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Table of Contents

In accordance with what has been said, the way that our study must take to go from its starting-point to its goal will be in three parts. First, the concepts of law, the State, and property must be determined. Next, it must be ascertained what the Anarchistic teachings assert about law, the State, and property. Finally, after removing some errors, we must get determinate concepts of Anarchism and its species.

1. First, we must get determinate concepts of law, the State, and property; and this must be of law, the State, and property in general, not of the law, State, or property of a particular legal system or a particular family of legal systems.

Law, the State, and property, in this sense, are the objects about which the doctrines which are to be examined in their common and special qualities make assertions. Before the fact of any assertions about an object can be ascertained,—not to say, before the common and special qualities of these assertions can be brought out and assigned to a place in the total realm of our experience,—we must get a determinate concept of this object itself. Hence the first thing that must be done is to determine the concepts of law, the State, and property (chapter II).

2. Next, it must be ascertained what the Anarchistic teachings assert about law, the State, and property;—that is, the recognized Anarchistic teachings, and also those teachings which likewise display the qualities common to these.

What the recognized Anarchistic teachings say, must be ascertained in order to determine the concept of Anarchism. What all the teachings that display the common qualities of the recognized Anarchistic teachings say, must be ascertained in order that we may get determinate concepts of the species of Anarchism.

So each of these teachings must be questioned regarding its relation to law, the State, and property. These questions must be preceded by the question on what foundation the teaching rests, and must be followed by the question how it conceives the process of its realization.

It is impossible to present here all recognized Anarchistic teachings, not to say all Anarchistic teachings. Therefore our study limits itself to the presentation of seven especially prominent teachings (chapters III to IX), and then, from this standpoint, seeks to get a view of the totality of recognized Anarchistic teachings and of all Anarchistic teachings (chapter X).

The teachings presented are presented in their own words,[24] but according to a uniform system: the first, for security against the importation of alien thoughts; the second, to avoid the uncomparable juxtaposition of fundamentally different courses of thought. They have been compelled to give definite replies to definite questions; it was indeed necessary in many cases to bring the answers together in tiny fragments from the most various writings, to sift them so far as they contradicted each other, and to explain them so far as they deviated from ordinary language. Thus Tolstoi's strictly logical structure of thought and Bakunin's confused talk, Kropotkin's discussions full of glowing philanthropy and Stirner's self-pleasing smartness, come before our eyes directly and yet in comparable form.

3. Finally, after removing widely diffused errors, we are to get determinate concepts of Anarchism and its species.

We must, therefore, on the basis of that knowledge of the Anarchistic teachings which we have acquired, clear away the most important errors about Anarchism and its species; and then we must determine what the Anarchistic teachings have in common, and what specialties are represented among them, and assign to both a place in the total realm of our experience. Then we have the concepts of Anarchism and its species (chapter XI).