Stephen T. Byington

Anarchism is the doctrine that government should be abolished. Everybody agrees to this, and, as everybody thinks he knows what government is, everybody thinks he knows what Anarchism is. Yet very few people can define government in such a way that they would not take back their definitions after being asked a few questions.

Anarchism is a theory of political science and is opposed to government in the political sense. Government, in the political sense, is a human power which assumes and exercise a general control over the actions of all persons within certain recognized limits of territory or of race, enforcing this control by violence when necessary. The “government” of a club, church, or any voluntary organization is not a political government because it does not attempt to compel the obedience of all persons within any limit, but simply directs the actions of such as are willing to be directed; hence it is not opposed to Anarchist principles.

What Anarchists regard as the essential and objectionable principle of government is the use of force to prevent a man from doing as he please. They (like most other people) would like to see a millennial period in which no force should be used against any man. But they (like most other people) recognize that that cannot be had at present — that some people will be violent, and others must decide whether to meet violence with violence. If a bully tries to duck me in the pond — an act essentially governmental, though lacking the public organization of government as generally recognized — and I violently resist him and thwart his will, is my action parallel to his?

Some Anarchist, such as Tolstoj, think it is, and would renounce the use of violence even for defence. But the great majority of Anarchists discriminate between government or crime (two names for the same things) and defence. To use or threat violence against any one who had been peaceable in government, — that is crime; but violence against a criminal, to repress his criminal use of violence, is a different thing. Anarchists commonly regard gross fraud as equivalent to violence in justifying violent reprisal.

Of course the business-like way of using violence, or its threat, to repress violence, is by social organization, with the ordinary machinery of police, courts, and jails. Many Anarchists approve of this machinery, desiring only that it be confined to defensive service; and it is obvious that in an Anarchist society those who wanted such service could not be prevented from combining and maintaining a police establishment, since any use of force to prevent them must, from its users’ standpoint, be tyrannically governmental.

Thus the triumph of Anarchism would not prevent the continuance of police and jails, and such continuance is to be expected. But this would not be government, since it would not be able to collect any tax except by threatening to withdraw its services from non-payers, or to enforce any law against those who let others alone. It could not even prevent the establishment of a rival police service in the same place. But government is not government unless it monopolizes its business within its boundaries.

The question arises, whether violence against property is in the same category with violence against persons. Here is the chief split among those who call themselves Anarchists, one party holding that property in the material products of labor is a corollary of personal liberty and should be defended as such, while the other holds that all property is an absurd institution, whose defence is an outrage on personal liberty. Logically, each party holds that the others are not true Anarchists.

Is law-breaking Anarchistic? There are two kinds of law-breakers: Anarchists and tyrants. An Anarchist is one who is unwilling to be subject to the will of others, and is willing to allow others the same liberty. A tyrant is one who breaks laws himself at will, but wants others kept in subjection. For instance, Napoleon, Rockefeller or any striking workman who tries to maintain his strike by violence against “scabs”. Tyrants should not be called Anarchists, even if the New York “World” [1] does talk about “anarchy directed by a usurping despot.”

The public is interested in the relation of Anarchism to violence. While it is clear, from the above discussion, that violence against peaceable people is contrary to the whole doctrine of Anarchism, and that, when such is practiced by a professed Anarchist, it shows that he does not know what Anarchism is, it is also clear that there is nothing contrary to Anarchistic principle in the use of violence against those who themselves are using governmental force to repress liberty. But neither is such violence commanded by Anarchistic principle, for no Anarchist holds himself bound to meet force by force, unless he finds some use in it.

The defenders of property hold that, where there is any tolerable amount of free speech, it is brutish, useless, and altogether condemnable, for a small party to attack the established authority with bloodshed. The Anarchist-Communists grade all the way from this position to the advocacy of the most reckless violence.

The Anarchist policy of the present is to diffuse our doctrines, live our own lives, and do our own business without regard to the decrees of government as far as possible, and encourage others to do the same. The policy of the future must be determined by the circumstances of the future.

Note

[1] The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publisher Joseph Pulitzer, it was a pioneer in yellow journalism, capturing readers' attention with sensational news, sports, sex and scandal and pushing its daily circulation to the one-million mark.