
                           Peter Kropotkin:  On Order

We are often reproached for accepting as a label this word *anarchy*, which
frightens many people so much.  "Your ideas are excellent", we are told, "but
you must admit that the name of your party is an unfortunate choice.  Anarchy
in common language is synonymous with disorder and chaos; the word brings to
mind the idea of interests clashing, of individuals struggling, which cannot
lead to the establishment of harmony".
   Let us begin by pointing out that a party devoted to action, a party
representing a new tendancy, seldom has the opportunity of choosing a name for
itself.  It was not the *Beggars* of Brabant who made up their name, which
later came to be popular.  But, beginning as a nickname - and a well-chosen one
- it was taken up by the party, accepted generally, and soon became its proud
title.  It will also be seen that this word summed up a whole idea.
   And the *Sans-culottes* of 1793?  It was the enemies of the popular
revolution who coined this name; but it too summed up a whole idea - that of
the rebellion of the people, dressed in rage, tired of poverty, opposed to all
those royalists, the so-called patriots and Jacobins, the well-dressed and the
smart, those who, despite their pompous speeches and the homage paid to them by
bourgeois historians, were the real enemies of the people, profoundly despising
them for their poverty, for their libertarian and egalitarian spirit, and for
their revolutionary enthusiasm.
   It was the same with the name of the *Nihilists*, which puzzles journalists
so much and let to so much playing with words, good and bad, until it was
understood to refer not to a peculier - almost religious - sect, but to a real
revolutionary force.  Coined my Turgenev in his novel *Fathers and Sons*, it
was adopted by the "fathers", who used the nickname to take revenge for the
disobedience of the "sons".  But the sons accepted it and, when they later
realised that it gave rise to misunderstanding and tried to get rid of it, this
was impossible.  The press and the public would not describe the Russian
revolutionaries by any other name.  Anyway the name was by no means badly
chosen, for again it sums up an idea; it expresses the negation of the whole of
activity of present civilisation, based on the opression of one class by
another - the negation of the present economic system.  the negation of
government and power, of bourgeois morality, of art for the sake of the
exploiters, of fashions and manners which are grotesque or revoltingly
hypocritical, of all that present society has inherited from past centuries: in
a word, the negation of everything which bourgeois civilisation today treats
with reverence.
   It was the same with the anarchists.  When a party emerged within the
International which denied authority to the Association and also rebelled
against authority in all its forms, this party at first called itself
*federalist*, then *anti-statist* or *anti-authoritarian*.  At that period they
actually avoided using the name *anarchist*.  The word *an-archy* (that is how
it was written then) seemed to identify the party too closely with the
Proudhonists, whose ideas about economic reform were at that time opposed by
the International.  But it is precisely because of this - to cause confusion -
that its enemies decided to make use of the name; after all, it made it
possible to say that the very name of the anarchist proved that their only
ambition was to create disorder and chaos without caring about the result.
   The anarchist party quickly accepted the name it has been given.  At first
it insisted on the hyphen between *an* and *archy*, explaining that in this
form the work *an-archy* - which comes from the Greek - means "no authority"
and not "disordeR"; but it soon accepted the word as it was, and stopped giving
extra work to proof readers and Greek lessons to the public.
   So the word returned to its basic, normal, common meaning, as expressed in
1816 by the English philosopher Bentham, in the following terms: "The
philosopher who wished to reform a bad law", he said, "does not preach an
insurrection against it....  The character of the anarchist is quite different.
He denies the existence of the law, he rejects its validity, he incites men to
refuse to recognise it as law and to rise up against its execution".  The sense
of the word has become wider today; the anarchist denies not just existing
laws, but all established power, all authority; however its essense has
remained the same: it rebels - and this is what it starts from - against power
and authority in any form.
   But, we are told, this word brings to mind the negation of order, and
consequently the idea of disorder, or chaos.
   Let us however make sure we understand one another - what order are we
talking about?  Is it the harmony which we anarchists dream of, the harmony in
human relations which will be established freely when humanity ceases to be
divided into two classes, one of which is sacrificed for the benefit of the
other, the harmony which will emerge spontaneously from the unity of interests
when all men belong to one and the same family, when each works for the good of
all and all for the good of each?  Obviously not!  Those who accuse anarchy of
being the negation of order are not talking about this harmony of the future;
they are talking about order as it is thought of in our present society.  So
let us see what this order in which anarchy wishes to destroy.
   Order today - what *they* mean by order - is nine-tenths of mankind working
to provide luxury, pleasure and the satisfaction of the most disgusting
passions for a handful of idlers.
   Order is nine-tenths being deprived of everything which is a necessary
condition for a decent life, for the reasonable development of intellectual
faculties.  To reduce nine-tenths of mankind to the state of beast of burden
living from day to day, without ever daring to think of the pleasures provided
for man by scientific study and artistic creation - that is order!
   Order is poverty and famine become the normal state of society.  it is the
Irish peasant dying of starvation; it is the peasants of a third of Russia
dying of diptheria and typhus, and of hunger following scarcity - at a time
when stored grain is being sent abroad.  It is the people of Italy reduced to
abandoning their fertile countryside and wandering across Europe looking for
tunnels to dig, where they risk being buried after existing only a few months
or so.  It is the land taken away from the peasant to raise animals to feed the
rich; it is the land left fallow rather than being restored to those who ask
nothing more than to cultivate it.
   Order is the woman selling herself to feed her children, it is the child
reduced to being shut up in a factory or to dying of starvation, it is the
worker reduced to the state of a machine.  It is the spectre of the worker
rising up against the rich, the spectre of the people rising against the
government.
   Order is an infinitesimal minority raised to positions of power, which for
this reason imposes itself on the majority and which raises children to occupy
the same positions later so as to maintain the same privileges by trickery,
corruption, violence and butchery.
   Order is the continuous warfare of man against man, trade against trade,
class against class, country against country.  It is the cannon whose roar
never ceases in Europe, it is the countryside laid waste, the sacrifice of
whole generations on the battlefield, the destruction in a single year of the
wealth built up by centuries of hard work.
   Order is slavery, thought in chains, the degradation of the human race
maintained by sword and lash.  It is the sudden death by explosion or the slow
death by suffocation of hundreds of miners who are blown up or buried every
year by the greed of the bosses - and are shot or bayoneted as soon as they
dare complain.
   Finally, order is the Paris Commune, drowned in blood.  It is the death of
thirty thousand men, women and children, cut to pieces by shells, shot down,
buried in quicklime beneath the streets of Paris.  It is the face of the youth
of Russia, locked in the prisons, buried in the snows of Siberia, and - in the
case of the best, the purest, and the most devoted - strangled in the hangman's
noose.
*That is order!*
And disorder - what *they* call disorder?
   It is the rising of the people against this shameful order, bursting their
bonds, shattering their fetters and moving towards a better future.  It is the
most glorious deeds in the history of humanity.
   It is the rebellion of thought on the eve of revolution; it is the upsetting
of hypotheses sanctioned by unchanging centuries; it is the breaking of a flood
of new ideas, or daring inventions, it is the solution of scientific problems.
Disorder is the abolition of ancient slavery, it is the rise of the communes,
the abolition of feudal serfdom, the attempts at the abolition of economic
serfdom.
   Disorder is peasant revolts against priests and landowners, burning castles
to make room for cottages, leaving the hovels to take their place in the sun.
It is France abolishing the monarchy and dealing a mortal blow at serfdom in
the whole of Western Europe.
   Disorder is 1848 making kings tremble, and proclaiming the right to work.
It is the people of Paris fighting for a new idea and, when they die in the
massacres, leaving to humanity the idea of the free commune, and opening the
way towards this revolution which we can feel approaching and which will be the
Social Revolution.
   Disorder - what *they* call disorder - is periods during which whole
generations keep up a ceaseless struggle and sacrifice themselves to prepare
humanity for a better existence, in getting rid of past slavery.  It is periods
during which the popular genius takes free flight and in a few years makes
gigantic advances without which man would have remained in the state of an
ancient slave, a creeping thing, degraded by poverty.
   Disorder is the breaking out of the finest passions and the greatest
sacrifices, it is the epic of the supreme love of humanity!
   The word *anarchy*, implying the negation of this order and invoking the
memory of the finest moments in the lives of peoples - is it not well chosen
for a party which is moving towards the conquest of a better future?
