PRINCE KRAPOTKLNE'S FANATICISM.*
Tins portentous book, which its author and annotator have thought fit to call The Words of a Rebel, had better have * Pierre Krapotkine: Pureles d'un Revolt& Oavrage Pablie, Annote, et Acoom- mad d'une Preface par Iflisee Realm. Pads; C. Marpon at E. Flammation. been entitled "The Dreams of a Visionary," for anything more unattainable than Prince Krapotkine's ideals, more imprac- ticable than his methods, or more baseless than his assump- tions, it were hard to conceive. The Words of a Rebel, in fact, are the words of a fanatic, of a man so thoroughly convinced that he is right, so sure of the honesty of his intentions and the infallibility of his conclusions, that he does not understand bow anybody can differ from him. Though N. Reclas, in his preface, admits that anarchists are the enemies of Christianity, the spirit in which he and his fellow-apostle write is exactly that of the Catholic theologians who "believed because it was impossible," and of those apologists of religion who, if their arguments fail to convince a sceptic, stigmatise him as wilfully obstinate and perverse. With a few slight alterations, the preface might serve as the introduction to a work on orthodox religion :—" I submit these ideas [Prince Krapotkine's]," says M. Reclus, "with confidence to all just men who do not pass judgment on a work which they have not opened, or on an opinion which they have not heard. Make a clean sweep of your prejudices, learn to rise for a moment above your interests, and look in these pages for the truth, without troubling yourself about its application. The author asks you only one thing, to share for a moment in his ideal, the happiness of all, not that of the privileged few. If this wish, how fugitive soever it may be, is truly sincere, and not merely a capricious fancy, a fleeting image, it is probable that you will soon be in accord with the writer. If you share in his wishes, you will understand his words. But you know beforehand that those ideas will not bring you honours; they will not be rewarded with well-paid places. Rather will they bring you the distrust of former friends, or some brutal blow from above. If you look for justice, expect iniquity." In other words, if you are an honest and righteous man (we had almost written God-fearing), you will accept the anarchist gospel as preached by Krapotkine and Reclas, and believe in the Communistic millennium which they predict. If, on the other hand, you see not as they see, and decline to believe that the one thing needful for social salvation is the abolition of all government and the removal of every sort of restraint, you are anathema maranatha, a self-seeking wretch who for your own base purposes sides with the great and powerful against the poor and oppressed. You are a bourgeois, and the bourgeoisie is the great beast of the Socialist apocalypse, the only class for whom they reserve the axe and the rope. The institution of government, which you may think the sole guarantee of free- dom and progress, and without which no civilised community has yet existed, is declared to be the root of all evil and the cause of all our misfortunes. "What purpose does it serve, this immense machine we call the State ?" asks Prince Krapotkine. "Does it prevent the exploitation of the workmen by the capitalist, of the peasant by the proprietor ? Does it assure us bread, protect us from the usurer, provide us with food when the mother has only water wherewith to satisfy the babe that cries at her exhausted breast ? No! a thousand times no I" Having failed in the impossible task (which it never under- took) of making eveiybody happy, the State is doomed to destruction. According to the author, "the history of our times is the history of the struggle of privileged Governments against the levelling aspirations of oppressed peoples." The contest goes on with ever-increasing virulence, and Prince Krapot- kine foresees that it will end in the victory of the oppressed. "The downfall of Governments," he says, "has become a ques- tion of a very short time ; philosophers can already discern the lightning-flashes which herald the approach of a great revolution."
It being, however, possible that some of his followers and sympathisers, whose faith is less robust than his own, may not contemplate with entire complacency the prospect of a general gaol delivery, the demolition of prisons, and the disappearance of law, Prince Krapotkine seeks to encourage the weak-kneed by assuring them that punishment has no effect on crime, and that nobody was ever yet deterred from committing murder by fear of being banged. Under the new dispensation, moreover, theft will necessarily cease, for private property being abolished, and everybody having all he wants, there will be no inducement to steal. "The day when no punishment whatever is inflicted for murder, the number of murders will not be increased by a single case ; on the contrary, it is most probable that they will diminish by the number at present committed by prison-brutalised recidivistes." This is put as a self-evident proposition. We are expected to believe it on the sole authority of the author and his
annotator. And then the former puts on his prophetic mantle, and predicts what will happen when "some great city" (Paris or London, for example) "shall proclaim the Commune, abolish private property, and adopt complete Communism,—that is to say, the collective enjoyment of the social capital. This done, provided the city be not hemmed in by hostile armies, the pro- ducts of its industry will be sent to all the four quarters of the world, to be exchanged for raw materials ; strangers will arrive in crowds, and when they return to their homes will tell of the marvellous life of the free city, where all work, where there are neither poor nor oppressed, where all enjoy the fruits of their labour, and where none take the lion's share." The sole im- pediments to this consummation are laws and institutions. Abolish them, and on the morrow of their destruction people will spontaneously organise themselves into groups, "according to their affinities," work together for the common good, and, we suppose, "live happily ever after," like the hero and heroine of a sentimental novel.
The short way with an anarchist, if he were capable of reasoning, would be to remind him that assertion is no more argument than prediction is proof, and ask him to point out a single instance, ancient or modern, of any society or nation, great or small, having dispensed with institutions and lived without law. Even brigands, who practise anarchy as M. Jourdain spoke prose, without knowing it, choose a leader. When people are cast away on a desert island, the first thing they do is to set up some sort of government. We know, more- over, what happens in a Western American State when the law is weak, or its administration inefficient,—vigilance committees are formed (spontaneously, like Prince Krapotkine's groups), and criminals summarily lynched. As for the equality for which our author so ardently longs, it would be impracticable, even though men were born with a perfect equality of faculties and opportunities. How, we may ask, would the varying re- quirements of married folks and single, be adjusted in his ideal community ? Being essentially a free community, all its mem- bers would be at liberty to marry and beget children or not, as they might prefer. But as children cannot keep themselves, they would have to be at the charge either of their parents or the community. In the former event, parents would need to work harder than their childless fellow-citizens, thereby violating the sacred principle of equality. If, on the other hand, the com- munity supported the children, it would be palpably unfair to the childless, for why, the latter would ask, "why should our comforts be diminished, or our labour increased, because some of our neighbours choose to increase the population for their own pleasure ? We are quite willing to share and share alike,—it is a truly admirable principie ; bat equality in consumption neces- sarily implies equality in production ; babies produce nothing, therefore babies have no right to live." If the author of this book has the courage of his convictions, he will proclaim the duty of general infanticide, and when the world's population consists -of a few celibate philanthropists of mature age, a seeming equality in condition may possibly be realised ; but until the human race is reduced to a single specimen, the complete equality foretold by anarchist prophets is not likely to be accomplished.
Nothing is easier than to refute the theories formulated in The Words of a Rebel. You have only to state them. As for the predictions, you have only to disbelieve them. The wonder is that two men like the author and his annotator should entertain the views which they so passionately advocate, and have such faith in their efficacy and practicability as to ask their fellow-men to set reason and experience at naught, and, at the bidding of a few enthusiasts, throw the entire civilised world into a witch's cauldron of slaughter and destruction (they frankly admit that their ends cannot be attained without vio- lence and bloodshed), in the hope that it may thereby be con- verted into an earthly paradise !
Is this community of sentiment between the Russian Prince and the French savant a sign of the times, or a fortuitous in- cident ? Does it arise from a sincere, though morbid, pity for the poor and lowly, a pity which distorts judgment and blinds to fact, a desire for notoriety, or from some other and less scrntable cause ? At any rate, it does not arise from lack of education, for two more highly instructed men than Peter Krapotkine and Elise's Reclus it would be hard to find. Neither can their peculiar opinions be ascribed to that departure from old-fashioned methods in which Mr. Ruskin discerns the cause of the present irreverence and unbelief, and all our woes. Prince Krapotkine was born in the purple, taught to fear God and honour the King, bred in a Court, and trained to arms. Elise Reclus, son of a Calvinist minister, was brought up in as stern a school as Thomas Carlyle himself. Both have arrived at the same conclusion as the seer of Chelsea and his most distinguished pupil,—that modern society is utterly rotten ; but their ideas of mending matters, it must be admitted, are slightly different. The antidote of the one is the bane of the other. The fact is, that these anarchist gentlemen are the veriest fanatics ; they have become so entirely the slaves of a master-idea as to be unable to distinguish right from wrong, the practicable from the impracticable. They cannot see, what is patent to every impartial observer, that any serious attempts to put their theories into force would do more to impede the progress of humanity and retard the economical redemption of the proletariat than a whole cycle of despotism. We give them full credit for sincerity and disinterestedness. Fanatics always are sincere ; bat this makes fanaticism none the less mischievous, and seldom was fanaticism more foolish and per- nicious than that of which Prince Krapotkine and M. Reclus are at once the victims and the apostles. We have lately seen anarchism in operation at Charleroi and elsewhere, and anarchists make no secret of their desire that the present social and economic order should be overthrown by a violent revolution, which, whatever else it might do, would beyond a doubt utterly ruin the pro- letaires whose cause they plead, and produce an equally violent reaction. It is, moreover, almost in the nature of things that fanatics, however extensive may be their learning and however profound their knowledge, should be weak men and unsafe guides. Of this truth Prince Krapotkine's book is a striking proof. All who would know how feebly a clever man can reason —if reason it may be called—should read The Words of a Rebel.
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