Emma Goldman once called for an end to “man-made laws.”[1] What? Nowadays this seems, at most, a somewhat amusing, quaint idea. Even a fair share of anarchists would disagree with such a simplistic, bold statement. But Goldman stood in the footsteps of Bakunin, who himself made a distinction between “innate” “natural laws” and “notions created by imagination”, those pesky man-made laws.[2]
And in true Enlightenment fashion, Bakunin went on to complain that “it is a great misfortune that a large number of natural laws, already established as such by science, remain unknown to the masses” but that when these natural laws “by means of a broad system of popular education, have entered into the general consciousness, the question of freedom will be solved.”[3] This type of Enlightenment-era optimism now tends to make us queasy, but is deeply rooted in Bakunin’s thinking. As one observer put it: “To summarize Bakunin’s philosophy, he is operating, by and large, within the naturalistic framework established by the empiricist current of the Enlightenment. Humans are conceived as embodying a permanently fixed nature with behaviour basically determined by natural laws.”[4] This led Bakunin to see “moral law”as an “actual law” of nature — to believe that “justice is a natural human sentiment which permanently resides in the human condition.”[5] Right and wrong are as implacably set as gravity of the rotation of the earth.
There is thus natural law and unnatural law, natural society and unnatural society. Freedom can only be expressed in a natural society, as freedom is following natural impulses — “Man’s freedom consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.”[6] Whilst there is something to be said for this idea, we cannot define “natural laws” with the breathtaking “scientific” confidence of Bakunin! When humankind followed nature’s decrees, we were happy, “However, when coercion enters into the relations among people, we enter the realm of the unnatural.”[7] Bakunin, like Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau, thus invoked some original “state of nature” before the coming of class hierarchy and the State. Hobbes took the negative extreme; Bakunin the positive. Hobbes conceived of the “state of nature” famously as: “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.”[8] But for Bakunin, the lost state of nature was to be reclaimed for the modern world: justice was purely a matter of finding out the natural laws (and Bakunin believed science could discover them) and then applying them. The basic contention of Bakunin, in direct contradiction to Hobbes, was that “all human beings are born good but are corrupted by society.”[9] Psychology and now genetics stand in opposition to this sunny view of -so called “human nature.”
An equally utopian view held by anarchists on human nature is that arguments over whether people are basically ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are irrelevant, since we all just follow our own self-interest. This is presumed to be the hard-nosed view, but, as we know from our Freudian comrades, is manifestly untrue! The view that we all follow our “natural self-interest”, held by many enthusiasts of the genetic view of human nature, leads to the view expressed by one anarchist that “most people in the United States have no choice but to support corporations, or else fail to meet subsistence and fail to gain social status and many are simply ignorant about the exploitation, oppression, and violence at the core of capitalist economics. If they had a choice and were educated it is doubtful that they would continue to support amoral corporations.”[10] Whilst this is to a certain extent true — if it wasn’t there would be dubious hope for revolutionary change —, it does not adequately explain why people don’t follow their self-interest. After all, nobody becomes an anarchist by putting the collected works of Kropotkin in their hands. They may adopt anarchist ideas, but the impulse was there already. Which is why, as Hitler pointed out, “men are won over less by the written than by the spoken word” and “every great movement on this earth owes its growth to great orators and not great writers.”[11] In fact, I blame part of the ghettoisation of anarchism on the retreat from the soap-box to the pen.
However, back to the main point — Bakunin, and subsequent anarchist thinkers, held the view that once coercion was removed and “social ills” healed through education, society would revert to following the natural, ingrained laws from which we had deviated under hierarchical society. I agree with the idea that there is a basic human condition, a condition which authority has twisted and distorted. Those who have denied the existence of a general human nature have tended to be the worst reactionaries, including the post-modernist academia of today. As the Freudian anthropologist Geza Roheim complained once: “The idea that all nations are completely different from each other and that the goal of anthropology is simply to find how different they are is a thinly veiled manifestation of nationalism, the democratic counterpart of the Nazi racial doctrine.”[12] I agree wholeheartedly with Bakunin when he says, “Only that can be called a human principle which is universal and common to all men; and nationality separates men, therefore it is not a principle. What is a principle is the respect which everyone should have for natural facts, real or social. Nationality, like individuality, is one of those facts.”[13]
With the abolition of destructive sexual and social repression, humanity will be infinitely healthier and happier. However, genetics have shown that “certain individuals have an innate genetic tendency to engage in violent, antisocial, or psychopathic behavior, including both rape and murder.”[14] These pessimistic findings are no great shock to my pessimistic generation, but to the 19th century anarchists , socialists and liberals, the idea that there was inherent bad in mankind would have been incredulous.
And of course there is the problem of transition, a period perhaps of hundreds of years, in which the neuroses of repressive class society will linger, sustained even beyond the revolutionary generation. The various anti-social neuroses from the days of sexual repression will not die with capitalism and the State. We will still have our psycho-killers and our pedophiles and our rapists and our mad bombers, and so on, and probably remnants of the old world launching guerrilla attacks, attempting to sabotage the cooperative commonwealth, and murdering our leaders.
For a good long time — and probably for ever — after the anarchist transformation of society, we will have criminals. And if a decentralised, bottoms-up anarchist polity cannot deal with crime, than we must fall back on the institution of the State. As Errico Malatesta said: “When a community has needs and its members do not know how to organise spontaneously to provide them, someone comes forward, an authority who satisfies those needs by utilising the services of all and directing them to his liking.” Thus, “the less organised we have been the more prone are we to be imposed on by a few individuals.”[15] A free society cannot survive if it bestows the “freedom” to attack freedom — as Western civilisation is finding out by embracing multiculturalism and accepting reactionary Islam into Europe’s secular, liberal society! The words on the revolutionary banner marching into the future are these — “Freedom through Strength. Strength through Freedom.”
Whilst trendy “radicals” embrace so-called prison abolition, those with a true concern about society will not jump on the “anti-prison” bandwagon. If anything, we should be horrified at the clemency pushed by the left-liberal-”radical” idiots to protect and save murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gangbangers, and others who destroy our communities and terrorise honest, hard-working people everywhere. Yes, the prison system is racist. Yes, the prison system is classist. Yes, the prison system is unjust. As is natural under an unjust, elite-controlled social system. So let’s get rid of the ruling class and get about the business of cleaning up our society!
Ultimately, we will probably always have prisons. Under workers’ syndicalism as under capitalist hierarchy. There will always be anti-social elements society will have to protect itself against. We will need a fairer system, but also tougher justice. As I said, a free society cannot survive if it tolerates those who would impinge upon it’s freedom. This is a lesson liberals will never learn. Hence, ultimately, at the periphery of liberalism, “anti-prison” activism.
There is some hope for being able to reintegrate anti-social elements back into society. But it will have to be much more in-depth and careful than now is the case, under capitalism. Some murderers are just murderers of passion, as the French put it, and should not forever be punished for what was the mistake of a moment. Others, psychopathic killers or pedophiles or serial rapists, do not deserve a second chance. Neither do they deserve to live in prison at society’s expense. As Benjamin Tucker said: “If society has a right to protect itself against such men as Kemmler[16], as is admitted, why may it not do so in whatever way proves most effective? If it is urged that capital punishment is not the most effective way, such an argument, well sustained by facts, is pertinent and valid. This position also I can understand, and with it, if not laid down as too absolute a rule, I sympathize. But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder. Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act. [...] I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can.”[17]
Anarchists must come to grips with the hard reality that one way or another, well or badly, society must find some way to dole out justice. The question is — will it be through the State, held in the hands of the biggest gangsters of them all, or through the decentralised polity of classless society? To quote Malatesta again, “either the people will find the means, and have the energy, to directly defend themselves against them [the criminal element], or the police and the magistrates will reappear and with them, government.”[18] As anarchists, we have no qualms about protecting our freedom. And this includes the criminal interests of the parasitic classes and the tyranny of the State. Disarming victims is the ultimate in democratic stupidity — as Benjamin Franklin, himself a democrat, wittily put it: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
Part of the reason we oppose the State because from its’ ramparts and under its’ protective watch issue and thrive social gangsterism at a scale beyond anything the Bloods or the Crips or the Mafia could aspire to. Ultimately arguments about the criminality of the State and parasitic classes are pointless, of course, since arguments of “right” only make sense in a society with a social contract. And since “the primary goals of a social contract are the promotion of economic goods and security for society as a whole — not an elite minority — it becomes clear that there can be no social contract between classes. The problem is that stratification and hierarchy destroys the coherence of society and leaves it fractured into smaller competing sub-societies, each with their own internal social contract…”[19] Or as the Preamble of the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World puts it: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” Between classes, might makes right. Within the working class, the social contract (solidarity) means different things at different times. For instance, I was brought up to believe that the scab was one of the lowest life forms crawling on this planet!
So, how are we to go about doling out justice of one sort or another? We do not want to see professional law-enforcers or a bureaucracy — we want wrongs to be righted at the point of origin, whether it be the workplace or community. We also want to place moral responsibility on the head of every adult, reviving the common law tradition which held that “the ordinary citizen had not just a right to prevent crime but even a duty.”[20] In the Nietzschean spirit, rights take the place of duties — and the performance of duty becomes the highest right.
I propose bringing back the old institution of outlawry, once practiced throughout Europe, whereby those who broke the social contact were not protected by the social contract: the outlaw was literally “outside the law.” The Vikings practiced outlawry — their word for outlaw, vargr, also meant wolf. And like wolves, outlaws could be hunted down and killed with impunity. Malatesta said that “the trouble is that in order to carry out the death penalty one needs an executioner. The executioner is, or becomes, a monster, and on balance it is better to let the monsters that there are go on living, rather than to create others.”[21] Bring back outlawry and the dilemma is solved: let the victims be the executioners, and then justice is back where it belongs, as intensely personal, rather than awfully impersonal. Outlawry seems the just and natural option. Upon committing an anti-social act, the individual should be judged by a popular tribunal, and the severity of punishment and the possibility and desirability of rehabilitation discussed (in more extreme cases). Then we should follow the example of the New Guinea tribespeople: “[W]hen the offender would not accept a judgment that the group considered to be just, the offender would be declared an outlaw. His reciprocal arrangements for protection were no longer in force, so anyone in the confederation was obligated to pursue him, either killing him or driving him from the area (which presumably would also lead to his death).”[22] Along with outlawry, ostracism seems to me a good idea.
A free society cannot exist if it lets criminals run amok. Likewise, it should not have to tolerate parasitism and laziness. Isaac Puente, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, declared in his influential pamphlet Libertarian Communism that: “Whosoever refuses to work for the community (aside from the children, the sick and the old) will be stripped of their other rights: to deliberate and to consume. [...] We recognise the right to be lazy provided that those who seek to exercise that right agree to get along without help of others. We live in a society where the lazy person, the incompetent and the anti-social being are types who prosper and enjoy plenty, power and honors.”[23] I do not think society will fall apart if individuals are not forced to work by brute necessity. True, I do not believe the lazy should be allowed to scrounge off the hard-working, but there are very few people inclined to laziness — people are by nature industrious.
For those who do not agree with the communal contract of any association, whether geographic (such as the commune) or economic (such as the union), they can freely go their own way. Those who harm society must be held accountable — to whatever degree. For minor crimes, as I said, non-violent ostracism is an option. Argues one rightwing libertarian: “When a society tries to impose rules upon an individual who does not agree with the rules, then the individual may decide to relinquish membership in that society. [...] If a society becomes foolish in the rules it tries to impose, then many members will exit and live quite successfully outside that society.”[24] I certainly agree with this idea of a more plastic societal contract, or rather, contracts.
Of course, work will gain a status amongst the highest of human strivings, once freed from the miserable chains of exploitation and alienation. I should hope to see the worker taking the place once held by the warrior. This workerist ethic will make industry the new heroic epic, as Georges Sorel foresaw in the contemporary syndicalist movement’s glorification of the worker as warrior. As Jeremy Jennings says in a 1999 introduction to Sorel’s major work Reflections on Violence: “Work in the modern factory, Sorel believed, demanded constant innovation and improvement in the quantity and quality of production, and it was through this that ‘indefinite progress’ was achieved. This striving for perfection ensured not only that industrial work attained the status of art but also that the factory would become the site of an ‘economic epic’ to rival the Homeric epic of the battlefield.”[25]
In an age of cultural decadence, nihilism, moral stagnation, I see the possibility of social renewal in the revolution of the working classes. “In the total ruin of institutions and of morals”, said Sorel, “there remains something which is powerful, new, and intact, and it is that which constitutes, properly speaking, the soul of the revolutionary proletariat.”[26] Or as that great working class hero and leader, Buenaventura Durruti, proclaimed: “We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.”
These are just a few thoughts on the subject of law and anarchy. To sum up, the Manichean view of natural as all good, and man-made as all bad, isn’t enough, not near enough. Tough as it is, human moral self-responsibility means distinguishing between what is good and what is bad. Jesus said to his apostles, the law is for servants. What are morals to the children of God? By this, morality itself was not discarded, but rather the Ten Commandments. Dumb obedience. With a hat-tip to attentat anarchism, Nietzsche asked: “Whether we immoralists are harming virtue? Just as little as anarchists harm princes. Only since the latter are shot at do they again sit securely in their thrones. Moral: morality must be shot at.”[27] No, we are not afraid of ruins. Neither are we afraid of justice.
1Goldman, Emma (1969) Anarchism and Other Essays Dover Books: New York.
2Maximoff, G.P. ed. (1953) The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism The Free Press: New York.
3Ibid.
4Robertson, Ann (2003) ‘The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict’ What’s Next December 2003.
5Ibid.
6Maximoff, G.P. ed. (1953) The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism The Free Press: New York.
7Robertson, Ann (2003) ‘The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict’ What’s Next December 2003.
8Hobbes, Thomas (1997) Leviathan Touchstone: New York.
9Baake, David (2006) ‘Darwinian Anarchism’ FuckAuthority.Com. Archived at http://www.freewebs.com/humanitybeyondcontrol/darwin.htm .
10Ibid.
11Hitler, Adolph (1943) Mein Kampf The Riverside Press: Cambridge.
12Quoted in Robinson, Paul A. (1969) The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse Harper Colophone Books: New York.
13Maximoff, G.P. ed. (1953) The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism The Free Press: New York.
14Baake, David (2006) ‘Darwinian Anarchism’ FuckAuthority.Com. Archived at http://www.freewebs.com/humanitybeyondcontrol/darwin.htm . Mr. Baake is drawing most of his observations from Steven Pinker’s book The Blank Slate.
15Richards, Vernon ed. (1965) Malatesta: Life and Ideas Freedom Press: London.
16William Kemmler (1860-1890): murdered his wife with a hatchet and was the first man to be executed via the electric chair.
17Tucker, Benjamin R. (1973) Individual Liberty: Selections from the Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker Vanguard Press: New York.
18Malatesta, Errico Crime and Punishment. Archived at http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/crime_and_punishment.html .
19Wheeler, Jed Anarchism and Human Rights library.circleapha.com. Archived at http://library.circlealpha.com/anarchism_theory/Anarchism-human_Rights-IR.pdf .
20Carr, David (2003) Between “Slaves of Ruffians” and “The Decision of the Sword”: in Support of the Common Law Tradition of Self-Defense (Legal Notes No. 43) Libertarian Alliance: London.
21Malatesta, Errico Crime and Punishment. Archived at http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/crime_and_punishment.html .
22Benson, Bruce L. (1990) The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State Pacific Research Institute: San Francisco.
23Puente, Isaac (1985) Libertarian Communism Monty Miller Press: Sydney.
24Hammer, Richard (1994) ‘The Power of Ostracism’ Formulations Winter 1994-95. Presented to the 15 October 1994 forum of the Free Nation Foundation.
25Sorel, Georges (1999) Reflections on Violence Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
26Ibid.
27Kaufmann, Walter ed. (1954) The Portable Nietzsche The Viking Press: New York.
