Читать книгу The Complete Works of Malatesta Vol. III - Errico Malatesta - Страница 37

Translated from “L’Individualismo nell’Anarchismo,” L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 6 (April 18, 1897).

We do not intend in this article to speak of those who, in calling themselves individualists, see that as justification for any repugnant action, and who have about as much to do with anarchism as the police do with the public order they boast to protect, or as the bourgeois do with the principles of morality and justice with which they sometimes try to defend their murderous privileges.

Neither is it our intention to speak of those comrades who style themselves “individualists about the means” and who, in the struggle we are fighting today, prefer or exclusively countenance individual action, either because they deem it more effective, or as a precaution, or again because they fear that any organization, any collective agreement, would curtail their freedom. We shall deal with that, which is partly a tactical issue and partly a question of principles, when we deal with the matter of organization.

Right now we want to say something about individualism as a philosophy, as a general appreciation of the nature of human societies and of the relations between individuals and groups, insofar as it is professed (sometimes virtually unwittingly) by a segment of our comrades.

There are those who call themselves individualists with the understanding that the individual is entitled to a complete physical, moral, and intellectual development and that he ought to find society a help, rather than a hindrance, in achieving the greatest possible happiness. But in that sense we are all individualists and it would be merely a matter of using one more word; and we do not use the word only because, having a range of other significations, it would only generate confusion. Not only are we anarchists or socialists of every persuasion individualists in the aforementioned sense, but so is everybody else, of whatever school or party; since the individual is the only sentient, conscious being, and every time that we speak of enjoyment or suffering, freedom or slavery, rights, duties, justice, etc., all we ever have, all we ever can have in mind is living individuals.

Sometimes, therefore, it is just a straightforward question of words and there would be no point making a great deal out of it. But often there is a real and significant difference in ideas between those who subscribe to individualism and those who shun it; and it is important to set it out, because there are serious practical consequences flowing from this, even though the ultimate purposes of both groups may be the same. Not that there is any reason to look at one another askance and treat one another as adversaries, especially since, the moment that anarchists have tried to dabble in “philosophy,” such a muddle of ideas and words has arisen as to make it often impossible to make head or tail of whether or not we agree. But as a matter of urgency we need to explain ourselves properly, if for no other reason than to rid ourselves once and for all of such abstract notions that consume the entire activity of certain comrades to the serious detriment of real propaganda work.

Scrutinizing everything that has been said and written by the individualist anarchists, we detect the coexistence of two underlying and mutually contradictory notions, which lots of them do not state explicitly, but which, in some form or another, keep cropping up—often, too, in the thinking of many anarchists who are not inclined to describe themselves as individualists.

The first of these consists of seeing society as an aggregate of autonomous individuals, entire unto themselves and capable of doing for themselves, who have no reason to be together other than their own advantage and who might part ways once they find that the benefits that society has to offer are not worth the sacrifices in personal freedom that it demands. In short, they look upon human society as a sort of trading company that leaves, or should leave, each shareholder free to join or to pull out as he sees fit. Today, they say, since a handful of individuals have bagged all the natural or man-made wealth, all the rest are duty bound to abide by the rules enforced by society or by those who prevail within society. But if the land, if the instruments of labor were freely available to all, and if the people were not thrust into slavery by the organized might of one class, nobody would have any reason to remain within society if his interests were otherwise. And since, once man’s material needs have been met, his over-riding need is for freedom, any form of coexistence that requires even the slightest sacrifice of the individual will is to be shunned. Do what thou wilt, taken in the narrowest and most absolute sense of the phrase, is the supreme principle, the only rule governing behavior.

Then again, assuming the existence of autonomous individuals with absolute, unbounded freedom, it follows that as soon as there is a clash of interests and as soon as wishes vary, strife ensues. In that strife some will be victors and some will be vanquished, and so we are back to the oppression and exploitation meant to be banished.

Thus the individualist anarchists, second to none in their burning desire for the good of all, needed a way of more or less logically reconciling the permanent good of everybody and the principle of undiluted freedom of the individual. And they came up with it by espousing another principle: that of harmony by natural law.

Do what thou wilt: but the fact is, they say, that, unsolicited and naturally, you will want only that which cannot infringe the equal rights of others to do as they wish.

A friend writes: “Our freedom, unfolding through the complete range of human faculties, will never trespass against the freedom of others. Just as the stars, gravitating around their own centers follow special trajectories, so men may follow their own line of freedom without ever overlapping and without descending into chaos.” And others, substituting physiology for astrology, speak of a “sympathetic agglomeration of cells in plants and animals”; and still others of the formation of crystals and so on, through the entire gamut of the natural sciences. No one seems to remember, even though these may be encountered in nature, misshapen or failed crystals, the struggle for survival, cosmic catastrophes, diseases, abortions, and the entire endless parade of disasters and hurts.

Disharmony and conflict of interests are the result of existing institutions. Destroy the State: respect complete freedom of trade, of banking, of minting; let title to ownership of the land be bound by the obligation to cultivate or otherwise work it in person; let us have free, completely free competition—say the individualist anarchists of Tucker’s school—and peace will prevail in the world. Economic rent, which is to say the difference in value, in terms of productivity and position, of the various tracts of land will vanish naturally and competition will lead naturally to the wisest use of nature’s blessings for the benefit of all.165

Destroy the State and private property, say the individualist anarchists of the communist school (and there is such a thing, despite the seeming contradiction in terms)—and everything will go well: everybody will agree naturally; everybody will work because work is a physiological need; production will always and naturally meet consumer demand and there will be no need for either rules or agreements because… with everybody doing as he pleases, it will turn out that, quite unknowingly and unintentionally, he will have done precisely what the rest wanted him to.

So, delving right to the very bottom of things, it turns out that ­individualist anarchism is nothing but a sort of harmonism and providentialism.

In our view, the underlying principles of individualism are entirely wrong.

The individual human being is not a being independent of society, but is rather the product of it. But for society, he would never have been able to hoist himself out of the realms of brutish animality and become truly human, and, outside of society, could not help but slide more or less quickly back into primitive animality.

When Dr. Stockmann, the protagonist of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, irked at not being understood and followed by the public, exclaimed “The strongest man is he who stands most alone,” he just made a downright blunder, even though he has been taken as anarchist whereas he was merely an aristocrat. If he knew more than the rest and was capable of more than the rest, that was because, more than the rest, he had lived a life in intellectual communication with men present and past, because, more than the rest, he had reaped the benefits of society—and thus, owed society a greater debt.

In society a man may be free or a slave, happy or unhappy, but in society he must remain because that is the context of his being a man. Therefore, instead of aspiring to some notional and impossible autonomy, he should look for the basis of his freedom and happiness in the agreement with his fellow men, joining with the rest to adjust those social institutions that do not suit him.

Likewise, the belief in some natural law, whereby harmony is automatically established between men without any need for them to take conscious, deliberate action, is hollow and utterly refuted by the facts.

Even if the State and private property were to be done away with, harmony does not come to pass automatically, as if Nature busies herself with men’s blessings and misfortunes, but rather requires that men themselves create it.

But if we are to make ourselves understood, we shall have to speak of this at some length… and our readers are already whining about our articles being unduly lengthy.

Another time, then.

165 The American anarchist Benjamin Tucker (1843–1939) set out his thinking mainly in the pages of the review Liberty, which he edited from 1881 until 1908, and from which he published the 1893 book entitled Instead of a Book.