                                  - 1 -


	A CRITIQUE OF ANARCHIST COMMUNISM
	
	by Ken Knudson 


                           A NOTE TO READERS

            I address myself in  these  pages  primarily  to  those
       readers   of   "Anarchy"  who  call  themselves  "communist-
       anarchists." It is my purpose in this article to  show  that
       this  label  is  a  contradiction  in  terms and that anyone
       accepting it must do so by a lack of clear understanding  of
       what  the  words "anarchist" and "communist" really mean. It
       is my hope that in driving a wedge between these two  words,
       the  communist  side  will  suffer  at  the  expense  of the
       anarchist.

            I make no claims to originality in these pages. Most of
       what I have to say has been said before and much better. The
       economics is taken primarily from the  writings  of  Pierre-
       Joseph  Proudhon, William B. Greene, and Benjamin R. Tucker.
       The philosophy from Max Stirner, Tucker  again,  and,  to  a
       lesser extent, James L.  Walker.

            I hope you won't be put off by my clumsy prose.  I'm  a
       scientist  by  trade,  not  a professional writer. I implore
       you, therefore, not to mistake style  for  content.  If  you
       want  both the content and good style may I suggest Tucker's
       "Instead of a Book". Unfortunately, this volume has been out
       of  print  since 1897, but the better libraries - especially
       those in the United States - should have  it.   If  you  can
       read  French, I recommend the economic writings of Proudhon.
       "General Idea of the Revolution in the  Nineteenth  Century"
       is particularly good and has been translated into English by
       the American individualist, John Beverley Robinson. (Freedom
       Press, 1923). Also in English is Tucker's translation of one
       of  Proudhon's  earliest  works,  the  well-known  "What  is
       Property?".   This book is not as good as the "General Idea"
       book, but it has the advantage of being currently  available
       in  paperback  in  both languages. A word of warning: unless
       you are thoroughly  familiar  with  Proudhon,  I  would  not
       recommend   the  popular  Macmillan  "Papermac"  edition  of
       "Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon"; they seem  to
       have been selected with irrelevance as their only criterion.
       Like  so  many  other  great   writers,   Proudhon   suffers
       tremendously  when quoted out of context and this particular
       edition gives, on average, less than a page  per  selection.
       Better  to  read his worst book completely than to be misled
       by  disconnected   excerpts   like   these.    Finally   the
       individualist  philosophy,  egoism,  is  best  found  in Max
       Stirner's "The Ego and His Own". This book suffers  somewhat
       from a very difficult style (which wasn't aided by Stirner's
       wariness of the Prussian censor), but if you can get through
       his obscure references and biblical quotes, I think you will
       find the task worth the effort.









1


                                  - 2 -



            H. L. Mencken once observed that just  because  a  rose
       smells  better than a cabbage doesn't mean to say it makes a
       better soup.   I  feel  the  same  way  about  individualist
       anarchism.  At  first  whiff,  the  altruist  rose may smell
       better than the individualist cabbage, but the  former  sure
       makes  a  lousy  soup. In the following pages I hope to show
       that the latter makes a better one.

       Ken Knudson
       Geneva, Switzerland
       March, 1971
















































1


                                  - 3 -



                       COMMUNISM: FOR THE COMMON GOOD

         "Communism is a 9 letter word used by inferior magicians
         with the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth
         into gold."
                              - Allen Ginsberg
                                "Wichita Vortex Sutra"

            By way of prelude  to  the  individualist  critique  of
       communism,  I  should like to look briefly at the communist-
       anarchists' critique of their Marxist  brothers.  Anarchists
       and  Marxists  have  traditionally  been  at  odds  with one
       another: Bakunin and Marx split the First International over
       their differences a century ago; Emma Goldman virtually made
       her living in the 1920's from  writing  books  and  magazine
       articles  about  her  "disillusionment  in  Russia"; in May,
       1937, the communists and anarchists took time off from their
       war  against  Franco to butcher each other in the streets of
       Barcelona; and the May days of  '68  saw  French  anarchists
       directing  more abuse against the communist CGT than against
       the Gaullist government.

            What is the nature of these  differences?  Perhaps  the
       most  concise  answer  to  this question came in 1906 from a
       veritable expert on the subject: Joseph Stalin. He wrote  in
       "Anarchism  or Socialism?" that there were essentially three
       main  accusations  which  (communist)   anarchists   leveled
       against Marxism:
            1) that the Marxists aren't really  communists  because
       they  would  "preserve the two institutions which constitute
       the foundation of [the  capitalist]  system:  representative
       government and wage labour"; [1]
            2)  that  the  Marxists  "are   not   revolutionaries",
       "repudiate  violent  revolution",  and  "want  to  establish
       Socialism only by means of ballot papers"; [2]
            3) that the Marxists "actually want  to  establish  not
       the   dictatorship   of   the  proletariat,  but  their  own
       dictatorship over the proletariat." [3]
            Stalin goes on to quote Marx and Engels to "prove" that
       "everything the anarchists say on this subject is either the
       result of stupidity, or despicable slander." [4]  Today  the
       anarchists  have  the  advantage of history on their side to
       show just who  was  slandering  whom.  I  won't  insult  the
       reader's   intelligence   by  pointing  out  how  all  three
       objections to Marxism were sustained by Uncle Joe himself  a
       few decades later.

            But let us look at these three accusations from another
       point of view. Aren't the communist-anarchists simply saying
       in their holier-than-thou attitude, "I'm more communist than
       you,  I'm  more  revolutionary than you, I'm more consistent








1


                                  - 4 -



       than you?" What's wrong with Marxism, they say, is NOT  that
       it  is  for  communism, violent revolution and dictatorship,
       but that it goes about attaining its goals by half-measures,
       compromises,   and   pussyfooting   around.   Individualist-
       anarchists have a different criticism. We  reject  communism
       per  se, violent revolution per se, and dictatorship per se.
       My purpose here is to try to explain why.

                           *   *   *   *   *

            Before one can get into  an  intelligent  criticism  of
       anything,   one   must   begin   by  defining  one's  terms.
       "Anarchism",  according  to  the  Encyclopaedia   Britannica
       dictionary,  is "the theory that all forms of government are
       incompatible with individual and social liberty  and  should
       be  abolished." It further says that it comes from the Greek
       roots  "an"  (without)  and  "archos"  (leader).*   As   for
       "communism",  it  is  "any  social theory that calls for the
       abolition of private property and control by  the  community
       over  economic  affairs."  To  elaborate on that definition,
       communists of all varieties hold that all wealth  should  be
       produced and distributed according to the formula "from each
       according to his** ability, to each according to his  needs"
       and  that  the  administrative  mechanism  to  control  such
       production  and  distribution   should   be   democratically
       organised   by   the   workers  themselves  (i.e.  "workers'
       control").  They further insist  that  there  should  be  no
       private  ownership of the means of production and no trading
       of goods except through the official channels agreed upon by
       the  majority.  With  rare  exceptions,  communists  of  all
       varieties propose to  realise  this  ideal  through  violent
       revolution and the expropriation of all private property.

            That no one should accuse me of building up  straw  men
       in  order to knock them down, allow me to quote Kropotkin***

       --------------------

            * Historically, it was Proudhon who first used the word
       to mean something other than disorder and chaos: "Although a
       firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of  the  term)
       an anarchist." [5]
            ** Here Marx uses the masculine pronoun to  denote  the
       generic "one". In deference to easy flowing English grammar,
       I'll stick to his precedent and hope that Women's Lib people
       will forgive me when I, too, write "his" instead of "one's".
            *** I have chosen Kropotkin as a  "typical"  communist-
       anarchist here and elsewhere in this article for a number of
       reasons. First, he was a particularly prolific writer, doing
       much  of  his  original  work  in  English.  Secondly, he is
       generally  regarded  as  "probably  the  greatest  anarchist
       thinker and writer" by many communist- anarchists, including
       at least one editor of "Freedom". [6] Finally,  he  was  the
       founder  of Freedom Press, the publisher of the magazine you
       are now reading.




1


                                  - 5 -






       to show that communist-anarchism fits in well with the above
       definition of communism:


       "We have to put an end to the  iniquities,  the  vices,  the
       crimes  which result from the idle existence of some and the
       economic, intellectual, and moral servitude of others.... We
       are  no  longer  obliged  to  grope  in  the  dark  for  the
       solution.... It  is  Expropriation....  If  all  accumulated
       treasure...does  not immediately go back to the collectivity
       - since ALL have contributed to produce it; if the insurgent
       people   do  not  take  possession  of  all  the  goods  and
       provisions amassed in the great cities and do  not  organise
       to  put  them  within  the  reach of all who need them...the
       insurrection will not be a revolution, and  everything  will
       have  to  be begun over again....Expropriation, - that then,
       is the watchword which is imposed upon the next  revolution,
       under  penalty  of  failing  in  its  historic  mission. The
       complete  expropriation  of  all  who  have  the  means   of
       exploiting  human  beings. The return to common ownership by
       the nation of all that can serve in the hands of any one for
       the exploitation of others." [7]

            Now let  us  take  our  definitions  of  communism  and
       anarchism  and see where they lead us. The first part of the
       definition of communism calls for the abolition  of  private
       property.  "Abolition"  is  itself  a  rather  authoritarian
       concept - unless, of course, you're talking about abolishing
       something  which  is  inherently  authoritarian and invasive
       itself (like slavery or government,  for  example).  So  the
       question  boils  down  to "Is private property authoritarian
       and   invasive?"   The   communists   answer   "yes";    the
       individualists  disagree.  Who  is  right? Which is the more
       "anarchistic" answer?  The communists  argue  that  "private
       property  has become a hindrance to the evolution of mankind
       towards  happiness"  [8],  that  "private  property  offends
       against   justice"   [9]   and   that   it   "has  developed
       parasitically amidst the free institutions of  our  earliest
       ancestors."  [10] The individualists, far from denying these
       assertions, reaffirm them. After all wasn't it Proudhon  who
       first declared  property "theft"?*   But when the  communist

       --------------------
            *By property Proudhon means property as it exists under
       government  privilege,  i.e.  property  gained  not  through
       labour or the exchange of the products of labour  (which  he
       favours),  but  through  the  legal  privileges  bestowed by
       government on idle capital.








1


                                  - 6 -



       says, "Be done, then, with this  vile  institution;  abolish
       private   property   once   and  for  all;  expropriate  and
       collectivise  all  property  for  the  common   good,"   the
       individualist must part company with him.  What's wrong with
       private property today is that it  rests  primarily  in  the
       hands  of a legally privileged elite. The resolution of this
       injustice is not to perpetrate  an  even  greater  one,  but
       rather  to  devise  a  social and economic system which will
       distribute property  in  such  a  manner  that  everyone  is
       guaranteed  the  product  of  his labour by natural economic
       laws. I propose to demonstrate just such a system at the end
       of  this  article.  If  this  can be done, it will have been
       shown that private property is  not  intrinsically  invasive
       after all, and that the communists in expropriating it would
       be committing a most UNanarchistic act.  It  is,  therefore,
       incumbent upon all communists who call themselves anarchists
       to read carefully that section and either find a flaw in its
       reasoning or admit that they are not anarchists after all.

            The second part of the  definition  of  communism  says
       that economic affairs should be controlled by the community.
       Individualists say they should be controlled by  the  market
       place  and  that  the  only law should be the natural law of
       supply and demand. Which of these two  propositions  is  the
       more  consistent  with  anarchism?  Herbert Spencer wrote in
       1884, "The great political superstition of the past was  the
       divine  right  of kings. The great political superstition of
       the present is the divine right of  parliaments."  [11]  The
       communists  seem  to  have carried Spencer's observation one
       step further: the great political superstition of the future
       shall  be the divine right of workers' majorities. "Workers'
       control" is their ideology;  "Power  to  the  People"  their
       battle  cry.  What communist-anarchists apparently forget is
       that workers' control means CONTROL.  Marxists,  let  it  be
       said  to their credit, at least are honest about this point.
       They openly and unashamedly demand the dictatorship  of  the
       proletariat.  Communist-anarchists seem to be afraid of that
       phrase,  perhaps  subconsciously  realising   the   inherent
       contradiction  in their position. But communism, by its very
       nature,  IS  dictatorial.   The   communist-anarchists   may
       christen  their  governing  bodies  "workers'  councils"  or
       "soviets", but they remain GOVERNMENTS just the same.

            Abraham Lincoln was supposed to  have  asked,  "If  you
       call  a  tail  a  leg,  how  many  legs has a dog? Five? No!
       Calling a tail a leg don't MAKE it a leg." The same is  true
       about  governments  and laws. Calling a law a "social habit"
       [12] or  an  "unwritten  custom"  [13]  as  Kropotkin  does,
       doesn't  change  its nature. To paraphrase Shakespeare, that
       which we call a law by any other name would smell as foul.









1


                                  - 7 -



            Let us take a closer look at the type  of  society  the
       communists would have us live under and see if we can get at
       the essence of these laws. Kropotkin says that  "nine-tenths
       of those called lazy...are people gone astray." [14] He then
       suggests  that   given   a   job   which   "answers"   their
       "temperament"  and  "capacities"  (today we would hear words
       like "relate", "alienation" and "relevancy"),  these  people
       would  be  productive workers for the community.  What about
       that other ten percent  which  couldn't  adjust?   Kropotkin
       doesn't  elaborate,  but  he  does  say, "if not one, of the
       thousands of groups of our  federation,  will  receive  you,
       whatever be their motive; if you are absolutely incapable of
       producing anything useful, or if you refuse to do  it,  then
       live like an isolated man....That is what could be done in a
       communal society in order to turn  away  sluggards  if  they
       become  too  numerous." [15] This is a pretty harsh sentence
       considering that ALL  the  means  of  production  have  been
       confiscated  in  the  name of the revolution. So we see that
       communism's law, put bluntly,  becomes  "work  or  starve."*
       This  happens to be an individualist law too. But there is a
       difference between the two: the communist law is a  man-made
       law,   subject  to  man's  emotions,  rationalisations,  and
       inconsistencies; the individualist law is nature's law - the
       law of gastric juices, if you will - a law which, like it or
       not, is beyond repeal.  Although  both  laws  use  the  same
       language,  the  difference  in  meaning  is  the  difference
       between  a  commandment  and   a   scientific   observation.
       Individualist-anarchists  don't  care  when, where, or how a
       man earns a living, as long as he is not invasive about  it.
       He  may work 18 hours a day and buy a mansion to live in the
       other six hours if he  so  chooses.  Or  he  may  feel  like
       Thoreau  did  that  "that man is richest whose pleasures are
       the cheapest" [16] and work but a few hours a week to ensure
       his  livelihood. I wonder what would happen to Thoreau under
       communism? Kropotkin would undoubtedly look upon him  as  "a
       ghost of bourgeois society." [17] And what would Thoreau say
       to Kropotkin's proposed "contract"?: "We undertake  to  give
       you  the  use  of  our  houses,  stores,  streets,  means of
       transport, schools, museums, etc., on condition  that,  from
       twenty  to  forty-five or fifty years of age, you consecrate
       four or five hours a day to some work recognised [by  whom?]
       as necessary to existence....Twelve or fifteen hundred hours

       --------------------

            *Article 12 of the 1936 constitution of the USSR reads:
       "In  the  USSR work is the duty of every able-bodied citizen
       according to the principle: 'He who does not  work,  neither
       shall  he  eat.'  In  the USSR the principle of socialism is
       realised: 'From each  according  to  his  ability,  to  each
       according to his work.'"








1


                                  - 8 -



       of work a year...is all we ask of you." [18]  I don't  think
       it would be pulling the nose of reason to argue that Thoreau
       would object to these terms.

            But some communist-anarchists would reject  Kropotkin's
       idea  of  not giving to the unproductive worker according to
       his needs, even if he doesn't contribute  according  to  his
       abilities. They might simply say that Kropotkin wasn't being
       a good communist when he  wrote  those  lines  (just  as  he
       wasn't  being  a good anarchist when he supported the Allies
       during World War I). But this idea, it seems to me would  be
       patently  unjust  to  the  poor  workers  who  would have to
       support such parasites. How do  these  communists  reconcile
       such an injustice? As best I can gather from the writings of
       the classical communist-anarchists, they meet  this  problem
       in one of two ways: (1) they ignore it, or (2) they deny it.
       Malatesta takes the first approach. When  asked,  "How  will
       production  and  distribution be organised?" he replies that
       anarchists are not prophets and that they have no blueprints
       for the future. Indeed, he likens this important question to
       asking when a man "should go to bed  and  on  what  days  he
       should  cut  his  nails."  [19]  Alexander Berkman takes the
       other  approach  (a  notion  apparently  borrowed  from  the
       Marxists*): he denies that unproductive men will exist after
       the revolution. "In an anarchist society it will be the most
       useful and difficult toil that one will seek rather than the
       lighter job."  [20]  Berkman's  view  of  labour  makes  the
       protestant  work  ethic sound positively mild by comparison.
       For example: "Can you doubt that even the hardest toil would
       become  a  pleasure...in  an  atmosphere  of brotherhood and
       respect for labour?" [21] Yes, I can doubt it. Or again: "We
       can  visualise  the  time  when  labour  will  have become a
       pleasant exercise, a joyous application of  physical  effort
       to  the  needs  of  the  world." [22] And again, in apparent
       anticipation of Goebbles' famous dictum about the powers  of
       repetition, "Work will become a pleasure... laziness will be
       unknown." [23] It is hard to argue with such "reasoning". It
       would  be  like  a debate between Bertrand Russell and Billy
       Graham about the existence of heaven. How can you argue with
       faith? I won't even try. I'll just ask the reader, next time
       he is at work, to look around - at himself and at his  mates
       -  and ask himself this question: "After the revolution will

       --------------------

            * At least Berkman is consistent in this matter.  Marx,
       paradoxically,  wanted to both "abolish labour itself" ("The
       German  Ideology"),  AND  make  it   "life's   prime   want"
       ("Critique of the Gotha Programme").










1


                                  - 9 -



       we really prefer this place to staying at  home  in  bed  or
       going  off  to the seashore?" If there are enough people who
       can answer "yes" to this  question  perhaps  communism  will
       work  after  all.  But  in the meantime, before building the
       barricades and  shooting  people  for  a  cause  of  dubious
       certainty,  I  would  suggest pondering these two items from
       the bourgeois and communist press respectively:

       "In Detroit's auto plants, weekend absenteeism  has  reached
       such  proportions  that a current bit of folk wisdom advises
       car buyers to steer clear of vehicles made on  a  Monday  or
       Friday.   Inexperienced  substitute  workers, so the caution
       goes, have a way of building bugs into a car. But  in  Italy
       lately  the  warning  might well include Tuesday, Wednesday,
       and  Thursday.  At  Fiat,  the  country's   largest   maker,
       absenteeism  has  jumped  this  year  from the normal 4 or 5
       percent to 12.5 percent, with  as  many  as  18,000  workers
       failing  to clock in for daily shifts at the company's Turin
       works. Alfa Romeo's rate has hit 15 percent as  hundreds  of
       workers  call  in  each  day  with  'malattia di comodo' - a
       convenient illness.... Italian auto workers seem to be doing
       no  more  than  taking  advantage of a very good deal. A new
       labour  contract  guarantees  workers  in   state-controlled
       industries 180 days of sick leave a year, at full pay, while
       workers in private firms (such as Fiat) get the same  number
       of days at 75 percent of full pay." [24]

            When doctors, employed by the state, made an inspection
       visit  in  Turin  we  are told that they found "that only 20
       percent of the 'indisposed' workers they  had  visited  were
       even  mildly  sick." For those who think that this is just a
       bourgeois aberration, let us see  what  revolutionary  Cuba,
       after   12  years  of  communism,  has  to  say  about  such
       "parasites". I translate from  the  official  organ  of  the
       Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party:

       "Worker's discussion groups are being set  up  in  all  work
       centres  to discuss the proposed law against laziness. These
       groups have already proven to be a valuable  forum  for  the
       working  class.   During  these  assemblies,  which  for the
       moment are limited to pilot projects  in  the  Havana  area,
       workers  have  made  original  suggestions  and posed timely
       questions which lead one to believe that massive  discussion
       of  this  type  would  make  a  notable  contribution to the
       solution of this serious  problem.  An  assembly  of  boiler
       repairmen  in  the Luyano district was representative of the
       general feeling of the workers. They demanded that action be
       taken  against  those  parasitic  students  who have stopped
       going  to  classes  regularly  or  who,  although  attending
       classes,  do just enough to get by. The workers were equally
       adamant about co-workers who, after a sickness or  accident,
       refuse  to  go  back to their jobs but go on receiving their







1


                                  - 10 -



       salaries for months without working.  Questions  were  often
       accompanied  by  concrete  proposals.  For  example,  should
       criminals receive the same salaries on coming back  to  work
       from  prison  as  when  they  left  their  jobs? The workers
       thought  not,  but  they  did  think it all right  that  the
       revolutionary  state  accord  a  pension  to  the prisoner's
       family during his stay in the re-education [sic] centre.  At
       the  Papelera  Cubana  factory the workers made a suggestion
       which proved  their  contempt  of  these  loafers;  habitual
       offenders  should be punished in geometric proportion to the
       number of their crimes.  They also proposed that workers who
       quit  their  jobs or were absent too often be condemned to a
       minimum, not of 6 months, but of one year's imprisonment and
       that the worker who refuses three times work proposed by the
       Ministry of Labour be considered automatically as a criminal
       and   subject  to  punishment  as  such.  The  workers  also
       expressed doubts about the scholastic 'deserters',  ages  15
       and  16,  who  aren't yet considered physically and mentally
       able to work but who don't study either. They also cited the
       case  of  the  self  employed man who works only for his own
       selfish interests. The dockworkers of Havana port,  zone  1,
       also  had  their meeting. They envisioned the possibility of
       making this law retroactive for those who have  a  bad  work
       attitude,  stating  forcefully  that it wasn't a question of
       precedents, because otherwise the law could only be  applied
       in  those  cases  which  occurred  after  its enactment. The
       harbour  workers  also   proposed   imprisonment   for   the
       'sanctioned'   workers  and  that,  in  their  opinion,  the
       punishment of these parasites shouldn't be lifted until they
       could demonstrate a change of attitude. The steadfastness of
       the workers was clearly demonstrated when they demanded that
       punishments  not  be  decided  by  the workers themselves in
       order to avoid possible leniency due to reasons of sympathy,
       sentimentality,  etc.  The workers also indicated that these
       parasites should not have the right to the  social  benefits
       accorded   to   other   workers.   Some  workers  considered
       imprisonment as a measure much too kind. As you can see, the
       workers  have  made  many  good proposals, which leads us to
       believe that with massive discussion, this new law  will  be
       considerably  enriched.  This  is perhaps the path to social
       legislation by the masses."* [25]

       These two extracts clearly  demonstrate  that  human  nature
       remains  pretty  constant,  independent of the social system
       the individual workman is subjected to. So it  seems  to  me
       that  unless  human  nature  can  somehow   be  miraculously
       transformed  by  the  revolution  -  and  that  WOULD  be  a
       revolution  -  some form of compulsion would be necessary in
       order to obtain "from each according to his abilities."

            While on this point, I would like to ask my  communist-








1


                                  - 11 -



       anarchist comrades just who is supposed to determine another
       person's abilities? We've seen from the above  article  that
       in  Cuba  the  Ministry  of  Labour makes this decision. How
       would it differ in an anarchist commune? If these anarchists
       are  at  all  consistent  with  their  professed  desire for
       individual freedom, the only answer to this question is that
       the  individual  himself  would  be  the  sole  judge of his
       abilities  and,  hence,  his   profession.   But   this   is
       ridiculous.  Who,  I  wonder,  is going to decide of his own
       free will that his real ability  lies  in  collecting  other
       people's  garbage? And what about the man who thinks that he
       is the greatest artist since Leonardo da Vinci  and  decides
       to devote his life to painting mediocre landscapes while the
       community literally feeds his delusions with food  from  the
       communal  warehouse? Few people, I dare say, would opt to do
       the  necessary  "dirty  work"  if  they  could  choose  with
       impunity  ANY  job, knowing that whatever they did - good or
       bad, hard or easy - they would still  receive  according  to
       their  needs.** The individualist's answer to this perennial
       question of "who will do the dirty work" is very simple:  "I

       --------------------

            *The Associated Press has since reported the passage of
       this  law:  "Cuba's  Communist  regime announced yesterday a
       tough new labour law that Premier Fidel Castro said is aimed
       at  400,000 loafers, bums and 'parasites' who have upset the
       country's new social order. The law, which goes into  effect
       April  1,  provides for penalties ranging from six months to
       two years of forced labour in 'rehabilitation  centres'  for
       those   convicted   of  vagrancy,  malingering  or  habitual
       absenteeism from work or school. The law  decrees  that  all
       males  between  17  and 60 have a 'social duty' to work on a
       daily systematic basis unless they are attending an approved
       school.  Those  who  do not are considered 'parasites of the
       revolution' and subject to  prosecution  by  the  courts  or
       special  labourers' councils. The anti-loafing law - seen as
       a tough new weapon to be used  mainly  against  dissatisfied
       young  people - was prompted by Mr. Castro's disclosure last
       September that as many  as  400,000  workers  were  creating
       serious economic problems by shirking their duties." [26]

            ** Anyone who has ever gone to an anarchist summer camp
       knows  what  I mean. Here we have "la creme de la creme", so
       to speak, just dying to get on with the revolution; yet  who
       cleans  out  the  latrines? More often than not, no one. Or,
       when it really  gets  bad,  some  poor  sap  will  sacrifice
       himself  for  the cause. You don't have solidarity; you have
       martyrdom.  And  no  one  feels  good  about  it:  you  have
       resentment on the part of the guy who does it and guilt from
       those who don't.








1


                                  - 12 -



       will  if  I'm  paid  well  enough." I suspect even Mr. Heath
       would go down into the London  sewers  if  he  were  paid  5
       million pounds per hour for doing it. Somewhere between this
       sum and what a sewer worker now gets is a just wage,  which,
       given  a  truly free society, would be readily determined by
       competition.
            This brings us to the  second  half  of  the  communist
       ideal:  the  distribution  of  goods  according to need. The
       obvious question  again  arises,  "Who  is  to  decide  what
       another  man  needs?"  Anarchists  once more must leave that
       decision up to the  individual  involved.  To  do  otherwise
       would  be  to invite tyranny, for who can better determine a
       person's  needs  than  the  person  himself?*   But  if  the
       individual  is  to decide for himself what he needs, what is
       to prevent him from "needing" a yacht and  his  own  private
       airplane?  If  you  think  we've got a consumer society now,
       what would it  be  like  if  everything  was  free  for  the
       needing? You may object that luxuries aren't needs. But that
       is just begging the question: what is a luxury,  after  all?
       To  millions  of people in the world today food is a luxury.
       To the English central heating is a  luxury,  while  to  the
       Americans  it's  a  necessity.  The Nazi concentration camps
       painfully demonstrated just how little man  actually  NEEDS.
       But   is   that  the  criterion  communists  would  use  for
       determining need? I should hope (and think) not. So it seems
       to me that this posses a definite dilemma for the communist-
       anarchist: what do you do about unreasonable, irrational, or
       extravagant  "needs"?  What  about the man who "needs" a new
       pair of shoes every month? "Nonsense," you may say, "no  one
       needs  new  shoes  that often." Well, how often then? Once a
       year? Every five years perhaps? And who  will  decide?  Then
       what  about  me?  I  live in Switzerland and I'm crazy about
       grape jam - but unfortunately the Swiss aren't. I feel  that
       a  jam  sandwich  isn't a jam sandwich unless it's made with
       GRAPE jam. But tell that to the Swiss! If Switzerland were a
       communist  federation,  there  wouldn't be a single communal
       warehouse which would stock grape jam. If I were to go up to
       the  commissar-in-charge-of-jams  and  ask him  to put  in a

       --------------------

            * I'm reminded here of the tale of the man who  decided
       his mule didn't NEED any food. He set out to demonstrate his
       theory and almost proved his point when, unfortunately,  the
       beast  died.   Authoritarian  communism  runs a similar risk
       when it attempts to determine the needs of others.













1


                                  - 13 -



       requisition for a few cases, he  would  think  I  was  nuts.
       "Grapes  are  for wine," he'd tell me with infallible logic,
       "and more people drink wine than eat grape jam." "But I'm  a
       vegetarian,"  I  plead, "and just think of all the money (?)
       I'm saving the commune by not eating any of  that  expensive
       meat."  After  which he would lecture me on the economics of
       jam making, tell me that a grape is  more  valuable  in  its
       liquid  form,  and  chastise  me  for  being  a throwback to
       bourgeois decadence.

            And  what  about  you,  dear  reader?   Have   you   no
       individual  idiosyncrasies? Perhaps you've got a thing about
       marshmallows.   What  if  the  workers  in  the  marshmallow
       factories  decide  (under  workers' control, of course) that
       marshmallows are bad for your health, too difficult to make,
       or  just simply a capitalist plot?  Are you to be denied the
       culinary delights that only marshmallows can  offer,  simply
       because  some distant workers get it into their heads that a
       marshmallowless world would be a better world?

            But, not only would distribution according to need hurt
       the  consumer,  it would be grossly unfair to the productive
       worker  who  actually  makes  the  goods  or  performs   the
       necessary  services.  Suppose, for example, that hardworking
       farmer Brown goes to the communal warehouse with a  load  of
       freshly  dug  potatoes. While there Brown decides he needs a
       new pair of boots. Unfortunately there are only a few  pairs
       in stock since Jones the shoemaker quit his job - preferring
       to spend his days living off Brown's  potatoes  and  writing
       sonnets about the good life. So boots are rationed. The boot
       commissar agrees that Brown's boots are pretty  shabby  but,
       he points out, Smith the astrologer is in even greater need.
       Could Brown come back in a month or so when BOTH soles  have
       worn  through?  Brown  walks away in disgust, resolved never
       again to sweat over his potato patch.

            Even today people are beginning to complain  about  the
       injustices  of the (relatively mild) welfare state. Theodore
       Roszak writes that in  British  schools  there  has  been  a
       "strong  trend  away  from  the  sciences over the past four
       years" and that people  are  showing  "annoyed  concern" and
       "loudly observing that the country is not spending its money
       to produce poets and Egyptologists - and  then  demanding  a
       sharp  cut in university grants and stipends."[27] If people
       are upset NOW at the number of poets and Egyptologists  that
       they are supporting, what would it be like if EVERYONE could
       simply take up his favourite hobby as his chosen profession?
       I  suspect  it  wouldn't  be  long  before  our professional
       chess players and  mountain  climbers  found  the  warehouse
       stocks  dwindling  to  nothing.  Social  unrest would surely
       increase in direct proportion to the  height  of  the  trash








1


                                  - 14 -



       piling  up  on the doorsteps and the subsequent yearning for
       the  "good  old  days"  would  bring  about  the  inevitable
       counter-revolution.    Such   would   be  the  fate  of  the
       anarchist-communist utopia.

                           *   *   *   *   *

            Peter Kropotkin opens his chapter on  "Consumption  and
       Production"  in  "The  Conquest of Bread" with the following
       words:

       "If you open the works of any economist you will  find  that
       he  begins  with  PRODUCTION, the analysis of means employed
       nowadays for the creation of  wealth;  division  of  labour,
       manufacture,  machinery,  accumulation of capital. From Adam
       Smith to Marx, all have proceeded along these  lines.   Only
       in  the  latter  parts  of  their  books  do  they  treat of
       CONSUMPTION, that is to  say,  of  the  means  necessary  to
       satisfy  the  needs  of  individuals....Perhaps you will say
       this is logical. Before satisfying needs you must create the
       wherewithal  to satisfy them. But before producing anything,
       must you not feel the need of it? Is it not  necessity  that
       first drove man to hunt, to raise cattle, to cultivate land,
       to make implements, and later on to invent machinery? Is  it
       not  the  study of needs that should govern production?"[28]
       When I first came upon these  words,  I  must  admit  I  was
       rather  surprised.  "What  have we here," I thought, "is the
       prince of anarchist-communism actually going to come out  in
       favour  of  the  consumer?"  It didn't take long to find out
       that he wasn't. Most communists try very hard to ignore  the
       fact that the sole purpose of production is consumption. But
       not Kropotkin; he first recognises the fact -  and  THEN  he
       ignores it. It's only a matter of three pages before he gets
       his head back into the sand and talks of "how to  reorganise
       PRODUCTION so as to really satisfy all needs." [My emphasis]

            Under communism it is not the consumer that counts;  it
       is  the producer. The consumer is looked upon with scorn - a
       loathsome, if necessary, evil.  The  worker,  on  the  other
       hand,  is depicted as all that is good and heroic. It is not
       by accident that the hammer and sickle  find  themselves  as
       the  symbols  of  the  Russian  "workers' paradise." Can you
       honestly imagine a communist society raising the  banner  of
       bread and butter and declaring the advent of the "consumers'
       paradise"? If you can, your imagination is much  more  vivid
       than mine.

            But that's exactly what individualist-anarchists  would
       do.   Instead  of the communist's "workers' control" (i.e. a
       producers' democracy), we advocate a  consumers'  democracy.
       Both  democracies  - like all democracies - would in fact be








1


                                  - 15 -



       dictatorships.  The  question  for   anarchists   is   which
       dictatorship  is  the least oppressive? The answer should be
       obvious. But,  judging  from  the  ratio  of  communists  to
       individualists  in  the  anarchist movement, apparently it's
       not. So perhaps I'd better explain.

            The workers in some given industry decide that  item  A
       should   no   longer  be  produced  and  decide  instead  to
       manufacture item B. Now consumer X, who never liked  item  A
       anyway,  couldn't  care less; but poor Y feels his life will
       never be the same without A. What can Y do? He's just a lone
       consumer  and  consumers have no rights in this society. But
       maybe other Y's agree with him. A survey is taken and it  is
       shown that only 3% of all consumers regret the passing of A.
       But can't some compromise be arrived at? How  about  letting
       just one tiny factory make A's? Perhaps the workers agree to
       this accommodation. Perhaps not. In any  case  the  workers'
       decision  is  final. There is no appeal. The Y's are totally
       at the mercy of the workers and if the decision is  adverse,
       they'll  just  have  to swallow hard and hope that next week
       item C isn't taken away as well. So much for the  producers'
       dictatorship.

            Let's now take a look at the  consumers'  dictatorship.
       Consumers  are  finicky people - they want the best possible
       product at the lowest possible price. To  achieve  this  end
       they  will use ruthless means. The fact that producer X asks
       more for his product than Y asks for his similar product  is
       all that the consumer needs to know. He will mercilessly buy
       Y's over X's. The extenuating circumstances matter little to
       him.  X  may  have ten children and a mother-in-law to feed.
       The consumer still buys from Y. Such is the  nature  of  the
       consumers' dictatorship over the producer.

            Now there is a fundamental difference between these two
       dictatorships.  In  the one the worker says to the consumer,
       "I will produce what I want and if you don't like it you can
       lump it." In the other the consumer says to the worker, "You
       will produce what I want and if you don't  I  will  take  my
       business  elsewhere." It doesn't take the sensitive antennae
       of an anarchist to see which of these two statements is  the
       more  authoritarian.  The first leaves no room for argument;
       there are no exceptions,  no  loopholes  for  the  dissident
       consumer  to  crawl  through. The second, on the other hand,
       leaves a loophole so big that it  is  limited  only  by  the
       worker's  imagination  and  abilities.  If a producer is not
       doing as well as his competitor, there's a reason for it. He
       may not be suited for that particular work, in which case he
       will change jobs. He may be charging too much for his  goods
       or  services, in which case he will have to lower his costs,
       profits, and/or overhead to meet the  competition.  But  one








1


                                  - 16 -



       thing  should  be made clear: each worker is also a consumer
       and what the individual looses in his role  as  producer  by
       having  to  cut  his  costs  down  to the competitive market
       level, he makes up in his role as consumer by being able  to
       buy at the lowest possible prices.*

                           *   *   *   *   *

            Let  us  turn  our  attention  now   to   the   various
       philosophies  used  by  communists  to  justify their social
       system. The exponents of any social change invariably  claim
       that  people  will be "happier" under their system than they
       now are under the status quo. The big metaphysical  question
       then  becomes,  "What  is  happiness?" Up until recently the
       communists - materialists par excellence - used  to  say  it
       was  material  well-being.  The  main gripe they had against
       capitalism was that the workers were NECESSARILY in a  state
       of increasing poverty. Bakunin, echoing Marx, said that "the
       situation  of  the  proletariat...by  virtue  of  inevitable
       economic  law,  must and will become worse every year." [29]
       But since World War II this pillar of communist thought  has
       become  increasingly  shaky  -  particularly  in  the United
       States where "hard hats" are now pulling in salaries upwards
       of  four  quid  an  hour.  This  fact has created such acute
       embarrassment among the faithful that  many  communists  are
       now  seeking a new definition of happiness which has nothing
       to do with material comfort.

            Very often what  they  do  in  discarding  the  Marxist
       happiness  albatross is to saddle themselves with a Freudian
       one.** The new  definition  of  happiness  our  neo-Freudian
       communists  arrive  at  is  usually  derived  from what Otto
       Fenichel called the "Nirvana

       --------------------

            *  The  usual  objection  raised   to   a   "consumers'
       democracy"  is  that  capitalists  have  used  similar catch
       phrases in order to justify capitalism and keep the  workers
       in  a  subjugated  position.   Individualists  sustain  this
       objection  but  point  out  that   capitalists   are   being
       inconsistent  by  not  practicing  what they preach. If they
       did, they would no longer be in  a  position  of  privilege,
       living off the labour of others. This point is made clear in
       the section on capitalism later in this article.
            ** Wilhelm Reich and R. D. Laing are among  the  latest
       gurus  of  the  libertarian  left.  And it's not uncommon in
       anarchist circles to hear  a  few  sympathetic  words  about
       Herbert  Marcuse's  "Eros  and  Civilisation,"  despite  the
       author's totalitarian tendencies.









1


                                  - 17 -



       principle." The essence of this theory is  that  both  life-
       enhancing  behaviour  (e.g.  sexual intercourse, eating) and
       life-inhibiting   behaviour    (e.g.   war,   suicide)   are
       alternative ways of escaping from tension. Thus Freud's life
       instinct and death instinct  find  their  common  ground  in
       Nirvana   where   happiness  means  a  secure  and  carefree
       existence. This sounds to me very much  like  the  Christian
       conception of heaven. But with communism, unlike heaven, you
       don't have to give up your  life  to  get  in  -  just  your
       humanity.

            Homer  Lane  used  to  have  a  little  anecdote  which
       illustrates the point I'm trying to make about the communist
       idea of happiness:

       "A  dog  and  a  rabbit  are  running  down  a  field.  Both
       apparently are doing the same thing, running and using their
       capacity to the full.  Really there is  a  great  difference
       between them. Their motives are different. One is happy, the
       other unhappy. The dog is happy because he is trying  to  do
       something  with  the  hope  of  achieving  it. The rabbit is
       unhappy because he  is  afraid.  A  few  minutes  later  the
       position  is reversed; the rabbit has reached his burrow and
       is  inside  panting,  whilst  the  dog  is  sitting  outside
       panting.  The  rabbit  is  now happy because it is safe, and
       therefore no longer afraid. The dog is unhappy  because  his
       hope  has  not been realised.  Here we have the two kinds of
       happiness of which each one of us  is  capable  -  happiness
       based  on the escape from danger, and happiness based on the
       fulfillment of a hope, which is the  only  true  happiness."
       [30]

            I leave it to the reader as an exercise  in  triviality
       to   decide  which  of  these  two  types  of  happiness  is
       emphasised by communism. While on the subject of  analogies,
       I'd  like  to  indulge  in one of my own. Generally speaking
       there are two kinds of cats: the "lap cat" and the "mouser."
       The  former leads a peaceful existence, leaving granny's lap
       only long enough to make a discreet trip to its sandbox  and
       to  lap  up  a  saucer of milk. The latter lives by catching
       mice in the farmer's barn and never goes near the inside  of
       the  farm  house.  The  former is normally fat and lazy; the
       latter skinny and alert. Despite the lap cat's easier  life,
       the  mouser  wouldn't  exchange places with him if he could,
       while the lap cat COULDN'T exchange places if he would. Here
       we  have two cats - perhaps even from the same litter - with
       two completely different  attitudes  toward  life.  The  one
       expects  a  clean  sandbox  and food twice a day - and he is
       rarely disappointed. The other has to work for a living, but
       generally  finds  the reward worth while. "Now what has this
       got to do with the subject at hand?" I hear  you  cry.  Just








1


                                  - 18 -



       this:  the  communists would make "lap cats" of us all. "But
       what's so bad about that?" you may ask.  To  which  I  would
       have  to  reply (passing over the stinky problem of WHO will
       change the sandbox), "Have you ever tried to 'domesticate' a
       mouser?"

            Communism, in its quest  for  a  tranquil,  tensionless
       world,  inevitably  harks back to the Middle Ages. Scratch a
       communist  and  chances  are  pretty  good  you'll  find   a
       mediaevalist underneath.  Paul Goodman, for example, derives
       his ideal "community of scholars"  from  Bologna  and  Paris
       models  based  in  the  eleventh and twelfth centuries. [31]
       Erich Fromm writes longingly of "the sense of security which
       was  characteristic of man in the Middle Ages....In having a
       distinct, unchangeable,  and  unquestionable  place  in  the
       social  world  from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a
       structuralised whole, and thus life had a meaning which left
       no  place,  and  no  need, for doubt. A person was identical
       with his role in society; he was a peasant,  an  artisan,  a
       knight,  and  not AN INDIVIDUAL who HAPPENED to have this or
       that occupation. The social order was conceived as a natural
       order, and being a definite part of it gave man a feeling of
       security and of belonging. There  was  comparatively  little
       competition.  One  was born into a certain economic position
       which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition.  [32]
       Kropotkin  goes even further than Fromm. I'd like to examine
       his position in some detail  because  I  think  it  is  very
       instructive of how the communist mentality works. In perhaps
       his best-known book, "Mutual Aid," Kropotkin devotes two  of
       its  eight  chapters to glorifying the Middle Ages, which he
       boldly claim were  one  of  "the  two  greatest  periods  of
       [mankind's]  history."  [33]  (The  other  one being ancient
       Greece. He doesn't say how he reconciles this with the  fact
       that  Greece  was  based firmly on a foundation of slavery).
       "No  period  of  history   could   better   illustrate   the
       constructive powers of the popular masses than the tenth and
       eleventh centuries...but, unhappily, this is a period  about
       which  historical  information is especially scarce." [34] I
       wonder why? Could it be that everyone was having such a good
       time  that  no one found time to record it? Kropotkin writes
       of  the  mediaeval  cities  as  "centres  of   liberty   and
       enlightenment." [35] The mediaeval guilds, he says, answered
       "a deeply inrooted want of human nature," [36] calling  them
       "organisations for maintaining justice." [37] Let's see what
       Kropotkin means here by "justice":

       "If a brother's house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or
       has  suffered  on  a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren MUST
       come to his aid. If a brother  falls  dangerously  ill,  two
       brethren  MUST  keep  watch  by  his  bed  till he is out of
       danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him - a great








1


                                  - 19 -



       affair  in  those  times of pestilences [Kropotkin must have
       been dozing to admit this in his Utopia] - and follow him to
       the  church and the grave. After his death they MUST provide
       for his children....If a brother was involved in  a  quarrel
       with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for
       bad and for good; that is, whether he was  unjustly  accused
       of  aggression,  OR  REALLY  WAS  THE AGGRESSOR, they HAD to
       support him....They went to court to  support  by  oath  the
       truthfulness  of  his statements, and if he was found guilty
       they did not let him go to full  ruin  and  become  a  slave
       through  not  paying  the  due  compensation;  they all paid
       it....Such were the  leading  ideas  of  those  brotherhoods
       which  gradually  covered the whole of mediaeval life." [38]
       (My emphasis)

       And such is Kropotkin's conception of "justice," which could
       better be described as a warped sense of solidarity. He goes
       on to say, "It is evident that an institution so well suited
       to serve the need of union, without depriving the individual
       of his initiative, could but  spread,  grow,  and  fortify."
       [39]  "We  see  not  only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and
       peasants united in guilds; we also see  guilds  of  priests,
       painters,  teachers  of  primary  schools  and universities,
       guilds for performing  the  passion  play,  for  building  a
       church,  for  developing  the 'mystery' of a given school of
       art or craft, or for a  special  recreation  -  even  guilds
       among  beggars,  executioners, and lost women, all organised
       on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual
       support."   [40]  It  was  such  "unity  of  thought"  which
       Kropotkin thinks "can but excite our admiration." [41]

            But where did the common labourer fit  into  all  this?
       Kropotkin  makes  the  remarkable generalisation that "at no
       time has labour enjoyed such conditions  of  prosperity  and
       such   respect."  [42]  As  proof  he  cites  the  "glorious
       donations" [43] the workers gave to the  cathedrals.  These,
       he says, "bear testimony of their relative well-being." [44]
       (Just as the Taj  Mahal  bears  testimony  of  the  relative
       well-being   of  the  people  of  India,  no  doubt).  "Many
       aspirations of our modern radicals were already realised  in
       the  Middle  Ages  [and]  much  of  what is described now as
       Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact." [45]

            As for the material achievements of  the  Middle  Ages,
       Kropotkin  can't find a superlative super enough to describe
       them - but he tries:

       "The very face of Europe had  been  changed.  The  land  was
       dotted  with  rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls
       [I wonder why?] which were embellished by towers and  gates,
       each  of  them  a  work  of  art  in itself. The cathedrals,








1


                                  - 20 -



       conceived in a grand style and profusely  decorated,  lifted
       their  bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form
       and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive  to
       attain....[He  displays  a  bit of 'boldness of imagination'
       himself (to be quite charitable) when he goes  on  to  say:]
       Over  large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of
       misery; learning  had  grown  and  spread.  The  methods  of
       science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy
       had been laid down; and the way had been paved for  all  the
       mechanical  inventions  of which our own times are so proud.
       Such were the magic [sic] changes accomplished in Europe  in
       less than four hundred years." [46]

            Just what were these "magic changes" of which Kropotkin
       is  so  proud?  He lists about a dozen. [47] Among them are:
       printing (neglecting to inform us that the  Gutenberg  press
       was  invented  in  the  middle of the 15th century, sometime
       after the mediaeval  cities  "degenerated  into  centralised
       states");   steelmaking   (neglecting   to  inform  us  that
       steelmaking had been mentioned in the works of Homer and was
       used  continuously since that time); glassmaking (neglecting
       to inform us that the Encyclopaedia Britannica - to which he
       contributed  numerous  articles - devotes to the Middle Ages
       all of two sentences of a 27 page article on the history  of
       glassmaking); the telescope (neglecting to inform us that it
       wasn't even invented until 1608); gunpowder and the  compass
       (neglecting to inform us that the Chinese lay earlier claims
       to both of these inventions); algebra (neglecting to  inform
       us  that  algebra was in common use in ancient Babylonia and
       that, although being introduced to mediaeval Europe  by  the
       Arabs,  no  important  contributions  were made by Europeans
       until the Renaissance); the decimal  system  (neglecting  to
       inform  us  that  the  Hindus  invented  the  system about a
       thousand years before it gained any ground in Europe in  the
       17th century); calendar reform (neglecting to inform us that
       although Roger Bacon suggested such reform to  the  Pope  in
       the  13th century, no action was taken until 300 years later
       under the reign of Pope Gregory  XIII  in  1582);  chemistry
       (neglecting  to inform us of an earlier work of his where he
       said  chemistry  was  "entirely  a  product  of  our  [19th]
       century."  [48])  Indeed  the  only  things  he  mentions as
       products of the Middle Ages which stand  up  under  scrutiny
       are  counterpoint  and, paradoxically, the mechanical clock.
       To top it all off, he then has the gall to cite Galileo  and
       Copernicus   as  being  "direct  descendents"  of  mediaeval
       science [49] - somehow managing  to  ignore  the  fact  that
       Galileo  spent  the last eight years of his life under house
       arrest for supporting the Copernican theory, thanks to  that
       grand mediaeval institution, the Inquisition.

            You may be wondering why the people of the Middle  Ages








1


                                  - 21 -



       let  such  a  Utopia  slip  through their fingers. Kropotkin
       cites foreign invasions -  notably  those  of  the  Mongols,
       Turks,  and  Moors  [50] - but makes it quite clear that the
       "greatest and most fatal error of most cities  was  to  bass
       their  wealth  upon  commerce and industry." [51] So here we
       have  it  laid  bare  for  all  to  see:  Kropotkin's  ideal
       community  would not only return  us to  the  dark ages, but
       would take away the one thing that could  bring  us  back  -
       commerce and industry.

            Rudolf Rocker, the darling of the anarcho-syndicalists,
       similarly  eulogises  the  Middle  Ages.  He, too, felt that
       mediaeval man led a "rich life" [52] which  gave  "wings  to
       his  spirit and prevent[ed] his mental stagnation." [53] But
       unlike Kropotkin - who chalked up  mediaeval  solidarity  to
       man's  innate  "nature"  - Rocker (correctly) explains these
       "fraternal associations" by means of  a  most  unanarchistic
       concept - Christianity:

       "Mediaeval man felt himself to be bound up  with  a  single,
       uniform  culture,  a  member  of a great community extending
       over all countries, in whose bosom all  people  found  their
       place.  It  was  the community of Christendom which included
       all  the  scattered  units  of  the  Christian   world   and
       spiritually   unified  them....The  deeper  the  concept  of
       Christianity took root in men, the easier they overcame  all
       barriers  between  themselves  and  others, and the stronger
       lived in them the consciousness that  all  belonged  to  one
       great community and strove toward a common goal." [54]

            So we  see  that  the  glue  that  held  these  idyllic
       mediaeval  communities  together was not Kropotkin's "mutual
       aid," but rather Christian mysticism. Rocker was  perceptive
       enough  to  see this; Kropotkin apparently was not. But what
       both of these men failed to see was that  mysticism  is  the
       necessary  glue  of  ANY  communist  society.   The mystical
       Garden of Eden is the ultimate goal of every church  of  the
       communist  religion.  Unfortunately, as every good Christian
       will tell you, the only way you can stay in  the  Garden  of
       Eden  is to abstain from the "tree of knowledge." Communists
       are apparently willing to pay this price. Individualists are
       not.  It  is  communism's intention to carry religion to its
       ultimate absurdity: it would sacrifice man on the  cross  of
       altruism for the sake of - Man.

                           *   *   *   *   *

            I'd like  to  end  my  diatribe  against  communism  by
       quoting  another one.  This is what one prophetic Frenchman,
       Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, had to  say  about  communism  eight
       years  before  the  "Communist  Manifesto"  appeared  like a








1


                                  - 22 -



       spectre to haunt Europe - and like a good French  wine,  his
       words seem to have improved with age:

       "Communism - or association  in  a  simple  form  -  is  the
       necessary  object  and  original  aspiration  of  the social
       nature, the spontaneous movement by which it  manifests  and
       establishes   itself.   It  is  the  first  phase  of  human
       civilisation. In this state of society, - which the  jurists
       have  called  'negative communism', - man draws near to man,
       and shares with him the fruits of the field and the milk and
       flesh of animals. Little by little this communism - negative
       as long as man does not produce - tends to  become  positive
       and  organic through the development of labour and industry.
       But it is then that the  sovereignty  of  thought,  and  the
       terrible  faculty  of  reasoning  logically  or illogically,
       teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of  society,
       communism   is   the   first   species   of   slavery....The
       disadvantages of communism are so obvious that  its  critics
       never  have  needed  to  employ much eloquence to thoroughly
       disgust men with it. The  irreparability  of  the  injustice
       which  it  causes, the violence which it does to attractions
       and repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens  upon  the
       will, the moral torture to which it subjects the conscience,
       the debilitating effect which it has upon society;  and,  to
       sum  it  all  up,  the  pious and stupid uniformity which it
       enforces upon  the  free,  active,  reasoning,  unsubmissive
       personality of man, have shocked common sense, and condemned
       communism by an  irrevocable  decree.  The  authorities  and
       examples  cited  in  its favour disprove it. The communistic
       republic  of  Plato  involved  slavery;  that  of   Lycurgus
       employed  Helots,  whose  duty  it  was to produce for their
       masters, thus  enabling  the  latter  to  devote  themselves
       exclusively  to  athletic  sports  and  to  war,  Even J. J.
       Rousseau - confounding communism and  equality  -  has  said
       somewhere  that,  without slavery, he did not think equality
       of conditions possible. The communities of the early  Church
       did  not  last  the  first century out, and soon degenerated
       into monasteries....The greatest danger to which society  is
       exposed  today  is  that  of another shipwreck on this rock.
       Singularly enough, systematic  communism  -  the  deliberate
       negation  of  property  -  is  conceived  under  the  direct
       influence of the proprietary prejudice; and property is  the
       basis   of  all  communistic  theories.  The  members  of  a
       community, it is true, have no  private  property;  but  the
       community  is  proprietor,  and  proprietor  not only of the
       goods, but of the persons and wills. In consequence of  this
       principle of absolute property, labour, which should be only
       a condition imposed upon  man  by  Nature,  becomes  in  all
       communities  a  human  commandment,  and  therefore  odious.
       Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is
       strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always








1


                                  - 23 -



       defective, however wise they may be thought,  allows  of  no
       complaint. Life, talent, and all the human faculties are the
       property of the State, which has the right to use them as it
       pleases  for  the  common  good.  Private  associations  are
       sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes  and  dislikes  of
       different  natures,  because  to  tolerate  them would be to
       introduce  small  communities  within  the  large  one,  and
       consequently private property; the strong work for the weak,
       although this ought to  be  left  to  benevolence,  and  not
       enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious work for the
       lazy though this is unjust; the clever work for the foolish,
       although  this  is absurd; and, finally, man - casting aside
       his  personality,  his  spontaneity,  his  genius,  and  his
       affections  -  humbly annihilates himself at the feet of the
       majestic and inflexible Commune!  Communism  is  inequality,
       but  not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the
       weak by the strong.* Communism is the  exploitation  of  the
       strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is
       the result of force, under whatever name  it  be  disguised:
       physical and mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE;
       force of accumulated property, etc. In communism, inequality
       springs  from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.
       This damaging equation is repellent to the  conscience,  and
       causes merit to complain; for although it may be the duty of
       the strong to aid the weak, they prefer  to  do  it  out  of
       generosity, - they never will endure a comparison. Give them
       equal opportunities of labour, and equal  wages,  but  never
       allow  their  jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of
       unfaithfulness  in  the  performance  of  the  common  task.
       Communism  is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to
       obey the law of duty, serve  his  country,  and  oblige  his
       friends;  but  he wishes to labour when he pleases, where he
       pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose  of
       his  own  time,  to be governed only by necessity, to choose
       his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to  act
       from judgement, not by command; to sacrifice himself through
       selfishness, not through servile  obligation.  Communism  is
       essentially  opposed  to the free exercise of our faculties,
       to our noblest desires, to our deepest  feelings.  Any  plan
       which  could  be devised for reconciling it with the demands
       of the individual reason and will would end only in changing
       the  thing while preserving the name.  Now, if we are honest
       truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about  words.   Thus,
       communism  violates  the  sovereignty  of the conscience and
       equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind  and
       heart,  and  freedom  of  thought and action; the second, by
       placing labour and laziness, skill and stupidity,  and  even
       vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort." [55]

       --------------------

            * See footnote on page 5.







1


                                  - 24 -



                       REVOLUTION: THE ROAD TO FREEDOM?

          "It's true that non-violence has been a dismal failure.
          The only bigger failure has been violence."
                              - Joan Baez

            There's an old story about a  motorist  who  stopped  a
       policeman  in  downtown Manhattan and asked him how he could
       get to the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  The  officer  looked  around,
       thought  a  minute,  scratched his head and finally replied,
       "I'm sorry,  but  you  can't  get  there  from  here.   Some
       anarchists  are  now  wondering  if  you can get to the free
       society from where we stand today. I must  confess  that  I,
       too,  harbour  some  doubts.  But  if  there is a way, it is
       incumbent upon all who wish to find that  way  to  carefully
       examine the important end-means problem.

            "The end justifies the means." Few people  would  argue
       with  this  trite  statement.  Certainly  all  apologists of
       government must ultimately fall back on  such  reasoning  to
       justify  their  large  police  forces  and  standing armies.
       Revolutionary anarchists must also rely on this argument  to
       justify  their  authoritarian  methods "just one more time",
       the  revolution  being  for  them  "the  unfreedom  to   end
       unfreedom."  It  seems  that  the  only  people  who  reject
       outright this article of faith  are  a  handful  of  (mostly
       religious)  pacifists.   The  question  I'd like to consider
       here is not whether the end JUSTIFIES the means (because  I,
       too,  tend to feel that it does), but rather whether the end
       is AFFECTED by the means and, if so, to what extent.

            That the  end  is  affected  by  the  means  should  be
       obvious.  Whether  I  obtain  your  watch  by swindling you,
       buying it from you, stealing it from you, or  soliciting  it
       as  a  gift  from  you  makes  the  same  watch "graft", "my
       property", "booty", or "a donation." The same  can  be  said
       for  social  change.  Even  so strong an advocate of violent
       revolution as Herbert Marcuse, in one  of  his  rare  lapses
       into sanity, realised this fact:

       "Unless the revolution itself  progresses  through  freedom,
       the need for domination and repression would be carried over
       into the new society and the fateful separation between  the
       'immediate' and the 'true' interest of the individuals would
       be almost  inevitable;  the  individuals  would  become  the
       objects  of  their  own  liberation,  and freedom would be a
       matter of administration  and  decree.   Progress  would  be
       progressive  repression,  and  the  'delay' in freedom would
       threaten to become self-propelling  and  self-perpetuating."
       [56]









1


                                  - 25 -



       But despite the truth of  Marcuse's  observation,  we  still
       find  many  anarchists  looking for a shortcut to freedom by
       means of violent revolution. The idea that anarchism can  be
       inaugurated by violence is as fallacious as the idea that it
       can be sustained by violence. The best that can be said  for
       violence  is  that it may, in rare circumstances, be used as
       an  expedient  to  save  us   from   extinction.   But   the
       individualist's  rejection  of  violence (except in cases of
       self-defence) is not due to any lofty  pacifist  principles;
       it's  a  matter of pure pragmatism: we realise that violence
       just simply does not work.

            The task of anarchism, as the individualist sees it, is
       not  to destroy the state, but rather to destroy the MYTH of
       the state. Once people realise that they no longer need  the
       state,  it  will  -  in  the  words  of  Frederick  Engels -
       inevitably "wither  away"  ("Anti-Duehring",  1877)  and  be
       consigned  to the "Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the
       spinning wheel and the bronze axe" ("Origin of  the  Family,
       Private   Property   and   the  State",  1884).  But  unless
       anarchists can create a general and well-grounded  disbelief
       in  the state as an INSTITUTION, the existing state might be
       destroyed by violent revolution or it might fall through its
       own  rottenness,  but  another  would inevitably rise in its
       place. And why shouldn't it? As long as people  believe  the
       state  to  be  necessary (even a "necessary evil", as Thomas
       Paine said), the state will always exist.

            We have already seen how Kropotkin would usher  in  the
       millennium  by  the  complete expropriation of all property.
       "We must see clearly in private property what it really  is,
       a  conscious or unconscious robbery of the substance of all,
       and seize it joyfully  for  the  common  benefit."  [57]  He
       cheerfully  goes on to say, "The instinct of destruction, so
       natural   and   so   just...will   find   ample   room   for
       satisfaction."  [58]  Kropotkin's  modern-day  heirs  are no
       different.  Noam Chomsky, writing in the "New York Review of
       Books"  and  reprinted  in  a  recent  issue  of  "Anarchy",
       applauds  the  heroism  of  the  Paris  Commune   of   1871,
       mentioning only in passing that "the Commune, of course [!],
       was drowned in blood." [59] Later in  the  same  article  he
       writes,  "What  is  far  more  important is that these ideas
       [direct workers' control] have been realised in  spontaneous
       revolutionary action, for example in Germany and Italy after
       World  War  I  and  in   Spain   (specifically,   industrial
       Barcelona)  in  1936."  [60]  What  Chomsky apparently finds
       relatively UNimportant are  the  million-odd  corpses  which
       were  the  direct result of these "spontaneous revolutionary
       actions." He also somehow manages to ignore  the  fact  that
       the three countries he mentions - Germany, Italy and Spain -
       were without exception victims of fascism within a few years








1


                                  - 26 -



       of these glorious revolutions. One doesn't need a great deal
       of insight to be able  to  draw  a  parallel  between  these
       "spontaneous"  actions with their reactionary aftermaths and
       the spontaneous "trashings" which are currently  in  fashion
       in  the United States. But it seems the Weathermen really DO
       "need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." [61]

            The question of how to attain the anarchist society has
       divided  anarchists  nearly  as much as the question of what
       the anarchist society actually is. While Bakunin insisted on
       the   necessity   of  "bloody  revolutions"  [62],  Proudhon
       believed that violence was unnecessary - saying instead that
       "reason  will  serve  us  better." [63] The same discord was
       echoed on the other side of the Atlantic some decades  later
       when,  in  the  wake  of the infamous Haymarket bombing, the
       issue of violence came to a head. Benjamin  Tucker,  writing
       in   the  columns  of  "Liberty",  had  this  to  say  about
       accusations  leveled  against  him  by  Johann   Most,   the
       communist-anarchist editor of "Freiheit":

       "It makes very little difference to Herr  Most  what  a  man
       believes  in economics. The test of fellowship with him lies
       in acceptance of dynamite as a  cure-all.  Though  I  should
       prove  that  my  economic views, if realised, would turn our
       social system inside out, he would not therefore  regard  me
       as  a  revolutionist.  He  declares  outright  that  I am no
       revolutionist, because the thought of the coming  revolution
       (by  dynamite,  he  means)  makes  my  flesh creep.  Well, I
       frankly confess that I take no pleasure in  the  thought  of
       bloodshed  and  mutilation  and  death.  At  these things my
       feelings revolt. And if delight in them is a requisite of  a
       revolutionist,  then  indeed  I  am  no  revolutionist. When
       revolutionist and cannibal become synonyms, count me out, if
       you  please.  But,  though  my  feelings  revolt,  I  am not
       mastered by them or made a coward by them.  More  than  from
       dynamite  and  blood  do  I  shrink  from  the  thought of a
       permanent system of society involving the slow starvation of
       the  most  industrious  and  deserving of its members.  If I
       should ever become convinced that the policy of bloodshed is
       necessary  to  end our social system, the loudest of today's
       shriekers for blood would not surpass  me  in  the  stoicism
       with  which  I  would  face the inevitable. Indeed, a plumb-
       liner  to  the  last,  I  am  confident  that   under   such
       circumstances  many  who  now think me chicken-hearted would
       condemn the stony-heartedness with which I should favour the
       utter  sacrifice of every feeling of pity to the necessities
       of the terroristic policy. Neither fear nor  sentimentalism,
       then, dictates my opposition to forcible methods. Such being
       the case, how stupid, how unfair, in Herr Most,  to  picture
       me  as crossing myself at the mention of the word revolution
       simply because I steadfastly act  on  my  well-known  belief








1


                                  - 27 -



       that  force  cannot  substitute truth for a lie in political
       economy!" [64]

            It is this issue of  economics  which  generally  sorts
       anarchists   into  the  violent  and  non-violent  wings  of
       anarchism. Individualists, by and large,  are  pacifists  in
       practice  (if  not  in  theory), whereas the communists tend
       toward violent revolution.* Why is this  so?  One  reason  I
       think   is  that  individualists  are  more  concerned  with
       changing the conditions which directly  affect  their  lives
       than  they  are with reforming the whole world "for the good
       of all." The communists, on the  other  hand,  have  a  more
       evangelical spirit. Like all good missionaries, they are out
       to convert the unbeliever - whether he likes it or not.  And
       inevitably this leads to violence. Another reason communists
       are more prone to violence than individualists can be found,
       I  think,  in  looking  at  the  nature of the force each is
       willing to use to secure and sustain his respective  system.
       Individualists  believe  that  the only justifiable force is
       force used in preventing invasion  (i.e.  defensive  force).
       Communists,  however,  would  compel  the worker to pool his
       products with the products of others and forbid him to  sell
       his  labour  or  the products of his labour. To "compel" and
       "forbid" requires the use  of  offensive  force.  It  is  no
       wonder,  then,  that  most  communists  advocate violence to
       achieve their objectives.

            If freedom is really what we anarchists crack it up  to
       be, it shouldn't be necessary to force it down the throat of
       anyone. What an absurdity! Even so superficial a  writer  as
       Agatha Christie recognised that "if it is not possible to go
       back [from freedom], or to choose to go back, then it is not
       freedom." [66] A. J. Muste used to say that "there is no way
       to peace - peace IS the way." The same thing is  true  about
       freedom:  the  only  way  to  freedom  is  BY  freedom. This
       statement is so nearly tautological that it should not  need
       saying.  The only way to realise anarchy is for a sufficient
       number of people to be convinced that  their  own  interests
       demand  it. Human society does not run on idealism - it runs
       on pragmatism. And unless people can be made to realise that
       anarchy actually works for THEIR benefit, it will remain

       --------------------

            * There are exceptions of course. It is hard to imagine
       a  more dedicated pacifist than Tolstoy, for example. On the
       other side of the coin is  Stirner,  who  quotes  with  near
       relish  the French Revolutionary slogan "the world will have
       no rest till the last king is hanged with the  guts  of  the
       last priest." [65]









1


                                  - 28 -



       what it is today: an idle pipe dream; "a  nice  theory,  but
       unrealistic."  It  is the anarchist's job to convince people
       otherwise.

            Herbert Spencer - the great evolutionist of whom Darwin
       said, "He is about a dozen times my superior" - observed the
       following fact of nature:

       "Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified  throughout
       the  Heavens  and  on  the  Earth: especially throughout the
       organic world; and above all in the animal division  of  it.
       No  creature,  save  the simplest and most minute, commences
       its existence in  a  form  like  that  which  it  eventually
       assumes;  and  in  most  cases  the unlikeness is great - so
       great that kinship between the  first  and  the  last  forms
       would  be incredible were it not daily demonstrated in every
       poultry-yard and every garden. More than this is true.   The
       changes  of  form  are  often several: each of them being an
       apparently  complete  transformation  -  egg,  larva,  pupa,
       imago, for example ... No one of them ends as it begins; and
       the  difference  between  its  original  structure  and  its
       ultimate structure is such that, at the outset change of the
       one into the other would have seemed incredible." [67]

            This universal law of metamorphosis holds not only  for
       biology,  but  for  society as well. Modern-day Christianity
       resembles the early Christian church  about  as  much  as  a
       butterfly  resembles  a  caterpillar. Thomas Jefferson would
       have  been  horrified  if  he  could   have   foreseen   the
       "government  by  the consent of the governed" which today is
       the hereditary heir  of  his  Declaration  of  Independence.
       French  revolutionaries  took  turns  beheading  one another
       until that  great  believer  in  "les  droits  de  l'homme",
       Napoleon  Bonaparte, came upon the scene to secure "liberte,
       egalite, fraternite" for all. And wasn't it  comrade  Stalin
       who in 1906 so confidently forecast the nature of the coming
       revolution?: "The dictatorship of the proletariat will be  a
       dictatorship  of  the entire proletariat as a class over the
       bourgeoisie and not the domination of a few individuals over
       the  proletariat."  [68] The examples of these ugly duckling
       stories in reverse are endless. For as  Robert  Burns  wrote
       nearly two centuries ago:

             "The best laid schemes o' mice and men
                  Gang aft a-gley;
             An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain
                  For promis'd joy." [69]












1


                                  - 29 -



            Why is it that Utopian dreams have a habit  of  turning
       into  nightmares  in  practice?  Very  simply because people
       don't act the way the would-be architects of  society  would
       have  them  act.  The  mythical man never measures up to the
       real man. This point was brought home forcefully in a recent
       letter  to  "Freedom"  by S. E. Parker who observed that our
       modern visionaries are bound for disappointment because they
       are  "trying  to deduce an 'is' from an 'ought'." [70] Paper
       constitutions might work all right in  a  society  of  paper
       dolls,  but  they  can  only  bring smiles to those who have
       observed their results in the real world. The same  is  true
       of paper revolutions which invariably have to go back to the
       drawing board once the reign of  terror  sets  in.   And  if
       communist-anarchists  think  that their paper social systems
       are exempt from this, how do they explain  the  presence  of
       anarchist  "leaders" in high government positions during the
       Spanish Civil War?

            Hasn't everyone been surprised  at  sometime  or  other
       with  the  behaviour  of people they thought they knew well?
       Perhaps a relative or a good friend does something  "totally
       out  of  character." We can never completely know even those
       people closest to us, let alone total strangers. How are we,
       then,  to  comprehend  and  predict the behaviour of complex
       groups of people? To make assumptions about how people  must
       and  will  act  under  a  hypothetical social system is idle
       conjecture. We know from daily experience that men don't act
       as  they  "ought"  to act or think as they "ought" to think.
       Why should things be any different after the revolution? Yet
       we  still  find  an  abundance of revolutionaries willing to
       kill and be killed for a cause which more likely  than  not,
       if  realised, would bear no recognizable resemblance to what
       they  were  fighting  for.  This  reason  alone  should   be
       sufficient  to give these people second thoughts about their
       methods. But apparently they are too  carried  away  by  the
       violence  of their own rhetoric to be bothered with where it
       will lead them.*

            There is but one effective way to rid ourselves of  the
       oppressive  power  of  the  state.  It is not to shoot it to
       death; it is not to vote it to death;  it  is  not  even  to
       persuade it to death.  It is  rather to  starve it to death.

       --------------------

            * I am reminded here of a Herblock cartoon  which  came
       out  during  the  Johnson-Goldwater presidential campaign of
       1964. It pictures Goldwater standing  in  the  rubble  of  a
       nuclear  war and proclaiming, "But that's not what I meant!"
       I wonder if the Utopia which our idealists intend  to  usher
       in by violent revolution will be what they really "meant"?








1


                                  - 30 -



       Power feeds on its spoils, and dies when its victims  refuse
       to  be  despoiled.  There  is  much truth in the well- known
       pacifist slogan, "Wars will  cease  when  people  refuse  to
       fight."   This   slogan  can  be  generalised  to  say  that
       "government will cease when people refuse to  be  governed."
       As  Tucker  put  it, "There is not a tyrant in the civilised
       world today who would  not  do  anything  in  his  power  to
       precipitate  a  bloody  revolution  rather  than see himself
       confronted by any large fraction of his subjects  determined
       not  to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army
       is willing or able to train its guns on  inoffensive  people
       who  do  not even gather in the streets but stay at home and
       stand back on their rights." [71]

            A particularly effective weapon could  be  massive  tax
       refusal.  If (say) one-fifth of the population of the United
       States refused to pay their taxes, the government  would  be
       impaled  on  the  horns of a dilemma. Should they ignore the
       problem, it would only get worse  -  for  who  is  going  to
       willingly  contribute  to  the government's coffers when his
       neighbours are getting away scotfree? Or should they opt  to
       prosecute,  the  burden  just  to  feed  and  guard  so many
       "parasites" - not to mention the lose of revenue - would  be
       so  great that the other four-fifths of the population would
       soon rebel. But in order to succeed,  this  type  of  action
       would  require  massive numbers. Isolated tax refusal - like
       isolated draft refusal - is a useless waste of resources. It
       is like trying to purify the salty ocean by dumping a cup of
       distilled water into it.  The individualist-anarchist  would
       no more advocate such sacrificial offerings than the violent
       revolutionary would advocate walking into his  neighbourhood
       police  station  and "offing the pig." As he would tell you,
       "It is not wise warfare to  throw  your  ammunition  to  the
       enemy  unless  you throw it from the cannon's mouth." Tucker
       agrees. Replying to a critic who  felt  otherwise  he  said,
       "Placed  in a situation where, from the choice of one or the
       other horn of a dilemma, it must follow  either  that  fools
       will  think a man a coward or that wise men will think him a
       fool, I can conceive of no possible ground for hesitancy  in
       the selection." [72]

            There is a  tendency  among  anarchists  these  days  -
       particularly   in   the   United  States  -  to  talk  about
       "alternatives"  and  "parallel  institutions".  This  is   a
       healthy  sign  which individualists very much encourage. The
       best argument one can possibly present against "the  system"
       is  to  DEMONSTRATE  a better one. Some communist-anarchists
       (let it be said to their credit) are now trying to  do  just
       that.  Communal  farms, schools, etc. have been sprouting up
       all over the  States.  Individualists,  of  course,  welcome
       these  experiments - especially where they fulfill the needs








1


                                  - 31 -



       of those involved and contribute to their happiness. But  we
       can't  help questioning the over-all futility of such social
       landscape gardening. The vast majority of these  experiments
       collapse  in  dismal  failure  within the first year or two,
       proving nothing but the difficulty of communal  living.  And
       should  an  isolated  community  manage  to  survive,  their
       success could not be judged as conclusive since it would  be
       said  that  their  principles were applicable only to people
       well-nigh perfect. They might  well  be  considered  as  the
       exceptions  which  proved the rule. If anarchy is to succeed
       to any appreciable extent, it has to be brought  within  the
       reach  of  everyone.  I'm  afraid  that tepees in New Mexico
       don't satisfy that criterion.

            The parallel institution I  would  like  to  see  tried
       would  be  something  called a "mutual bank."* The beauty of
       this proposal is that it can be carried out under  the  very
       nose  of  the  man-in-the-street.  I would hope that in this
       way people could see for themselves the practical advantages
       it  has  to  offer  them,  and ultimately accept the plan as
       their own. I'm well aware that this scheme, like any  other,
       is  subject to the law of metamorphosis referred to earlier.
       But should this plan fail, unlike those plans which  require
       bloody  revolutions for their implementation, the only thing
       hurt  would   be   the   pride   of   a   few   hair-brained
       individualists.

       --------------------

            * The reader can judge for himself the merits  of  this
       plan  when  I  examine  it  in  some detail later on in this
       article.



























1


                                  - 32 -



                     EGOISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM

                     "Many a year I've used my nose
                     To smell the onion and the rose;
                     Is there any proof which shows
                     That I've a right to that same nose?"

                   - Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller

            The philosophy of individualist-anarchism is  "egoism."
       It is not my purpose here to give a detailed account of this
       philosophy, but I would like to explode a few  of  the  more
       common  myths  about egoism and present to the reader enough
       of its essence so that he may understand  more  clearly  the
       section  on  individualist  economics.  I am tempted here to
       quote long extracts from "The Ego and His Own," for  it  was
       this  book  which first presented the egoist philosophy in a
       systematic  way.  Unfortunately,  I  find   that   Stirner's
       "unique"  style  does  not readily lend itself to quotation.
       So what I have done in the following pages is  to  dress  up
       Stirner's ideas in a language largely my own.

            Voltaire once said, "If God did not exist, it would  be
       necessary  to  invent him." Bakunin wisely retorted, "If God
       DID  exist,  it  would  be  necessary   to   abolish   him."
       Unfortunately,  Bakunin  would  only  abolish God. It is the
       egoist's  intention  to  abolish  GODS.  It  is  clear  from
       Bakunin's  writings  that  what  he  meant  by  God was what
       Voltaire meant - namely the religious God. The  egoist  sees
       many  more  gods  than  that - in fact, as many as there are
       fixed ideas.  Bakunin's gods, for example, include  the  god
       of  humanity,  the  god of brotherhood, the god of mankind -
       all variants  on  the  god  of  altruism.   The  egoist,  in
       striking   down  ALL  gods,  looks  only  to  his  WILL.  He
       recognises no legitimate power over himself.* The  world  is
       there  for  him to consume - if he CAN. And he can if he has
       the power. For the egoist, the only right is  the  right  of
       might. He accepts no "inalienable rights," for such rights -
       by virtue of the fact that they're inalienable -  must  come
       from a higher power, some god.  The  American Declaration of

       --------------------

            * He does not, of course, claim to be omnipotent. There
       ARE  external  powers  over  him. The difference between the
       egoist and non-egoist in this regard is therefore one mainly
       of  attitude:  the  egoist  recognises  external power as an
       enemy and consciously fights  against  it,  while  the  non-
       egoist  humbles  himself before it and often accepts it as a
       friend.









1


                                  - 33 -



       Independence, for example, in proclaiming these rights found
       it  necessary  to invoke the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's
       God."  The  same  was  true  of  the  French   Revolutionary
       "Declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen."

            The egoist recognises no right - or what amounts to the
       same  thing - claims ALL rights for himself. What he can get
       by force he has a right to; and what he  can't,  he  has  no
       right.  He  demands no rights, nor does he recognise them in
       others. "Right - is a wheel in the  head,  put  there  by  a
       spook," [73] says Stirner. Right is also the spook which has
       kept men servile throughout the ages. The believer in rights
       has  always  been  his own jailer. What sovereign could last
       the day out without a general belief in the "divine right of
       kings"?  And  where  would  Messrs. Nixon, Heath, et. al. be
       today without the "right" of the majority?

            Men make their tyrants as they  make  their  gods.  The
       tyrant  is  a  man  like any other. His power comes from the
       abdicated power of his subjects. If people believe a man  to
       have  superhuman  powers,  they automatically GIVE him those
       powers by default. Had Hitler's pants fallen down during one
       of  his  ranting speeches, the whole course of history might
       have been different.  For who can respect a  naked  Fuehrer?
       And  who knows? The beginning of the end of Lyndon Johnson's
       political career might well have been  when  he  showed  his
       operation  scar  on  coast-to-coast television for the whole
       wide world to see that he really was a man after  all.  This
       sentiment  was  expressed  by  Stirner  when he said, "Idols
       exist through me; I need only  refrain  from  creating  them
       anew,  then they exist no longer: 'higher powers' exist only
       through my exalting them and abasing  myself.   Consequently
       my  relation  to  the world is this: I no longer do anything
       for it 'for God's sake,' I do nothing 'for man's sake,'  but
       what I do I do 'for my sake'." [74] The one thing that makes
       a man different from any other living creature is his  power
       to  reason.  It  is  by  this  power that man can (and does)
       dominate over the world.  Without  reason  man  would  be  a
       pathetic  non-entity  -  evolution  having taken care of him
       long before the dinosaur.  Now some people say that  man  is
       by  nature  a social animal, something like an ant or a bee.
       Egoists don't deny the sociability of man, but  what  we  do
       say is that man is sociable to the extent that it serves his
       own self-interest. Basically man is (by nature, if you will)















1


                                  - 34 -



       a selfish being. The evidence for this is overwhelming.* Let
       us  look  at  a  hive  of  bees  to see what would happen if
       "reason" were suddenly introduced into their lives:

            "In the first place, the bees would  not  fail  to  try
       some  new  industrial  process; for instance, that of making
       their cells round  or  square.  All  sorts  of  systems  and
       inventions  would  be tried, until long experience, aided by
       geometry, should show them that the hexagonal shape  is  the
       best.  Then  insurrections would occur.  The drones would be
       told to provide for themselves, and the  queens  to  labour;
       jealousy  would  spread  among the labourers; discords would
       burst forth; soon each one would want to produce on his  own
       account;  and  finally  the hive would be abandoned, and the
       bees would perish. Evil would be introduced into the  honey-
       producing  republic  by  the power of reflection, - the very
       faculty which ought to constitute its glory." [75]

            So it would appear to me  that  reason  would  militate
       against  blind, selfless cooperation. But by the same token,
       reason leads to cooperation which is mutually beneficial  to
       all  parties  concerned.  Such  cooperation  is what Stirner
       called a "union of egoists." [76] This binding  together  is
       not done through any innate social instinct, but rather as a
       matter  of  individual  convenience.  These   unions   would
       probably  take  the  form  of  contracting  individuals. The
       object of these contracts not being to enable all to benefit
       equally from their union (although this isn't ruled out, the
       egoist thinks it highly unlikely), but rather to protect one
       another  from  invasion  and  to  secure to each contracting
       individual what is mutually agreed upon to be "his."

            By referring to a man's selfishness, you know where you
       stand.    Nothing   is   done  "for  free."  Equity  demands
       reciprocity. Goods and services are exchanged for goods  and
       services  or  (what  is  equivalent)  bought. This may sound
       "heartless" - but what is the alternative? If one depends on
       kindness,  pity  or  love  the  services  and goods one gets
       become "charity." The receiver is put in the position  of  a
       beggar,  offering  nothing  in return for each "present." If
       you've ever been on the dole, or know anyone  who  has,  you
       will  know  that  the receiver of such gifts is anything but
       gracious. He is stripped of his manhood and he  resents  it.
       Now  the egoist isn't  (usually)  so cold  and cruel as this

       --------------------

            * Many people cite trade unions as a "proof"  of  man's
       solidarity  and  sociability. Just the opposite is true. Why
       else do people strike if not for their own  "selfish"  ends,
       e.g. higher wages, better working conditions, shorter hours?








1


                                  - 35 -



       description makes him out to be. As often as not  he  is  as
       charitable  and  kind  as  his  altruist  neighbour.  But he
       CHOOSES  the  objects  of  his  kindness;  he   objects   to
       COMPULSORY   "love."   What   an  absurdity!  If  love  were
       universal, it would have no meaning. If  I  should  tell  my
       wife  that  I  love  her because I love humanity, I would be
       insulting her. I love her not because she happens  to  be  a
       member  of the human race, but rather for what she is to me.
       For me she  is  something  special:  she  possesses  certain
       qualities  which I admire and which make me happy. If she is
       unhappy, I suffer, and therefore I try to  comfort  her  and
       cheer her up - for MY sake. Such love is a selfish love. But
       it is the only REAL love.  Anything else is  an  infatuation
       with  an  image, a ghost. As Stirner said of his loved ones,
       "I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I  love  them
       because  love  makes  ME  happy,  I  love  because loving is
       natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no 'commandment
       of love'." [77]

            The lover of "humanity" is bewitched by a superstition.
       He  has  dethroned God, only to accept the reign of the holy
       trinity: Morality, Conscience and Duty. He becomes  a  "true
       believer" - a religious man. No longer believing in himself,
       he becomes a slave to Man. Then, like all religious men,  he
       is  overcome  with  feelings  of  "right"  and  "virtue." He
       becomes  a  soldier  in  the  service  of   humanity   whose
       intolerance  of  heretics  rivals that of the most righteous
       religious fanatic. Most of the misery in the world today (as
       in the past) is directly attributable to men acting "for the
       common good." The individual is nothing; the mass all.

            The egoist would reverse  this  situation.  Instead  of
       everyone  looking  after  the welfare of everyone else, each
       would look after his own welfare. This would,  in  one  fell
       swoop, do away with the incredibly complicated, wasteful and
       tyrannical machinery (alluded to  previously)  necessary  to
       see  to  it that not only everyone got his fair share of the
       communal pie, but that everyone contributed  fairly  to  its
       production. In its stead we egoists raise the banner of free
       competition: "the war of all against all" as the  communists
       put  it.  But wouldn't that lead to (dare I say it) ANARCHY?
       Of course it would. What anarchist would  deny  the  logical
       consequences  of  the principles he advocates? But let's see
       what this "anarchy" would be like.

            The egoist believes that the relationships between  men
       who are alive to their own individual interests would be far
       more just and  equitable  than  they  are  now.    Take  the
       property  question  for  example.  Today  there  is  a great
       disparity of income. Americans  make  up  about  7%  of  the
       world's  population,  but  they  control  over  half  of its








1


                                  - 36 -



       wealth. And among the Americans, nearly one quarter  of  the
       wealth  is  owned  by  5%  of the people.* [78] Such unequal
       distribution  of  wealth  is  due  primarily  to  the  LEGAL
       institution  of property. Without the state to back up legal
       privilege and  without  the  people's  acquiescence  to  the
       privileged  minority's  legal  right to that property, these
       disparities would soon disappear. For what  makes  the  rich
       man  rich and the poor man poor if not the latter GIVING the
       former the product of his labour?

            Stirner is commonly thought to have  concerned  himself
       little  with the economic consequences of his philosophy. It
       is true that he avoided elaborating on the exact  nature  of
       his  "union of egoists," saying that the only way of knowing
       what a slave will do when he breaks his chains  is  to  wait
       and  see. But to say that Stirner was oblivious to economics
       is just not so. On the contrary. It was he, after  all,  who
       translated into German both Adam Smith's classic "An Inquiry
       into the Nature and Causes of the  Wealth  of  Nations"  and
       Jean  Baptiste  Say's  pioneering  work  on  the free market
       economy, "Traite d'Economie Politique."  The  few  pages  he
       devotes  to economics in "The Ego and His Own" are among his
       best:

       "If we assume that, as ORDER belongs to the essence  of  the
       State,  so  SUBORDINATION too is founded in its nature, then
       we see that the subordinates, or  those  who  have  received
       preferment,   disproportionately  OVERCHARGE  and  OVERREACH
       those who are put in the lower ranks....By what then is your
       property  secure,  you  creatures  of  preferment?...By  our
       refraining from interference!  And so by OUR protection! And
       what  do  you  give us for it? Kicks and disdain you give to
       the 'common people'; police  supervision,  and  a  catechism
       with  the  chief  sentence  'Respect what is NOT YOURS, what
       belongs to  OTHERS!  respect  others,  and  especially  your
       superiors!'  But  we reply, 'If you want our respect, BUY it
       for a  price  agreeable  to  us.  We  will  leave  you  your
       property,   if   you   give   a   due  equivalent  for  this
       leaving.'...What equivalent do  you  give  for  our  chewing
       potatoes  and  looking  calmly on while you swallow oysters?
       Only buy the oysters of us as dear as we  have  to  buy  the
       potatoes  of  you, then you may go on eating them. Or do you
       suppose the oysters do not  belong  to  us  as  much  as  to
       you?...Let  us  consider  our  nearer  property, labour...We
       distress ourselves twelve  hours in  the  sweat of our face,

       --------------------

            * Contrary to popular  belief,  this  gulf  is  getting
       larger.  Since  1966,  despite a constantly mushrooming GNP,
       the American factory workers' REAL wages (as opposed to  his
       apparent, inflationary wages) have actually declined. [79]







1


                                  - 37 -





       and you offer us a few pennies for it. Then  take  the  like
       for your labour too. Are you not willing? You fancy that our
       labour is richly repaid with that wage, while yours  on  the
       other  hand  is worth a wage of many thousands.  But, if you
       did not rate yours so high, and gave us a better  chance  to
       realise  value  from  ours,  then we might well, if the case
       demanded it, bring to pass still more important things  than
       you  do  for  the many thousand pounds; and, if you got only
       such wages as we, you would soon grow  more  industrious  in
       order  to  receive more. But, if you render any service that
       seems to us worth ten and a hundred times more than our  own
       labour,  why, then you shall get a hundred times more for it
       too; we, on the other hand, think also to  produce  for  you
       things  for  which you will requite us more highly than with
       the ordinary day's wages. We shall be willing to  get  along
       with  each  other all right, if only we have first agreed on
       this - that neither any longer needs to -  PRESENT  anything
       to  the  other....We  want  nothing  presented  by  you, but
       neither will we present you with anything. For centuries  we
       have  handed alms to you from good-hearted - stupidity, have
       doled out the mite of the poor and given to the masters  the
       things  that  are  -  not  the  masters'; now just open your
       wallet,  for  henceforth  our  ware  rises  in  price  quite
       enormously.  We  do  not  want  to  take  from you anything,
       anything at all, only you are to pay  better  for  what  you
       want  to  have.  What  then have you? 'I have an estate of a
       thousand acres.' And I am your plowman, and will  henceforth
       attend  to  your  fields  only for a full day's wages. 'Then
       I'll take another.' You won't find any, for we  plowmen  are
       no longer doing otherwise, and, if one puts in an appearance
       who takes less, then let him beware  of  us.  There  is  the
       housemaid, she too is now demanding as much, and you will no
       longer find one below this price. 'Why, then it is all  over
       with me.' Not so fast! You will doubtless take in as much as
       we; and, if it should not be so, we will take  off  so  much
       that  you  shall  have  wherewith to live like us. 'But I am
       accustomed to live better.' We have  nothing  against  that,
       but  it is not our lookout; if you can clear more, go ahead.
       Are we to hire out under rates, that you  may  have  a  good
       living?  The  rich  man  always  puts  off the poor with the
       words, 'What does your want concern me? See to  it  how  you
       make  your  way  through the world; that is YOUR AFFAIR, not
       mine.' Well, let us let it be our affair, then, and  let  us
       not  let  the  means  that  we  have  to  realise value from
       ourselves be  pilfered  from  us  by  the  rich.   'But  you
       uncultured  people really do not need so much.' Well, we are
       taking somewhat more in order that for it we may procure the
       culture  that  we  perhaps need....'O ill-starred equality!'
       No, my good old sir, nothing of equality. We  only  want  to








1


                                  - 38 -



       count for what we are worth, and, if you are worth more, you
       shall count for more right along. We only want to  be  WORTH
       OUR  PRICE, and think to show ourselves worth the price that
       you will pay." [80]

            Fifty years  later  Benjamin  Tucker  took  over  where
       Stirner left off:

       "The minute you remove privilege, the class that  now  enjoy
       it will be forced to sell their labour, and then, when there
       will be nothing but labour with which  to  buy  labour,  the
       distinction  between  wage-payers and wage-receivers will be
       wiped out, and every man will be a labourer exchanging  with
       fellow-labourers.   Not  to abolish wages, but to make EVERY
       man dependent upon wages and secure to every man  his  WHOLE
       wages  is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic
       Socialism aims to abolish is usury.  It  does  not  want  to
       deprive labour of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of
       its reward. It does not hold that labour should not be sold;
       it holds that capital should not be hired at usury." [81]

            Franklin D. Roosevelt  said  in  his  second  inaugural
       address  that  "We  have  always  known  that heedless self-
       interest was  bad  morals;  we  know  now  that  it  is  bad
       economics."  I've  tried  to show in this section that self-
       interest is "good morals." I now intend to show that  it  is
       also good economics.
































1


                                  - 39 -




                     CAPITALISM: FREEDOM PERVERTED

            "Permit me to issue and control the money of a
             nation and I care not who makes its laws."
                           - Meyer A. Rothchild

            Roosevelt, in blaming the depression of  the  'thirties
       on  "heedless self-interest," played a cheap political trick
       for which the world has been suffering ever since. The great
       crash  of 1929, far from being created by "free enterprise,"
       was created by government interference in the  free  market.
       The  Federal Reserve Board had been artificially controlling
       interest rates since 1913. The tax structure of the  country
       was  set up in such a way as to encourage ridiculously risky
       speculation  in  the  stock  market.  "Protective   tariffs"
       destroyed  anything  that  vaguely  resembled a free market.
       Immigration barriers prevented the free flow of  the  labour
       market.  Anti-trust laws threatened prosecution for charging
       less than the competition ("intent to monopolise")  and  for
       charging  the  same as the competition ("price fixing"), but
       graciously permitted  charging  more  than  the  competition
       (commonly  called  "going  out of business.") With all these
       legislative restraints and controls, Roosevelt still had the
       gall  to  blame the depression on the "free" market economy.
       But what was his answer to the  "ruthlessness"  of  freedom?
       This is what he had to say on taking office in 1933:

       "If we are to go forward, we must  move  as  a  trained  and
       loyal  army  willing  to  sacrifice  to the good of a common
       discipline, because without such discipline no  progress  is
       made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready
       and willing  to  submit  our  lives  and  property  to  such
       discipline because it makes possible a leadership which aims
       at a larger good." [82]

            We've been on  that  Keynesian  road  ever  since.  The
       "larger  good"  has become larger and larger until today the
       only cure the politicians come up  with  for  the  economy's
       ills  is  more  of the same poison which made it sick in the
       first place. The rationale for such a policy  was  expressed
       by G. D. H. Cole in 1933:

       "If once a departure is made from the  classical  method  of
       letting all the factors [of the economy] alone - and we have
       seen enough of that  method  [have  we?]  to  be  thoroughly
       dissatisfied  with  it - it becomes necessary to control ALL
       the factors...for interference with one,  while  the  others
       are  left  unregulated, is certain to result in a fatal lack
       of balance in the working of the economic system.." [83] (My
       emphasis)








1


                                  - 40 -


            Many people, on hearing the individualist  critique  of
       governmental  control  of the economy, jump to the erroneous
       conclusion that we believe in capitalism. I'm sorry  to  say
       that  some  anarchists - who should know better - share this
       common fallacy. In a letter to "Freedom" a few months ago  I
       tried  to  clear up this myth. Replying to an article by one
       of its editors, I had this to say:

       "First let me look at the term  'anarcho-capitalist.'  This,
       it   seems  to  me,  is  just  an  attempt  to  slander  the
       individualist-anarchists by using a supercharged  word  like
       'capitalist'  in  much the same way as the word 'anarchy' is
       popularly used to mean chaos and  disorder.  No  one  to  my
       knowledge  accepts the anarcho-capitalist label*, just as no
       one up to the time of Proudhon's memoir on property in  1840
       accepted the anarchist label. But, unlike Proudhon who could
       call himself an anarchist  by  stripping  the  word  of  its
       derogatory  connotation  and looking at its real MEANING, no
       one can logically call himself an anarcho-capitalist for the
       simple reason that it's a contradiction in terms: anarchists
       seek  the  abolition  of  the  state  while  capitalism   is
       inherently  dependent  upon  the  state.  Without the state,
       capitalism would inevitably fall, for  capitalism  rests  on
       the pillars of government privilege. Because of government a
       privileged  minority  can  monopolise  land,  limit  credit,
       restrict  exchange, give idle capital the power to increase,
       and,  through  interest,  rent,  profit,  and   taxes,   rob
       industrious labour of its products." [84]

            Now most anarchists when they attack capitalism  strike
       it  where  it  is strongest: in its advocacy of freedom. And
       how paradoxical  that  is.  Here  we  have  the  anarchists,
       champions  of  freedom  PAR  EXCELLENCE,  complaining  about
       freedom! How ridiculous, it seems to me, to find  anarchists
       attacking  Mr.  Heath  for  withdrawing government subsidies
       from museums and children's milk programmes. When anarchists
       start  screaming  for free museums, free milk, free subways,
       free medical care, free education,  etc.,  etc.,  they  only
       show  their  ignorance  of what freedom really is. All these
       "free" goodies which governments so graciously  shower  upon

       --------------------

            * I have since been informed that "the  term  'anarcho-
       capitalist'  is now in use in the USA - particularly amongst
       those  who  contribute  to  the  Los   Angeles   publication
       'Libertarian  Connection'."  It  seems  to  me  that  people
       accepting such a label must do so primarily  for  its  shock
       value.  Very  few  people  like  capitalists these days, and
       those who do certainly don't like anarchists.   What  better
       term could you find to offend everyone?









1


                                  - 41 -



       their  subjects  ultimately   come   from   the   recipients
       themselves  -  in  the  form  of taxes. Governments are very
       clever at concealing just how large this  sum  actually  is.
       They  speak  of  a  billion  pounds  here  and a few hundred
       million  dollars  there.  But  what  does  a   figure   like
       $229,232,000,000.00  (Nixon's proposed budget) actually mean
       to the taxpayer? Virtually nothing. It's just a long  string
       of  numbers  preceded  by  a  dollar  sign.  People  have no
       conception of numbers that size. But let me try to shed some
       light  on  this figure by breaking it down into a number the
       individual taxpayer can't help but understand:  the  average
       annual  cost  per family. This is a number governments NEVER
       talk about - for if they did, there would be a revolt  which
       would  make  the storming of the Bastille look like a Sunday
       school picnic. Here's how to  calculate  it:  you  take  the
       government's  annual  budget and divide it by the population
       of the country; then you multiply the result by the  average
       size  of  family (4.5 seems a reasonable number). Doing this
       for the American case cited, we come to  $4,800  (i.e.  2000
       pounds  per family per year!*). And that is just the FEDERAL
       tax bite. State and local taxes  (which  primarily  pay  for
       America's  "free" education and "free" public highways) have
       yet to be considered. I leave  it  as  an  exercise  to  the
       British reader to see why their "welfare state" also prefers
       to mask budgetary figures by using astronomical numbers.

            One thing should be clear from this example: nothing is
       for  nothing.  But the Santa Claus myth dies hard, even - or
       should I  say  especially?  -  among  anarchists.  The  only
       encouraging  sign  to  the  contrary  I  have  found  in the
       anarchist press of late was when Ian  Sutherland  complained
       in  the columns of "Freedom": "I object, strongly, to having
       a large section of my 'product', my contribution to society,
       forcibly  removed  from  me  by  a  paternalistic  state  to
       dispense to a fool with  10  kids."  [85]  Unfortunately,  I
       suspect   that   Mr   Sutherland   would  only  replace  the
       "paternalistic state" by the "paternalistic commune"  -  and
       in so doing would  still end up supporting those 10 kids. My
       suspicions were nourished by what he said in the  very  next
       paragraph  about  "laissez  faire" anarchists: "perhaps they

       --------------------

            *  I  am  usually  quite  conservative  in  my  use  of
       exclamation  marks.   When  I  used this example in a recent
       letter to "Freedom", the editors saw fit to insert one where
       I  had  not.  In  keeping  with  their  precedent, I will do
       likewise.











1


                                  - 42 -




       should join the Powellites." Perhaps  Mr  Sutherland  should
       learn what laissez faire means.

            Laissez  faire  is  a  term  coined   by   the   French
       physiocrats  during the eighteenth century. John Stuart Mill
       brought it into popular English usage with  the  publication
       in  1848  of his "Principles of Political Economy," where he
       examined  the   arguments   for   and   against   government
       intervention  in the economy. The "con" side of the argument
       he called laissez faire. "The principle of  'laissez  faire'
       in  economics  calls  for  perfect  freedom  in  production;
       distribution of the returns (or profit) to  the  factors  of
       production  according  to  the  productivity  of  each;  and
       finally, markets in which prices are determined by the  free
       interplay of forces that satisfy buyers and sellers." [86] I
       find it difficult to see how any advocate of  freedom  could
       possibly  object to a doctrine like this one. Unfortunately,
       what happened in the 19th century  was  that  a  handful  of
       capitalists,  who  were  anything  but believers if freedom,
       picked up this nice sounding catch  phrase  and  decided  to
       "improve"  upon  it. These "improvements" left them with the
       freedom to exploit labour but took away labour's freedom  to
       exploit   capital.  These  capitalists,  in  perverting  the
       original meaning of laissez faire,  struck  a  blow  against
       freedom  from  which  it  still  suffers  to  this day.  The
       capitalist who advocates laissez faire is a hypocrite. If he
       really  believed  in  freedom, he could not possibly condone
       the greatest invader of freedom known  to  man:  government.
       The  capitalist  necessarily relies on government to protect
       his privileged RIGHTS. Let us look at the foremost  advocate
       of  capitalism  today,  Ayn  Rand. Her book "Capitalism: The
       Unknown Ideal" has two appendices. The first  is  on  "Man's
       Rights"  where  she say, "INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ARE THE MEANS OF
       SUBORDINATING SOCIETY TO MORAL  LAW."  [87]  (Her  emphasis)
       Once  again  we  are  back  to  "rights"  and "morals" which
       Stirner so strongly warned us about.  And  where  does  this
       lead   us?   Directly   to  Appendix  Two,  "The  Nature  of
       Government," where she says that government  is  "necessary"
       because  "men  need  an institution charged with the task of
       protecting [you guessed it] their rights."  [88]  Let's  see
       what some of these precious rights are:

            I. Chapter 11 of Miss  Rand's  book  is  devoted  to  a
       defence  of  patent and copyright laws. In it she calls upon
       government to  "certify  the  origination  of  an  idea  and
       protect  its  owner's  exclusive right to use and disposal."
       [89] Realising the absurdity of PERPETUAL property in  ideas
       ("consider what would happen if, in producing an automobile,
       we had to pay  royalties  to  the  descendants  of  all  the
       inventors  involved, starting with the inventor of the wheel








1


                                  - 43 -



       and  on  up."  [90]),  she  goes  into  considerable  mental
       acrobatics  to  justify  intellectual property for a LIMITED
       time. But by so doing, she only  succeeds  in  arousing  our
       suspicion  of  her motives, for it seems strange that a mere
       lapse of time should negate something so precious as a man's
       "right"   to   his  property.  Admitting  that  "a  patented
       invention often tends to hamper or restrict further research
       and  development  in  a  given  area  of  science  [91], our
       champion of the unhampered economy nevertheless  manages  to
       justify  governmental  "protection" to secure the inventor's
       "rights." As for copyrights, our millionaire  author  thinks
       "the  most  rational"  length  of time for this governmental
       protection would be "for the  lifetime  of  the  author  and
       fifty years thereafter." [92] How does she justify all this?
       The way she justifies most  of  her  inane  arguments  -  by
       quoting  herself:  "Why  should  Rearden  be  the  only  one
       permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?" [93] Why indeed?

            II. Capitalists are fond of proclaiming the "rights" of
       private  property. One of their favourite property rights is
       the right to own land without  actually  occupying  it.  The
       only  way  this  can  possibly  be  done  is, once again, by
       government  protection  of  legal  pieces  of  paper  called
       "titles"  and  "deeds."  Without these scraps of paper, vast
       stretches of vacant land would be open to  those  who  could
       use  them  and  exorbitant rent could no longer be extracted
       from the non-owning user as tribute to the non-using owner.

            There  is  much  talk  these  days  of  a   "population
       explosion."  It  is  claimed  that land is becoming more and
       more scarce and that by the year such and such there will be
       38.2  people per square inch of land. But just how scarce is
       land? If all the world's land were divided up equally, every
       individual  would  have  more  than  ten  acres apiece. Even
       "crowded" islands like Britain and Japan have more  than  an
       acre  per  person on average. [94] When you consider how few
       people actually own any of this  land,  these  figures  seem
       incredible.  It's  no wonder then that the absentee landlord
       is a strong believer in property rights.  Without  them  his
       vulnerable  land  might actually be used to the advantage of
       the user.

            III. Capitalists have always been  great  believers  in
       the  sovereign  "rights"  of nations. Ayn Rand, for example,
       thinks it perfectly consistent with  her  brand  of  freedom
       that  the  United  States  government  should tax the people
       within its borders to support an army which  costs  tens  of
       billions  of  dollars  each  year. It is true that Miss Rand
       opposes the war in Vietnam. But why? Because  "IT  DOES  NOT
       SERVE ANY NATIONAL INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES." [95] (Her
       emphasis)  So  we  see  that  our   advocate   of   "limited








1


                                  - 44 -



       government"  wouldn't  go  so  far as to limit its strongest
       arm:  the  military.  Eighty  billion  dollars  a  year  for
       national  "defence" doesn't seem to phase her in the least -
       in fact, she would like to add on a few billion more to make
       "an  army career comparable to the standards of the civilian
       labour market." [96]

            As every anarchist knows, a frontier  is  nothing  more
       than  an  imaginary line drawn by a group of men with vested
       interests on their side of the line. That  "nations"  should
       exist is an absurdity.  That a highwayman (in the uniform of
       a customs official) should rob people as  they  cross  these
       imaginary  lines and turn back others who haven't the proper
       pieces of paper is an obscenity too indecent to relate  here
       -  there  may be children reading. But if there are children
       reading, perhaps they can enlighten their elders  about  the
       obvious - as they did when the emperor went out in his "new"
       clothes. The nationalists of the world are  strutting  about
       without a stitch of reason on. Can only a child see this?

            IV. The cruelest "right" - and the one least understood
       today  -  is  the  exclusive  right  of governments to issue
       money. There was a time  about  a  hundred  years  ago  when
       nearly  everyone  was  aware  of  the currency question. For
       several decades in the United States it  was  THE  political
       issue.   Whole  political parties formed around it (e.g. the
       Greenback and Populist parties). William Jennings Bryan, the
       three-time  Democratic candidate for the presidency, rose to
       fame with his  "easy  money"  speeches;  next  to  Lincoln's
       Gettysburg  address,  his "cross of gold" speech is probably
       the best-known public oration of 19th century  America.  Yet
       today  virtually  everyone  accepts the currency question as
       settled. Governments issue the money  people  use  and  they
       never  give  it a second thought - it's just there, like the
       sun and the moon.

            The   capitalist   is   vitally   interested   in   the
       government's  exclusive right to issue money. The capitalist
       is,  by  definition,  the  holder  of   capital;   and   the
       government, by making only a certain type of capital (namely
       gold) the legal basis of all money, gives to the  capitalist
       a  monopoly  power  to  compel all holders of property other
       than  the  kind  thus  privileged,  as  well  as  all   non-
       proprietors, to pay tribute to the capitalist for the use of
       a circulating medium  and  instrument  of  credit  which  is
       absolutely  necessary  to  carry  out  commerce and reap the
       benefits of the division of labour. A crude example  of  how
       this  system works is given by the Angolan "native tax." The
       Portuguese whites in Angola found it difficult to get  black
       labour  for  their coffee plantations, so they struck upon a
       rather ingenious scheme: tax the natives  and  the  natives,








1


                                  - 45 -



       having  to  pay  their tax in MONEY, would be forced to sell
       their labour to the only people who could give it to them  -
       the whiteman. [97]

            The same thing goes on today on  a  more  sophisticated
       level  in  our  more "civilised" societies. The worker needs
       money to carry out the business of everyday life.  He  needs
       food,  he  needs  housing,  he  needs clothing. To get these
       things he needs MONEY. And to get money he has to  sell  the
       only  thing  he's  got:  his  labour. Since he MUST sell his
       labour, he is put into a very bad bargaining  position  with
       the  buyers  of  labour:  the  capitalists.  This is how the
       capitalist grows rich. He buys labour in a cheap market  and
       sells his products back to the worker in a dear one. This is
       what Marx called the "surplus value theory" of  labour.  His
       analysis  (at  least  here)  was  right; his solution to the
       problem was wrong.

            The way Marx saw out of this trap was to abolish money.
       The  worker  would  then get the equivalent of his labour by
       pooling his products with other workers and taking out  what
       he  needed.  I've  already  exposed  the weak points of this
       theory. What is the individualist alternative?




































1


                                  - 46 -



                   MUTUALISM: THE ECONOMICS OF FREEDOM

         "There is perhaps no business which yields a profit so
          certain and  liberal  as the business  of banking and
          exchange,  and  it is proper  that it should  be open
          as far as  practicable  to the  most free competition
          and its  advantages shared by  all classes of people."

                   - Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, 1837




            When it comes to economics, most anarchists  reveal  an
       ignorance verging on the indecent. For example, in the first
       piece of the first issue of the new "Anarchy" the California
       Libertarian  Alliance  talks  in  all seriousness of "Marx's
       'labour theory of value,' which causes communist governments
       to  repress  homosexuals."  [98]  Now, passing over the fact
       that Adam Smith developed the principles of this theory long
       before  Marx  was  even born, I can't for the life of me see
       what  the  labour  theory  of  value  has  to  do  with  the
       repression  of  homosexuals - be they communist, capitalist,
       or mercantilist. Kropotkin was no better; in  his  "Conquest
       of Bread" he shows a total lack of any economic sense, as he
       amply demonstrates by his rejection of the  very  foundation
       of  any rational economic system: the division of labour. "A
       society that will satisfy the needs of all, and  which  will
       know  how  to  organise production, will also have to make a
       clean sweep of several prejudices concerning  industry,  and
       first  of  all  of the theory often preached by economists -
       The Division of Labour  Theory  -  which  we  are  going  to
       discuss   in   the   next  chapter....It  is  this  horrible
       principle, so noxious to  society,  so  brutalising  to  the
       individual,  source  of  so  much  harm,  that we propose to
       discuss in its divers manifestations." [99]  He  then  fills
       the  next  two  pages  of  perhaps  the  shortest chapter in
       history with a discussion of  this  theory  "in  its  divers
       manifestations."  In these few paragraphs he fancies himself
       as having overturned the economic thought of  centuries  and
       to  have  struck  "a  crushing  blow  at  the  theory of the
       division of labour which was supposed to be so sound." [100]
       Let's see just how sound it is.

            Primitive man discovered two great advantages to social
       life.  The  first  was  man's ability to gain knowledge, not
       only through  personal  experience,  but  also  through  the
       experience  of others. By learning from others, man was able
       to acquire knowledge which he could never have gained alone.










1


                                  - 47 -



       This knowledge was handed down from generation to generation
       -  growing  with  each  passing  year,  until  today   every
       individual  has  at  his  fingertips a wealth of information
       which took thousands of years to acquire. The  second  great
       advantage  of  social  life was man's discovery of trade. By
       being able to exchange goods, man  discovered  that  he  was
       able  to  concentrate  his  efforts  on a particular task at
       which he was especially  good  and/or  which  he  especially
       liked.  He  could  then trade the products of his labour for
       the products of the labour  of  others  who  specialised  in
       other  fields.  This  was found to be mutually beneficial to
       all concerned.

            That the  division  of  labour  is  beneficial  when  A
       produces one thing better than B and when B produces another
       thing better than A was obvious even to  the  caveman.  Each
       produces  that  which he does best and trades with the other
       to their mutual advantage. But what happens when A  produces
       BOTH  things  better  than  B?  David  Ricardo answered this
       question when he expounded his law of association  over  150
       years  ago.  This  law  is  best  illustrated  by a concrete
       example. Let us say that Jones can produce one pair of shoes
       in  3  hours  compared  to Smith's 5 hours.  Also let us say
       that Jones can produce  one  bushel  of  wheat  in  2  hours
       compared to Smith's 4 hours (cf. Table I). If each man is to
       work 120  hours,  what  is  the  most  advantageous  way  of
       dividing  up  the  work? Table II shows three cases: the two
       extremes where one man does only one job while the other man
       does  the  other, and the middle road where each man divides
       his time equally between jobs. It is clear  from  Table  III
       that  it  is  to  the  advantage  of  BOTH men that the most
       productive man should devote ALL of his energies to the  job
       which  he  does best (relative to the other) while the least
       productive man concentrates his energies on  the  other  job
       (case  3).  It  is  interesting  to note that in the reverse
       situation (case 1) - which is also the least productive case
       -  the  drop  in productivity is only 6% for Jones (the best
       worker), while  for  Smith  it's  a  whopping  11%.  So  the
       division  of  labour,  while helping both men, tends to help
       the least productive worker more  than  his  more  efficient
       workmate  -  a fact which opponents of this idea should note
       well.

            These figures show something which  is  pretty  obvious
       intuitively.   A  skilled surgeon, after many years invested
       in schooling, internship, practice, etc., may find his  time
       more  productively  spent  in actually performing operations
       than in washing his surgical instruments in preparation  for
       these  operations.  It  would seem natural, then, for him to
       hire a medical student (say for 1 pound per hour) to do  the
       washing up job while he does the operating (for say 3 pounds








1


                                  - 48 -







                         PRODUCTIVITY RATES
                         ------------------

           Time Necessary to Produce    Time Necessary  to  Produce
           One Pair of Shoes (Hours)    One Bushel of Wheat (Hours)
       ------------------------------------------------------------
       Jones:                      3                              2
       Smith:                      5                              4
       ------------------------------------------------------------

                               TABLE I

                      *    *    *    *    *    *

                PRODUCTIVITY UNDER DIVISION OF LABOUR
                -------------------------------------

                       Hours of    Hours of       Shoes       Bushels
                     Shoemaking     Farming    Produced      of Wheat
       --------------------------------------------------------------
                Jones       120           0          40             0
       Case 1   Smith         0         120           0            30
                Total       120         120          40            30
       --------------------------------------------------------------
                Jones        60          60          20            30
       Case 2   Smith        60          60          12            15
                Total       120         120          32            45
       --------------------------------------------------------------
                Jones         0         120           0            60
       Case 3   Smith       120           0          24             0
                Total       120         120          24            60
       --------------------------------------------------------------

                               TABLE II

                      *    *    *    *    *    *


              TIME NECESSARY TO PRODUCE THE SAME AMOUNT
                 OF GOODS WHILE WORKING ALONE (HOURS)
              -----------------------------------------

                         Jones                            Smith
       --------------------------------------------------------------
       Case 1:     120 +  60 = 180                    200 + 120 = 320
       Case 2:      96 +  90 = 186                    160 + 180 = 340
       Case 3:      72 + 120 = 192                    120 + 240 = 360
       --------------------------------------------------------------

                              TABLE III





1


                                  - 49 -



       per  hour).  Even  if  the  surgeon  could  wash   his   own
       instruments  twice  as fast as the student, this division of
       labour would be profitable for all concerned.

            If the earth were a homogeneous sphere, equally endowed
       with  natural  resources  at  each  and  every  point of its
       surface, and if each man were equally capable of  performing
       every  task  as  well as his neighbour, then the division of
       labour would have no ECONOMIC meaning.  There  would  be  no
       material  advantage  to letting someone else do for you what
       you could do equally well  yourself.  But  the  division  of
       labour  would  have  arisen  just  the  same  because of the
       variety of human tastes. It is a fact of human  nature  that
       not  all  people  like  doing the same things. Kropotkin may
       think this unfortunate, but I'm afraid that's the way  human
       beings  are  built.  And as long as this is the case, people
       are going to WANT to specialise their labour and trade their
       products with one another.

                       *    *    *    *    *    *

            Given the advantages of the division of labour, what is
       to  be  the  method  by  which  man  exchanges his products?
       Primitive man devised the barter system  for  this  purpose.
       But  it  wasn't  long  before the limitations of this system
       became apparent:

       "Let Peter own a horse; let James own a cow and a  pig;  let
       James's  cow  and pig, taken together, be worth precisely as
       much as Peter's horse; let Peter and James desire to make an
       exchange;  now,  what  shall  prevent  them  from making the
       exchange by direct barter? Again, let Peter own  the  horse;
       let  James  own  the  cow;  and  let John own the pig. Peter
       cannot exchange his horse for the cow, because he would lose
       by  the transaction; neither - and for the same reason - can
       he exchange it for the pig. The division of the horse  would
       result  in  the  destruction  of  its value. The hide, it is
       true, possesses an intrinsic value; and a dead  horse  makes
       excellent manure for a grapevine; nevertheless, the division
       of a horse results in the destruction  of  its  value  as  a
       living animal.  But if Peter barters his horse with Paul for
       an equivalent in wheat,  what  shall  prevent  him  from  so
       dividing  his  wheat as to qualify himself to offer to James
       an equivalent for his cow and to John an equivalent for  his
       pig?   If   Peter  trades  thus  with  James  and  John  the
       transaction is still barter,  though  the  wheat  serves  as
       currency  and  obviates  the  difficulty  in making change."
       [101]

           Thus currency (i.e, money) was born.  Many  things  have
       served  as money throughout the ages: slaves, gunpowder, and








1


                                  - 50 -



       even human skulls, to name but a few. The New Hebrides  used
       feathers  for their money and in Ethiopia salt circulated as
       the currency for centuries. But  by  far  the  most  popular
       medium  of  exchange  became  the  precious metals, gold and
       silver. There were several  reasons  for  this:  (1)  Unlike
       feathers  or  skulls,  they  have intrinsic value as metals.
       (2) They are sufficiently rare as to  impose  difficulty  in
       producing  them  and  sufficiently  common as to make it not
       impossible to do so. (3) Their value  fluctuates  relatively
       little  with  the passing of time. Even large strikes - such
       as those in California and Alaska - failed to  devalue  gold
       to  any appreciable extent. (4) They are particularly sturdy
       commodities, loosing relatively little due to the  wear  and
       tear  of  circulation.   (5)  They are easily divisible into
       fractional parts to facilitate small  purchases.  For  these
       and  other  reasons,  gold  and  silver  became  universally
       recognised as standards  of  value.  Certain  quantities  of
       these  metals  became  the  units  by which man measured the
       worth of an object. For example, the pound  sterling,  lira,
       and  ruble  were  originally terms for metallic weight while
       the drachma means literally a handful.

            As long as these metals served purely as  just  another
       commodity  to be bartered - albeit a very useful commodity -
       there was no inherent advantage in possessing  these  metals
       as such. It was not until governments declared them the sole
       LEGAL  medium  of  exchange  that  gold  and  silver  became
       intrinsically  oppressive.   Governments, by monetising gold
       and silver automatically demonetised  every  other  item  of
       capital.*   It  is  this  monopoly  which has been the chief
       obstacle in preventing men from  obtaining  the  product  of
       their  labour and which permitted the few men who controlled
       the money supply to roll  up  such  large  fortunes  at  the
       expense of labour.

            As long as the monetary structure was directly tied  to
       gold  and  silver,  the  volume  of money was limited by the
       amount of gold and silver available for coinage. It  is  for
       this reason that paper money - backed by "hard money" - came
       into being. The paper money was simply a promise "to pay the
       bearer  on  demand"  its  equivalent in specie (i.e. gold or

       --------------------
            * A natural question arises here: "That may  have  been
       true  up  until  40 years ago, but haven't governments since
       abandoned the gold standard?" The answer is no. As  long  as
       the  United  States government promises to buy and sell gold
       at $35 an ounce and as long as  the  International  Monetary
       Fund  (which stabilises the exchange rates) is based on gold
       and U.S. dollars, the world remains on the gold standard.









1


                                  - 51 -



       silver). Hence the words  "note"  and  "bill,"  which  imply
       debt.  Governments  were  at  first reluctant to issue paper
       money.  But  the  scarcity  of  money  in  an   increasingly
       commercial  world  soon  forced  them  to recant. The men of
       wealth, well aware of the threat that "easy money" posed  to
       their "hard money," insisted that such money be based solely
       on the wealth they already  possessed.  Governments  readily
       fell  into  line.  In  the  United States, from 1866, anyone
       issuing circulating notes was slapped  with  a  tax  of  10%
       until  it  was  completely  outlawed  in  1936.  The British
       government was even more severe; it gave the Bank of England
       monopoly  rights  to  issue  "bank  notes" as early as 1844.
       [102]

            When a man is forced to barter his products for  money,
       in  order  to  have  money to barter for such other products
       that he might want,  he is put at a  disadvantage  which the
       capitalist is all too ready to  exploit.   William B. Greene
       was one of the first to observe this fact:

       "Society  established  gold  and  silver  as  a  circulating
       medium,  in  order  that  exchanges  of commodities might be
       FACILITATED; but society made a mistake in so doing; for  by
       this very act it gave to a certain class of men the power of
       saying what exchanges shall, and what exchanges  shall  not,
       be FACILITATED by means of this very circulating medium. The
       monopolisers of the precious metals have an undue power over
       the  community;  they  can say whether money shall, or shall
       not, be permitted  to  exercise  its  legitimate  functions.
       These  men have a VETO on the action of money, and therefore
       on exchanges of commodity; and they will not take off  their
       VETO  until  they  have  received  usury,  or, as it is more
       politely termed, interest on their money. Here is the  great
       objection  to  the  present  currency.  Behold the manner in
       which the absurdity inherent in a specie currency - or, what
       is  still  worse, in a currency of paper based upon specie -
       manifests itself in actual operation!  The  mediating  value
       which  society  hoped  would facilitate exchanges becomes an
       absolute marketable commodity, itself transcending all reach
       of  mediation. The great natural difficulty which originally
       stood in the way of exchanges is now the private property of
       a class, and this class cultivates this difficulty, and make
       money out of it, even as a farmer cultivates  his  farm  and
       makes money by his labour. But there is a difference between
       the farmer and the  usurer;  for  the  farmer  benefits  the
       community as well as himself, while every dollar made by the
       usurer is a dollar taken  from  the  pocket  of  some  other
       individual,  since  the  usurer  cultivates  nothing  but an
       actual obstruction." [103]










1


                                  - 52 -



            The  legitimate  purpose  of  money  is  to  facilitate
       exchange. As Greene shows, specie - or money based on specie
       - accomplishes this purpose, but only at a terrible price to
       the  user.  The solution to the problem is to devise a money
       which has no value as a COMMODITY,  only  as  a  circulating
       medium. This money should also be available in such quantity
       as not to hamper any exchanges which  may  be  desired.  The
       organ  for  creating such a currency Greene called a "mutual
       bank."*

            Before considering the operations of a mutual bank, I'd
       like  to  look at how an ordinary bank functions. Let us say
       that Mr Brown, who owns a farm worth a few thousand  pounds,
       needs  500  pounds  to buy seed and equipment for the coming
       year. Not having that kind of money on hand, he goes to  the
       bank  to  borrow  it.  The  bank  readily  agrees  -  on the
       condition that at the end of the year Brown  not  only  pays
       back  the 500 pounds borrowed, but also 50 pounds which they
       call "interest." Farmer Brown has no choice; he needs  MONEY
       because  that  is  all the seed dealer will accept as "legal
       tender." So he agrees to the  conditions  set  down  by  the
       bank. After a year of hard work, and with a bit of luck from
       the weather, he  harvests  his  crops  and  exchanges  (i.e.
       "sells") his produce - for money. He takes 550 pounds to the
       bank and cancels his debt. The net result  of  all  this  is
       that  some  banker  is  50 pounds richer for doing a minimal
       amount of work (perhaps a few hours of  bookkeeping)  at  no
       risk to himself (the farm was collateral), while Mr Brown is
       50 pounds out of pocket.

            Now let's see where Greene's idea leads us. A group  of
       people  get together and decide to set up a mutual bank. The
       bank will issue notes which all members of the bank agree to
       accept  as "money." Taking the above example, Mr Brown could
       get five hundred of these notes by mortgaging his  farm  and
       discounting with the bank a mortgage note for that sum. With
       the notes, he buys his seed from Smith and some  tools  from
       Jones.  Smith and Jones in turn exchange some of these newly
       acquired notes for some things they need. And  so  on  until
       the  end  of  the year when Brown exchanges his farm produce
       and receives for them - mutual bank  notes.  Does  all  this
       sound  familiar?  It  should,  for  up  until  now, from all
       outward appearances, there has been  no  difference  between
       our  mutual bank and an ordinary specie bank. But it's here,

       --------------------
            *  Proudhon's  bank,  "la   banque   du   peuple,"   is
       essentially  the  same.   For  a  detailed  account  of  the
       workings of each bank  see  Greene's  "Mutual  Banking"  and
       Proudhon's  "Solution of the Social Problem" and "Revolution
       in the Nineteenth Century."








1


                                  - 53 -



       however, that the change comes in.  Mr  Brown  goes  to  the
       mutual  bank  with  his notes and gives the bank 500 of them
       plus ONE OR TWO extra to help pay for the operating expenses
       of  the  bank  over  the  past  year.  The  bank cancels his
       mortgage and Mr Brown walks away thinking how nice it is  to
       be a member of such a wonderful bank.

            Now notice that it was never mentioned that  Smith  and
       Jones  were  members of the bank. They may have been, but it
       wasn't necessary. Smith, the seed dealer, might  not  belong
       to  the bank and yet be willing to accept its notes. He's in
       business, after all, and if the  only  money  Brown  has  is
       mutual  money, that's all right with him - as long as he can
       get rid of it when HE wants to buy something. And of  course
       he  can because he knows there are other members of the bank
       pledged to receiving these notes. Besides, Brown  will  need
       at  least 500 of them eventually to pay off his mortgage. So
       Smith accepts the money, and he too profits from this  novel
       scheme.  In fact, the only one who seems to be any the worse
       is the poor usurous banker. But I'm afraid he will just have
       to  find  himself an honest job and work for his living like
       everyone else.

            John   Stuart   Mill   defined   capital   as   "wealth
       appropriated  to  reproductive  employment."  In our example
       above, farmer Brown's 500 pounds is capital since he intends
       to  use it for creating new wealth. But Mr Brown can use his
       capital in any number of ways: he may decide to  use  it  to
       buy  seeds  for  planting  corn;  or  he may decide that his
       ground is better suited for growing wheat, or he may  decide
       to invest in a new tractor. This 500 pounds, then, is liquid
       capital or, as Greene called it, disengaged capital. When Mr
       Brown  buys  his  seeds  and  tools,  these things are still
       designed for "reproductive employment,"  and  are  therefore
       still  capital.  But what kind of capital? Evidently, frozen
       or engaged capital. He then plants his  seeds  and  harvests
       his  crops  with  the aid of his new tractor. The produce he
       grows is no longer capital because it is no  longer  capable
       of being "appropriated to reproductive employment."  What is
       it, then? Evidently, it is product. Mr Brown then takes  his
       goods  to  town  and sells them at market value for somewhat
       more than the 500 pounds he  originally  started  out  with.
       This "profit" is entirely due to his labour as a farmer (and
       perhaps to some extent his skill as a salesman).  The  money
       he  receives  for  his  goods  become,  once  again,  liquid
       capital.  So  we  have  came  full  circle:  liquid  capital
       becomes  frozen  capital;  frozen  capital  becomes product;
       product becomes liquid capital. And  the  cycle  starts  all
       over again.

            A society is prosperous when money flows freely -  that








1


                                  - 54 -



       is  when each man is able to easily convert his product into
       liquid capital. A society  is  unprosperous  when  money  is
       tight  -  that  is,  when  exchange  is difficult to effect.
       Mutual  banking  makes  as  much  money  available   as   is
       necessary.  When  a  man  needs  money he simply goes to his
       friendly mutual bank, mortgages some property, and  receives
       the notes of the bank in return. What this system does is to
       allow a man to circulate  his  CREDIT.  Whoever  goes  to  a
       mutual  bank  and mortgages some of his property will always
       receive money, for a mutual bank  can  issue  money  to  any
       extent.  This  money  will  always be good because it is all
       based on actual property which, if necessary, could be  sold
       to  pay  off  bad  debts.  The mutual bank, of course, would
       never give PERSONAL credit, for to  do  so  would  give  the
       notes  an element of risk and render them unstable. But what
       about the man with no property to pledge?   Greene  answered
       this question as follows:

       "If we knew of  a  plan  whereby,  through  an  act  of  the
       legislature,  every  member  of  the community might be made
       rich, we would destroy this petition  and  draw  up  another
       embodying  that  plan.   Meanwhile, we affirm that no system
       was ever devised so beneficial to the poor as the system  of
       mutual  banking;  for  if  a  man having nothing to offer in
       pledge, has a friend who  is  a  property  holder  and  that
       friend is willing to furnish security for him, he can borrow
       money at the mutual bank at a rate of 1%  interest  a  year;
       whereas, if he should borrow at the existing banks, he would
       be obliged to pay 6%. Again  as  mutual  banking  will  make
       money  exceedingly  plenty, it will cause a rise in the rate
       of wages, thus benefiting the man who has  no  property  but
       his  bodily  strength; and it will not cause a proportionate
       increase in the price of the necessaries of  life:  for  the
       price of provisions, etc., depends on supply and demand; and
       mutual banking operates, not directly on supply and  demand,
       but  to the diminution of the rate of interest on the medium
       of exchange. But certain  mechanics  and  farmers  say,  'We
       borrow  no  money,  and therefore pay no interest. How, then
       does this thing concern us?'  Harken,  my  friends!  let  us
       reason  together. I have an impression on my mind that it is
       precisely the class who have no dealings with the banks, and
       derive  no advantages from them, that ultimately pay all the
       interest money that is paid.  When  a  manufacturer  borrows
       money  to  carry  on his business, he counts the interest he
       pays as a part of  his  expenses,  and  therefore  adds  the
       amount  of  interest to the price of his goods. The consumer
       who buys the goods pays the interest when he  pays  for  the
       goods;  and who is the consumer, if not the mechanic and the
       farmer? If a manufacturer could borrow money at 1%, he could
       afford  to  undersell  all  his competitors, to the manifest
       advantage of the farmer and mechanic. The manufacturer would








1


                                  - 55 -



       neither  gain nor lose; the farmer and mechanic, who have no
       dealings with the bank, would gain the whole difference; and
       the  bank  -  which,  were it not for the competition of the
       mutual bank, would have loaned the money at  6%  interest  -
       would lose the whole difference. It is the indirect relation
       of the bank to the farmer and mechanic, and not  its  direct
       relation  to  the manufacturer and merchant, that enables it
       to make money." [104]

            Mutual banking, by broadening the currency base,  makes
       money  plentiful.  The  resulting stimulus to business would
       create an unprecedented demand for labour - a  demand  which
       would  always  be in excess of the supply. Then, as Benjamin
       Tucker observed:

       "When two labourers are after one employer, wages fall,  but
       when  two  employers  are  after  one  labourer, wages rise.
       Labour will then be in a position to dictate its wages,  and
       will  thus secure its natural wage, its entire product. Thus
       the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.
       But  this  is  not  all.   Down  will  go  profits also. For
       merchants, instead of buying at high prices on credit,  will
       borrow  money  of the banks at less than one percent, buy at
       low prices for cash, and correspondingly reduce  the  prices
       of their goods to their customers. And with the rest will go
       house-rent. For no one who can borrow capital at one percent
       with  which  to build a house of his own will consent to pay
       rent to a landlord at a higher rate than that." [105]

            Unlike the "boom and bust"  cycles  we  now  experience
       under  the  present system, mutualism would know nothing but
       "boom." For the present "busts" come  when  the  economy  is
       "overheated"  and  when there is so-called "overproduction."
       As long as most of humanity lead lives of abject poverty, we
       can  never  speak realistically of "over-production." And as
       long as each hungry  belly  comes  with  a  pair  of  hands,
       mutualism  will  be  there  to give those hands work to fill
       that belly.





















1


                                  - 56 -



               AN AFTERWORD TO COMMUNIST-ANARCHIST READERS

            What generally distinguishes you  from  your  communist
       brother  in  some  authoritarian  sect is your basic lack of
       dogmatism. The state socialist is always towing  some  party
       line.  When  it comes to creative thinking his brain is in a
       mental straitjacket, with no more give and take in his  mind
       than  you  will  find in the mind of a dog watching a rabbit
       hole. You, on the contrary, pride yourself  on  being  "your
       own man." Having no leaders, prophets, Messiahs, or Popes to
       refer to for divine guidance, you can  afford  to  use  YOUR
       mind  to  analyse the facts as YOU see them and come up with
       YOUR conclusions. You are, in your fundamental  metaphysics,
       an  agnostic.  You  are  broad  minded to a fault...how else
       could you have read this far?

            But when it comes  to  economics,  your  mind  suddenly
       becomes  rigid.  You  forget your sound anarchist principles
       and surrender without a struggle the one  thing  that  makes
       you  an  anarchist:  your  freedom.  You suddenly develop an
       enormous capacity for believing and especially for believing
       what  is palpably not true. By invoking a set of second hand
       dogmas (Marxist hand-me-downs) which  condemn  outright  the
       free  market  economy,  you smuggle in through the back door
       authoritarian ideas which  you  had  barred  from  the  main
       entrance.  In  commendably  searching  for  remedies against
       poverty, inequality and injustice, you forsake the  doctrine
       of  freedom  for  the  doctrine of authority and in so doing
       come step by step to endorse all the  fallacies  of  Marxist
       economics.  A  few  years  ago  S.  E.  Parker wrote an open
       letter to the editors of "Freedom" in which he said:

       "The trouble is that what you call 'anarchism'  is  at  best
       merely   a   hodge-podge,   halfway   position  precariously
       suspended between socialism and anarchism. You yearn for the
       ego-sovereignty,  the  liberating individualism, that is the
       essence  of  anarchism,   but   remain   captives   of   the
       democratic-proletarian-collectivist   myths   of  socialism.
       Until you can cut the umbilical cord that still connects you
       to the socialist womb you will never be able to come to your
       full power as self-owning individuals.  You  will  still  be
       lured  along  the path to the lemonade springs and cigarette
       trees of the Big Rock Candy Mountains." [106]

             This article was written for you in hopes of relieving
       you of your schizophrenic condition.  The fact that you call
       yourself an anarchist shows that  you  have  an  instinctual
       "feeling"  for  freedom.  I  hope  that  this  article  will
       encourage you to  seek  to  put  that  feeling  on  a  sound
       foundation.   I  am  confident  that  when  you do, you will
       reject your communist half.








1


                                  - 57 -



                                REFERENCES

       1. Joseph Stalin, "Anarchism or Socialism" (Moscow;  Foreign
       Languages  Publishing  House,  1950), p. 85. Written in 1906
       but never finished.

       2. Ibid., pp. 90-1.

       3. Ibid., p.95.

       4. Ibid., p. 87.

       5. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "What  is  Property:  An  Inquiry
       into  the  Principle  of  Right  and  of Government," trans.
       Benjamin  R.  Tucker  (London:  William  Reeves),  p.   260.
       Originally published in French in 1840.

       6. Bill Dwyer, "This World", "Freedom," March 27, 1971.

       7. Pierre Kropotkine, "Paroles d'un Revolte" (Paris:  Ernest
       Flammarion, 1885), pp. 318-9.

       8. Paul Eltzbacher, "Anarchism: Exponents of  the  Anarchist
       Philosophy,"  trans. Steven T. Byington, ed. James J. Martin
       (London: Freedom Press, 1960), p. 108. "Der Anarchismus" was
       originally published in Berlin in 1900.

       9. Ibid., p. 109.

       10. Ibid., p. 110.

       11. Herbert Spencer, "The Man Versus The State," ed.  Donald
       MacRae  (London:  Penguin  Books, 1969),  p. 151. Originally
       published in 1884.

       12. Prince Peter Kropotkin, "The Conquest of Bread" (London:
       Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1906), p. 41.

       13. Eltzbacher, op. cit., p. 101.

       14. Kropotkin, op. cit., p. 209.

       15. Ibid., p. 206.

       16. Henry David Thoreau, "Journal," March 11, 1856.

       17. Kropotkin, op. cit., p. 206.

       18. Ibid., p. 205.









1


                                  - 58 -



       19. Errico  Malatesta,  "Anarchy"  (London:  Freedom  Press,
       1949), p. 33. Originally published in 1907.

       20.  Alexander  Berkman,  "A.B.C.  of  Anarchism"   (London:
       Freedom Press, 1964), p. 27. This is the abbreviated version
       of the Vanguard Press "ABC  of  Communist  Anarchism"  which
       appeared in 1929.

       21. Ibid., p. 28.

       22. Ibid., p. 29.

       23. Ibid., p. 25.

       24. "Italy: An Illness of Convenience," "Newsweek,"  January
       4, 1971, p. 44.

       25. "Un Forum Legislatif de la Classe  Ouvriere?",  "Granma"
       (French edition), January 31, 1971, p. 3.

       26. "Cuba  Announces  Labor  Penalties  For  Loafers,"  "The
       International Herald Tribune," March 19, 1971, p. 4.

       27. Theodore Roszak,  "The  Making  of  a  Counter  Culture"
       (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 29.

       28. Kropotkin, op. cit., pp. 236-7.

       29. Mikhail Bakunin, "The Political Philosophy  of  Bakunin:
       Scientific  Anarchism,"  ed.  G.  P. Maximoff (New York: The
       Free Press, 1953), p. 285.

       30. Homer Lane, "Talks to  Parents  and  Teachers"  (London:
       George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1928), p. 121.

       31.  Paul  Goodman,  "Compulsory  Mis-education"  and   "The
       Community  of  Scholars"  (New  York:  Vintage  Books, 1962,
       1964), p. 174.

       32. Erich Fromm, "Fear  of  Freedom"  (London:  Routledge  &
       Kegan  Paul,  Ltd.,  1960),  p.  34.  First published in the
       United States in 1942 under the title "Escape from Freedom."

       33. Petr Kropotkin, "Mutual  Aid:  A  Factor  of  Evolution"
       (Boston:  Extending Horizons Books, 1955), p. 297. This book
       first appeared in London in 1902.

       34. Ibid., p. 166.

       35. Ibid., p. 169.









1


                                  - 59 -



       36. Ibid., p. 176.

       37. Ibid., p. 176.

       38. Ibid., pp. 172-3.

       39. Ibid., p. 176.

       40. Ibid., p. 174.

       41. Ibid., p. 177.

       42. Ibid., p. 194.

       43. Ibid., p. 194.

       44. Ibid,, p. 194.

       45. Ibid., pp. 194-5.

       46. Ibid., pp. 209-10.

       47. Ibid., p. 214.

       48. Kropotkine, "Paroles," p. 333.

       49. Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid," p. 215.

       50. Ibid., p. 217.

       51. Ibid., p. 219.

       52. Rudolf Rocker, "Nationalism and Culture," trans. Ray  E.
       Chase (Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1937), p.
       92.

       53. Ibid., p. 91.

       54. Ibid., p. 92.

       55. Proudhon, op. cit., pp. 248-51.

       56. Herbert Marcuse, "Reason and Revolution: Hegel  and  the
       Rise  of  Social  Theory"  (London:  Routledge & Kegan Paul,
       Ltd., 1967), p. 435.  This  quotation  was  taken  from  the
       supplementary chapter written in 1954. The original book was
       first published by Oxford University Press in 1941.

       57. Kropotkine, Paroles, p. 341.

       58. Ibid., p. 342.








1


                                  - 60 -



       59. Noam  Chomsky,  "Notes  on  Anarchism,"  "Anarchy  116,"
       October, 1970, p. 316.

       60. Ibid., p. 318.

       61. Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," 1965.

       62. Eltzbacher, op. cit., p. 89.

       63. Ibid., p. 57.

       64. Benjamin R. Tucker, "Instead of a Book  (By  a  Man  Too
       Busy  to  Write  One)" (New York: Benj. R. Tucker, 1897), p.
       401. Reprinted from "Liberty," May 12, 1888.

       65. Max Stirner (Johann Kaspar Schmidt), "The  Ego  and  His
       Own:  The  Case of the Individual Against Authority," trans.
       Steven T. Byington (New York: Libertarian Book Club,  1963),
       p.  298. "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" was written in 1844
       and translated into English in 1907, when it  was  published
       in New York by Benj. Tucker.

       66. Agatha Christie, "Destination Unknown" (London:  Fontana
       Books), p. 98.

       67. Spencer, op, cit., pp. 323-4.

       68. Stalin, op. cit., p. 97.

       69. Robert Burns, "To a Mouse," 1785, stanza 7.

       70. S. E. Parker, "Letters", "Freedom," February 27, 1971.

       71. Tucker, "Instead of a  Book,"  p.  413.  Reprinted  from
       "Liberty," October 4, 1884.

       72. Tucker, "Instead of a  Book,"  p.  422.  Reprinted  from
       "Liberty," June 23, 1888.

       73. Stirner, op. cit., p. 210.

       74. Ibid., p. 319.

       75. Proudhon, op. cit., pp. 243-4.

       76. Stirner, op. cit., p. 179.

       77. Ibid., p. 291.

       78. "At the Summit  of  the  Affluent  U.S.  Society,"  "The
       International Herald Tribune." March 19, 1971, p. 1.








1


                                  - 61 -



       79. "Newsweek," February 1, 1971 , p. 44.

       80. Stirner, op. cit., pp. 270-2.

       81. Tucker, "Instead of a  Book,"  p.  404.  Reprinted  from
       "Liberty," April 28, 1888.

       82. Quoted from Charles  A.  Reich's  article  in  "The  New
       Yorker"  magazine, "The Greening of American," September 26,
       1970.

       83. G. D. H. Cole,  "What  Everybody  Wants  To  Know  About
       Money" (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1933), pp. 526-7.

       84. Ken Knudson, "Letters", "Freedom," November 14, 1970.

       85.  Ian  S.  Sutherland,  "Doomsday  &  After,"  "Freedom,"
       February 27, 1971.

       86. "Laissez Faire," "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1965,  vol.
       XIII, p. 606.

       87. Ayn Rand, "Capitalism: The  Unknown  Ideal"  (New  York:
       Signet Books, 1967), p 320.

       88. Ibid., p. 331.

       89. Ibid., p. 131.

       90. Ibid., pp. 131-2.

       91. Ibid., pp. 132-3.

       92. Ibid., p, 132.

       93. Ibid., p. 134.

       94.   "Geographical   Summaries:   Area   and   Population,"
       Encyclopaedia Britannica Atlas," 1965, p. 199.

       95. Rand, op. cit., p. 224.

       96. Ibid., p. 229.

       97. Douglas Marchant, "Angola," "Anarchy 112,"  June,  1970,
       p. 184.

       98. "Libertarian  Message  to  Gay  Liberation,"  "Anarchy,"
       February, 1971, p. 2.

       99. Kropotkin, "Conquest of Bread," pp. 245 & 248.








1


                                  - 62 -



       100. Ibid., p. 250.

       101. William B. Greene, "Mutual  Banking,"  from  Proudhon's
       "Solution of the Social Problem," ed. Henry Cohen (New York:
       Vanguard Press, 1927), p. 177.

       102. "Money," "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1965, vol. XV,  p.
       703.

       103. Greene, op. cit., p. 180.

       104. Ibid., pp. 196-7.

       105. Tucker, "Instead of  a  Book"  p.  12,  Reprinted  from
       "Liberty," March 10, 1888.

       106. S. E. Parker, "Enemies of Society: An  Open  Letter  to
       the  Editors  of  Freedom,"  "Minus  One," October-December,
       1967, p. 4.








































