Chapter VIII. The Fallacy of Anarchism

CHAPTER VIII The Fallacy of Anarchism To call anarchism a fallacy after having stated that savages have no government, which is certainly a condition of anarchy, must sound like flat inconsistency, unless it is borne in mind that the mode of the conversion of energy must correspond to the mode of association. Anarchy is practicable only to savagery. It has been attempted with an agricultural economy, which is more advanced, and the result is highly instructive. The religious sect of Dukhobors have made the trial, exhaustively. Within its limits, their reasoning was completely consistent. They were resolved to have no government whatever, not even self-government as the term is understood in describing a formal organization. A reporter * making a factual study of a Dukhobor colony in Canada asked a Dukhobor if he would promise not to burn some manuscript notes if they were left about. This would have been the easiest kind of promise to fulfill, being mere abstention from an act which no conceivable circumstances subsequently arising could make necessary in the given instance.

The Dukhobor answered that he "would not want to burn those notes." The reporter conceded that undoubtedly the Dukhobor at the moment thought he would not, but supposing he felt otherwise later? In that case, the Dukhobor said, "if the Spirit truly moved me to do it, then I would have to burn them." The essence of self-government consists in keeping promises ; the formal organization is instituted by agreement, and its power is delegated for the purpose of maintaining contract *SLAVA BOHU: The story of the Dukhobors. J. F. C. Wright. 71 72 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE freely entered into—the contract embodied in the constitution, and private contracts between individuals. The Dukhobors were quite logical in avoiding the first step toward self-government, since they did not wish to have any. But the sect throughout its existence has alternated between disputes which stopped production and autocratic leadership which disposed of a large share of the product arbitrarily. Such is the inevitable outcome of the most conscientious attempt to remain in a condition of anarchy after the moral relationship of the members of the community has been extended in space and time to permit a higher economy than that of savagery.

Labor is wasted -y and the members of the community are held down to poverty, distress, and ignorance. The stage of development in which government becomes necessary is easily discovered 5 and its correspondence to the mode of the conversion of energy, or failure when the synchronization is not right, can be discerned. What has not hitherto been elucidated is the specific connection of the mechanism of government and the productive order. This has led to various conflicting guesses as to the origin and nature of government. One theory of history asserts that government arises from war, and therefore is force fer se. This is doubly false since it is a reversal of the true relation. It has been adopted by philosophers committed to the doctrine of the Absolute State, because it is the sole argument they can muster which seems to afford them a factual base; but it rests only upon the error of fost hocy ergo frofter hoc.

Government by force is a contradiction in terms and an impossibility in physics. Force is what is governed. Government originates in the moral faculty. The subsidiary relation of force to the moral faculty is self-evident from the location of the source of the energy applied in human affairs 5 and this relationship is demonstrable by the mechanism of every known or imaginable mode of human association. The earliest form of society, subsisting by the direct bounty of nature and held together THE FALLACY OF ANARCHISM 73 by the instinct of species, is that of the savage. The Eskimos are believed to exhibit a survival of the Stone Age culture, scarcely modified until recent times. Their habitat does not permit accumulation of possessions beyond portable objects and small caches of food; neither may they hope for improvement in their lot beyond an obvious narrow margin. Old age is brief; incompetence, sickness, or severe disability mean death. Marriage is a working partnership easily dissolved j and sex behavior is accordantly lax. The process of conversion of energy has the smallest possible circuit, with the man as hunter bringing in raw materials and the woman forthwith turning them into consumption goods; these go into maintenance, and the children are replacement. The group cannot become very large; it must disperse and wander, and cannot establish a regular place of assembly. Hence it has no secular head. No Eskimo has authority over another; but Stefansson notes that without seeking it the abler men have influence without privilege. Under acute necessity, which is the mold of pure custom, the Eskimos really have no government, no political structure or agency whatever.

Eskimos do not make war. Their energy is absorbed in the immediate struggle for existence; and their environment, the white Arctic waste, eliminates the possible aspect of war as sport, which consists in surprise, escape, and pursuit. In temperate regions, savages do make war; and still have no formal government. But war and leadership, with an informal council, seem to be synchronous developments. This is what lends plausibility to the theory that government originates in war and therefore that government fer se is force. The error can be maintained only by rejecting both the facts of savage behavior and the specific testimony of intelligent savages as to the meaning and purpose of what has been called the council of war. The significant point is that in their beginnings neither chief nor council had any fower. They exercised only accredited influence. The chief had no permanence of tenure and no positive authority. Coun74 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE cil and chief debated when war was in prospect; but the manifest occasion for their exhortations was to instill prudence, that is, to speak for peace. This was put on record by a famous chief, old Seattle, who had been instrumental in uniting a number of Pacific Coast tribes. When the white men came, he saw that his people were done for. In a valedictory oration, acceding to a treaty, he explained, recapitulating the function of the chief simply as matter of fact: * "Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and then they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better."

Chief Seattle described an indisputable physical phenomenon, a diversion of surplus energy. Obviously primitive war can be begun and carried on by impulse on the part of the fighting men. In the conditions, it could not be conducted by any other means. If the young men were in militant mood, nothing could conceivably restrain them except persuasion. They are the force. Thus the council might either prevent war by moral influence, or sanction it, or admit their inability to forbid it, while ready to make peace afterward. In no case could the council, the old men, apply force, either for prevention or to compel war. They simply had none. Likewise in such primitive warfare no authoritative command is possible; every man must fight on his own. The chief could offer advice on crude strategy, and give an example of bravery and expertness. That was about all. Consequently he was chosen for wisdom as much as for valor.

Hence his position did not, because it could not, rest upon force, with his own people. Personal prowess is no more •GATEWAY OF THE NORTH. By Archie Binns.

THE FALLACY OF ANARCHISM 75 than the strength of one man, while the tribe is many. Where free movement is necessary to get a living, one strong man can scarcely dominate a single inferior by intimidation ; he certainly cannot hold numbers in subjugation. The chief and council did not give positive orders because they had no means to compel obedience. Offenses against persons were open to personal retaliation ; serious infractions of custom might be punished by a committee of the whole making the offender run the gantlet, or expelling him from the tribe. It may be suggested that at least a minority comprising the strongest might command by force the weaker members of the tribe; but even to essay this, a basis of accord must be adopted by the junta. The expectation of loot or tribute requires agreement on division of the spoils. "Honor among thieves" reveals that a moral basis remains indispensable.

For analysis, the successive cultural stages utilizing different modes of the conversion of energy must be distinguished. It is convenient to designate the next step above savagery as barbarism. The barbarian culture, though still nomadic, owns flocks and herds. It is at this stage that the necessity for a measure of government arises, with the extension of human relations over time and space. When the problem is so stated, it may be thought that the roving habit of savages brings in a space relation. On the contrary, it obviates the need, for nothing is left behind. Moral relations between adult individuals, and the group relationship predicated by the economy, are resolved immediately. Two men who are inclined to quarrel may fight it out on the spot; space enters into the matter only as a chance of escape. Husbands and wives who cannot agree may separate and take up with new mates. There is no way of preserving food, so it must be eaten at once, and therefore will be shared. The kind of agreement which must be executed at a distance is unknown. The moral relation of savages does extend in time, as regards parents and children; but instinct takes care of that, except in extremity. Where the burden of the aged j6 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE becomes impossible to manage on the natural basis, the old are abandoned to die. Hence the idea o£ tenure, in savage life, is vague and pragmatic. Personal articles are in possession. Territorial usage is elastic. Otherwise, first come, first served, and finders are keepers, serve as working rules. In hunting, whoever sees game has a right to kill it. The absent can have no claim.

But animal husbandry, even if it be nothing but herding the beasts on wild pastures, involves a timespace relation of human beings. All property, which is ownership, is a claim through time. The beasts must be watched $ they may not be killed nor the product consumed except by the owners. The timespace factor is likewise introduced by primitive agriculture, between sowing and harvest, imposing a claim on plots of ground and seed to be preserved. Hence the barbarians conceded positive power to their chief 3 his word would be enforced, not only immediately but at a distance, as long as it was in accord with custom and property rights. To avoid a break in authority, that is, in the time relation, the hereditary principle came in. Its odd variations, such as matrilineal succession and in some places inheritance by the youngest instead of the elder child ("borough English"), are what might be called engineering devices to gear the system over the shortest space and distance by the physical connection obviously existent. The relation of a child to its mother is indisputable 5 and the youngest child would still be at home when the elder children might have gone out and become independent. In either case, the force obeys the moral sanction.

However, the hereditary system cannot be invariable 5 nature again forbids that finality.* The succession may fail, or if it falls to an infant, it becomes temporarily ineffectual and liable to be disputed. For these emergencies some re*When it was urged that the good of the realm required Henry VIII to put away his queen and re-marry in order to beget a son as heir to the throne, an objector asked: "Who hath promised him a son?"

THE FALLACY OF ANARCHISM 77 course resembling elective choice must be posited. Even with the "divine" dynasty of medieval Japan, though the throne was reserved to one line of descent, the principle was blurred because monogamy did not obtain j and by custom the emperor abdicated after a short and nominal reign, when a new incumbent was selected by the great nobles from a number of candidates of royal blood. In the Ottoman empire, the death of the Sultan meant a sudden grab for power by whichever of his offspring or kin had enough backing j then the new Sultan promptly exterminated all other pretenders, murdering his brothers, nephews, and uncles out of hand. There is nothing novel in the "blood purges" of rivals by modern dictators. Wherever a legitimate means of political succession is not provided, it must occur. And the form of voting is not enough j if the energy of the nation has been subverted, so that elections are controlled from above, bought by the use of tax money, this resort to violence will soon be made.

Since the elective principle exists in the nature of things, underlying monarchy, whenever monarchy becomes too oppressive, the elective principle is called in. Whatever makes kings can unmake them. In Europe, though feudal monarchy was the prevailing usage for a thousand years, and had the triple support of embodied custom, military command, and the family pattern of society, yet the pretension of kings to rule by divine right and exercise absolute power was never for a moment conceded in theory by any nation, nor long tolerated in fact without overt rebellion. Resistance was constant; and in the last resort, assassination was the answer. And it is a genuine refutation of the royal encroachment in its own terms, no less logical than regicide by legal deliberation which indicts the king for treason. In theory, the noble (as head of family) was noble by status, being born to his position; the king was king only by contract, "first among his peers." The oath of allegiance, renewed to each king, is a contract. The gravamen of the charge of treason 78 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE against a king is that he has exceeded his office or proper authority, by usurped force. And in terms of force, one man is about as strong as another. Thus the initial truth is again brought to light whenever a citizen or subject is sufficiently determined; force cannot compel obedience in the social order. What it can effect is death, whether of subject or king.

When the assassin is otherwise sane, and acting from a strictly political grievance, assassination is a symptom of a grave imperfection in the mechanism, a relatively weak connection, or a point of disproportionate stress, where a break occurs. In terms of mechanism, it stops the machine until the broken part has been replaced; but it does not and cannot institute a better type of mechanism. At the given moment, government is nonexistent, and has to be resumed by a moral act, the acceptance of a new incumbent. Such recurrent breakdowns naturally weaken the moral sanction. But in this also they reveal the relation of government to force. A dead subject is no longer subject; and a dead king is no longer king. Where force is the arbiter, government ceases. This is so because of the intrinsic nature of the political mechanism, which is and must be the same whatever the form. // is an instrument of negationy and nothing more.

When government begins to rely upon force or intimidation, if the various factors involved could be discovered exactly, and expressed in a mathematical equation with the ratio of the increase of force, the sum would give the length of time remaining before either the government or the nation, or both, must collapse. The event must depend upon the volume of energy in use for production, and the type of government imposed, as regards structure, mechanism, and dead load. If the energy is sufficient to shatter the structure and mechanism, it must do so (by war, civil war, revolution). Unless liberty is regained, the mode of conversion of energy will revert to a lower level, and the population will be reduced by war and famine to the lower optimum which can be subsisted at that level. This process is now THE FALLACY OF ANARCHISM 79 going on in Europe. The prime cause was the introduction of a high energy potential—industrial development—in Germany, when the political form could not accommodate it.

While industry got up steam, during the nineteenth century, political changes were in reverse, more and more power accruing to government under "socializing" measures. The present explosion is the result. An attempt to revert to a type of association suited to a lower potential of energy will bring this about. The informal advisory method suits a nomadic savage society. In such conditions, the lack of tenure of the chief is salutary. An unfortunate choice has a quick remedy. Leadership is obliged to justify itself daily. In a settled and productive society, leadership is completely impracticable, because continuity is necessary, with the timespace factor in economics. The two cannot exist together, because the essential characteristic of leadership, the bloodless deposition of the leader by the dropping away of his following, has been lost. With permanent institutions, the form of government must include fixed tenure -y this does not mean irremovable persons, but the contrary; it means legitimate change of persons in an office of defined powers. When "leadership" is attempted instead, what can occur is a degenerate and temporary manifestation, the rule of popularity, by which the permanent institutions are subverted to make the leader irremovable. The characteristics of both are thus negated, cancelling out the moral element, as evidenced by the leader denying his own credentials by an immediate resort to force and intimidation.

In terms of mechanism, the control is disconnected, the motor is still running. The consequence is external collision and internal disruption, more or less simultaneously. A regime of popularity is effective for starting a war 3 and indeed must do so. If the energy and mechanism engaged are those of a productive society with a considerable surplus capacity, the regime is likely to begin with an appearance of enormous success in aggression, the march of an Alexander 8O THE GOD OF THE MACHINE or a Napoleon, to end by disintegrating in civil war and possibly subjection to a foreign power. The two things are different aspects of the same physical phenomenon, of dislocated mass crashing by momentum, shattering whatever is in its way and likewise breaking apart of its own weight and impact. The Napoleonic empire was such a swathe of destruction.* A century earlier, Louis XIV laid the train for it. His minister Colbert fostered industry under monopoly, which enabled Louis to reduce the aristocratic order to impotence and transfer the mechanism of government to a bureaucracy. Thus the ancient structure of France was rendered obsolete, but it still remained as dead-load, and so held the nation more or less stationary, frustrating the effort of Louis to get the mass in motion through his wars. Subsequently, when the dead load (which unfortunately served no other purpose) was thrown off—that is, the aristocracy was formally disestablished—the accumulated energy was released and augmented by the proclamation of liberty and equality. But this torrential energy was thrown into a society which did not understand the relation of the mechanism to the base. Napoleon himself was little more than a figurehead hurled about in front of the moving mass. The energy tore the nation apart, flung fragments of it to every corner of Europe in the form of armies, and only subsided by disintegration and inertia. Napoleon was the first of the modern "leaders." What a really high potential can do in that line is painfully evident.

When the word leader, or leadership, returns to current use, it connotes a relapse into barbarism. For a civilized people, it is the most ominous word in any language. *A8 part of the destruction was of obsolete obstructive institutions, it is not recognized as random destruction, though it certainly was. Millions of men also were destroyed, in mangled heaps.