an organisation; the whims of sovereign "individuals" will be kept within reasonable bounds by the wants of society, by the logic of the situation. And, nevertheless, we shall be in the midst of full-blown Anarchy; individual liberty will be safe and sound. This seems incredible, but it is true; there is anarchy, and there is organisation, there are obligatory rules for everyone, and yet everyone does what he likes. You do not follow? 'Tis simple enough. This organisation—it is not the "authoritarian" revolutionists who will have created it;—these rules, obligatory upon all, and yet anarchical, it is the People, the Great Misunderstood, who will have proclaimed them, and the People are very knowing as anyone who has seen,—what Kropotkine never had the opportunity of seeing—days of barricade riots, knows.[1]
But if the Great Misunderstood had the stupidity to create the "bureaux" so detested of Kropotkine? If, as it did in March, 1871, it gave itself a revolutionary Government? Then we shall say the people is mistaken, and shall try to bring it back to a better state of mind, and if need
- ↑ As, however, Kropotkine was in London at the time of the great Dock Strike, and therefore had an opportunity learning how the food supply was managed for the strikers, it is worth pointing out that this was managed quite differently from the method suggested above. An organised Committee, consisting of Trade Unionists helped by State Socialists (Champion) and Social-Democrats (John Burns, Tom Mann, Eleanor Marx Aveling, etc.) made contracts with shopkeepers, and distributed stamped tickets, for which could be obtained certain articles of food. The food supplied was paid for with the money that had been raised by subscriptions, and to these subscriptions the bourgeois public, encouraged by the bourgeois press, had very largely contributed. Direct distributions of food to strikers, and those thrown out of work through the strike, were made by the Salvation Army,an essentially centralised, bureaucratically organised body, and other philanthropic societies. All this has very little to do with the procuring and distributing of the food supply, "the day after the revolution;" with the organising of the "service for supplying food." The food was there, and it was only a question of buying and dividing it as a means of support. The "People," i.e., the strikers, by no means helped themselves in this respect; they were helped by others.
