wing and Juan Negrin.

In size, the largest revolutionary force was the Libertarian movement: the National Confederation of Labor (C.N.T.) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (F.A.I.). There was division and dissension in this movement, too. The P.O.U.M., as a minority party with revolutionary perspectives, identified most closely with the Anarchists, holding with them the position that the social revolution and the war against Franco were inseparable.

The P.O.U.M. was a new party that had been established in October, 1935, only a few months before Franco’s uprising, through the fusion of the Spanish Communist Left led by Andres Min, who had broken with Leon Trotsky some years before, and the workers and peasants bloc led by Joaquin Maurin. While ideologically Marxist, the P.O.U.M. included many workers of a revolutionary syndicalist background and was in the main labor-oriented rather than politically doctrinaire. As the only independent Marxist movement in Spain, the P.O.U.M. was the magnet that drew from abroad the independent Marxist elements of a dozen or more international splinter movements.

Spanish Revolution was edited for the P.O.U.M. by Charles Orr, of the Revolutionary Policy Committee of the Socialist Party of the U.S., with the very able assistance of his wife, Lois. They had been touring in Europe in the summer of 1936 and went to Barcelona shortly after the outbreak of the revolution to do their part for a cause to which they felt deeply committed. Mary Brea of Australia and other English-speaking comrades contributed on occasion. Publication continued until it was interrupted by the suppression of the P.O.U.M. The Orrs were arrested by the Russian GPU at the same time as the P.O.U.M. leadership. This was featured in a Matthews dispatch to the New York Times as a “Fascist Nest Uncovered in Barcelona.” Relatives learned of the Orrs’ arrest, and they were released, thanks mainly to the intervention of Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky and to the U.S. State Department. The Orrs were permitted to leave Spain, after spending ten days in a private prison operated by the Russians in Barcelona.

Spanish Revolution faithfully reported events during its period of publication from the point of view of the P.O.U.M. Its first issue appeared on October 21, 1936, at a time when the revolutionary process was already beginning to decline. Its final issues dealt with the historic May Days of 1937 and the events immediately following, which led to the Stalinist takeover.

In the Moscow Pravda of December 16, 1936, the Russian Stalinists had boldly announced:

“As for Catalonia-the purging of the Trotskyists and Anarcho-Syndicalists has already begun; and it will be conducted with the same energy with which it has been conducted in the U.S.S.R.”

Stalin knew all too well which forces stood in the way of his policies in Spain. The Anarcho-Syndicalists were a powerful movement with a following greater than any other single sector. Their elimination would not be an easy matter. A logical step was first to compromise the P.O.U.M. (which the Stalinists insisted on referring to as Trotskyist), and then to destroy it physically. But this was not to be an overnight matter. With upwards of 10,000 members, the P.O.U.M. had its own armed militias at the front. It included many militants whose probity was well established and recognized by their political competitors in the Socialist, Libertarian and Republican camps. Its leaders were individually better known and of greater intellectual and working-class stature than were the top people of Spanish Stalinism.

The elimination of Spain’s revolutionists could only be accomplished along with the erosion of the conquests of the revolution itself. The entrance of the Anarchists and the P.O.U.M. into the organs of the government and the weakening or suppression of the revolutionary committees played a large part in this erosion. The P.O.U.M. could only operate in the shadow of the C.N.T., and it was destined to go under as soon as the Anarcho-Syndicalist movement lost its power to the capitalist government.

It should be noted that there was considerable-though largely passive-resistance among the members and leaders of the Spanish Communist Party to the aggressive policy of repression imposed by Moscow’s agents in Spain. The foreign Stalinists insisted on controlling and directing affairs, and they held virtual veto power-backed up by the GPU-over all major policy decisions. The Russians imposed themselves on their Spanish comrades in a manner less ruthless only in degree from that used against their declared enemies. Much of this has been documented in Jesus Hernandez, Yo Fui un Ministro de Stalin (Mexico City, 1953).

The armed barricade struggles of May 3-7, 1937, were the culmination of a series of Stalinist political maneuvers and GPU terrorist actions and provocations directed at the revolutionary elements of the Libertarians and the Poumists. The private Cheka prisons of the GPU were filled with persons known or thought to be opposed to Stalinist policies. A number of key people in the Anarchist organizations were murdered. In the central region alone eighty Anarchists were assassinated between January and May. Press censorship was greatly increased, and a number of Anarcho-Syndicalist papers were suspended. During the May “uprising,” the revolutionary forces had effective control of all Catalonia and could easily have snuffed out the small centers of Stalinist and governmental resistance, establishing their own power. That this was not done sealed the fate of the revolution, because it could not have been possible at a later time.

Following the events of early May, the Stalinists were able to provoke a political crisis which brought down the national government of Francisco Largo Caballero, general secretary of the U.G.T. He was replaced as Prime Minister by Dr. Juan Negrin, and as Minister of War by Indalecio Prieto. Both men were right-wing Socialists. The C.N.T. refused to participate in the counterrevolutionary government of Negrin, which represented a victory not only for the Stalinists but also for the capitalist elements of the country. It raised the stock of the Republic among the conservative elements in the Western democracies, since the revolution would ultimately have expropriated most, if not all, of their investments. On the other hand, the political move to the right in Spain had the effect of discouraging radicalism in the Western countries.

Having in effect eliminated the P.O.U.M. as an active political movement and overthrown the government of Largo Caballero, the Stalinists now moved to smash the left Socialists as a political and social force. A split in the U.G.T. was effected by a bloc of Stalinists and right Socialists against the left Socialists. This was accompanied by an intense campaign of vilification and slander against Largo Caballero, even though it was claimed that he was no longer an important leader of the proletariat. He was blamed for the alleged “treason of the trotskyists” because he “had permitted all types of provocateurs, spies and agents of the Gestapo, masquerading in the P.O.U.M., to carry out tranquilly their work of demoralization and provocation.” He was also blamed for the military blunders and defeats that took place during his period in power.

With the left Socialists and Anarchists out of the government, the last remnants of the workers’ militias were eliminated and central control of the army was perfected. The Libertarian-dominated Defense Council of Aragon was overthrown by force of arms, and the magnificent Aragonese collectives were dissolved. The autonomous character of Catalonia was terminated. Government control of industry was strengthened at the expense of worker control. All of these factors were favorable to the Stalinists, who found in Dr. Negrin a willing tool of their policies. The “Government of Victory,” as his regime with its counterrevolutionary and increasingly dictatorial policies was called, was in fact paving the way for Franco’s victory by constant erosion of the workers’ conquests, which was destroying the revolutionary spirit of the people.

A period of terror developed against all of the revolutionary elements. Over 1,000 P.O.U.M. members and several dozen foreigners associated with it were seized, most of them by the private police of the Communist Party and the GPU. Hundreds of Anarchists and numerous left Socialists were arrested, and many of these disappeared without a trace. On the demand of the Communist Party, the more prominent leaders of the P.O.U.M. were arrested on June 16, 1937.

It was clearly the intention of international Stalinism, through its agents operating in Spain, to make the trial of the P.O.U.M. leadership a big and dramatic show trial much like those that had just been held in Moscow. But conditions in Spain did not favor this. In spite of their strength in the army and the fact that Negrin was under their thumb, and in spite of their influence in the various police agencies and their all-around political astuteness, the Stalinists had not yet succeeded in turning Spain into a totalitarian society completely under their control. They had their private prisons, one of which held Andres Nin, who was murdered after weeks of torture failed to break him down. But the Stalinists did not control the Spanish courts, which were a carry-over from the democratic Republic, and for their own purposes, the Stalinists paid lip service to the forms of Spanish judicial procedure.

After many months of postponements, the trial of the P.O.U.M. leadership was finally held in Barcelona from October 11 to October 22, 1938, and even then matters did not go entirely as the Stalinists would have liked. The accused were charged with espionage and high treason (in the interests of the Gestapo and Franco), illegal traffic in arms and money, and armed rebellion for the purpose of establishing a different social order. Julian Gorkin, Juan Andrade, Enrique Gironella and Pedro Bonet were each sentenced to fifteen years; Jordi Arquer to eleven years; Daniel Rebull and Jose Escuder were acquitted. But the court was compelled to admit that all of the accused had “a well known and firmly established anti-Fascist record.” On the subject of espionage and the much-touted plans of vital defense works that were supposedly discovered in the possession of the accused, a communication from the National Defense Ministry was read which stated that the plans submitted as evidence had no military value whatever. They turned out to be photographs used in aviation courses given by the government, and hence accessible to many persons, including the police. In his summary, the defense attorney stated:

“This trial has been marked by a bitter fight between the Presiding Justice and the police from whom he has repeatedly requested the sources of the evidence on which the accusations are based without ever obtaining a satisfactory answer. In spite of the repeated requests of the Judge the police never turned over to him the foreigners of the P.O.U.M. said to be agents of the Gestapo. The Judge insisted time and time again on seeing these foreigners and obtaining their signed confessions but was only able to get a list of prisoners which is in the files of the trial. There is only one foreigner on this list … who has already been released.”

Actually, over fifty foreign P.O.U.M. sympathizers accused of espionage had been arrested during the summer of 1937, most of whom were subsequently released. (Among those who were not, but who were murdered by the GPU, were Kurt Landau, the Austrian Marxist; Bob Smillie, a member of the British Independent Labor Party youth movement who had served in the P.O.U.M. militia; Hans Freund-Moulin, a Swiss Trotskyist; Erwin Wolf, a Czech who had at one time been secretary to Trotsky; and Walter Schwarz, a German political refugee and member of the German KPO who had served as political commissar in the P.O.U.M. militia.)

In sentencing the defendants for the sole crime of being proletarian revolutionists, the nonrevolutionary character of the Spanish republican government was officially proclaimed, as though this were necessary in view of its overt political and social policies! Demoralization and pessimism in the country and in the army increased in proportion to the increasing Stalinist influence, with the general erosion of political liberties, and the long succession of military defeats. But this is not the place for a detailed discussion of these matters.

— Russell Blackwell

New York, 1968

Short bio of Russell Blackwell