of society. Everything will be done by means of "free arrangement."
"Well, Citizens, let others preach industrial barracks, and the convent of "Authoritarian" Communism, we declare that the tendency of societies is in the opposite direction. We see millions and millions of groups constituting themselves freely in order to satisfy all the varied wants of human beings, groups formed, some by districts, by streets, by houses; others holding out hands across the walls (!) of cities, of frontiers, of oceans. All made up of human beings freely seeking one another, and having done their work as producers, associating themselves, to consume, or to produce articles of luxury, or to turn science into a new direction. This is the tendency of the nineteenth century, and we are following it; we ask only to develop it freely, without let or hindrance on the part of governments. Liberty for the individual! "Take some pebbles," said Fourier, "put them into a box and shake them; they will arrange themselves into a mosaic such as you could never succeed in producing if you told off some one to arrange them harmoniously."[1]
A wit has said that the profession of faith of the Anarchists reduces itself to two articles of a fantastic law: (1) There shall be nothing. (2) No one is charged with carrying out the above article.
This is not correct. The Anarchists say:
(1) There shall be everything. (2) No one is held responsible for seeing that there is anything at all.
This is a very seductive "Ideal," but its realisation is unfortunately very improbable.
Let us now ask, what is this "free agreement" which, according to Kropotkine, exists even in capitalist society? He quotes two kinds of examples by way of evidence (a) those connected with production and the circulation of commodities; (b) those belonging to all kinds of
- ↑ "L'Anarchie dans l'Evolution socialiste." Lectures at the Salle Levis, Paris, 1888, pp. 20–21.
