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    Fabian Tract No. 45.

    THE IMPOSSIBILITIES OF
    ANARCHISM.

    BY
    BERNARD SHAW

    PUBLISHED BY
    THE FABIAN SOCIETY

    PRICE TWOPENCE

    LONDON
    TO BE OBTAINED OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY, 276 STRAND, W.C.
    REPRINTED NOVEMBER 1895




THE IMPOSSIBILITIES OF ANARCHISM.[1]

Anarchists and Socialists.


Some years ago, as the practical policy of the Socialist party in
England began to shape itself more and more definitely into the
program of Social-Democracy, it became apparent that we could not
progress without the gravest violations of principles of all sorts.
In particular, the democratic side of the program was found to
be incompatible with the sacred principle of the Autonomy of the
Individual. It also involved a recognition of the State, an institution
altogether repugnant to the principle of Freedom. Worse than that,
it involved compromise at every step; and principles, as Mr. John
Morley once eloquently showed, must not be compromised. The result
was that many of us fell to quarrelling; refused to associate with
one another; denounced each other as trimmers or Impossibilists,
according to our side in the controversy; and finally succeeded in
creating a considerable stock of ill-feeling. My own side in the
controversy was the unprincipled one, as Socialism to me has always
meant, not a principle, but certain definite economic measures
which I wish to see taken. Indeed, I have often been reproached for
limiting the term Socialism too much to the economic side of the great
movement towards equality. That movement, however, appears to me to
be as much an Individualist as a Socialist one; and though there are
Socialists, like Sir William Harcourt, to whom Socialism means the
sum total of humanitarian aspiration, in which the transfer of some
millions of acres of property from private to public ownership must
seem but an inessential and even undesirable detail, this sublimer
shade of Socialism suffers from such a lack of concentration upon
definite measures, that, but for the honor and glory of the thing,
its professors might as well call themselves Conservatives. Now what
with Socialists of this sort, and persons who found that the practical
remedy for white slavery was incompatible with the principle of
Liberty, and the practical remedy for despotism incompatible with
the principle of Democracy, and the practical conduct of politics
incompatible with the principle of Personal Integrity (in the sense
of having your own way in everything), the practical men were at last
driven into frank Opportunism. When, for instance, they found national
and local organization of the working classes opposed by Socialists on
the ground that Socialism is universal and international in principle;
when they found their Radical and Trade Unionist allies ostracized
by Socialists for being outside the pale of the Socialist faith one
and indivisible; when they saw agricultural laborers alienated by
undiscriminating denunciations of allotments as "individualistic";
then they felt the full force of the saying that Socialism would
spread fast enough if it were not for the Socialists. It was bad
enough to have to contend with the conservative forces of the modern
unsocialist State without also having to fight the seven deadly
virtues in possession of the Socialists themselves. The conflict
between ideal Socialism and practical Social-Democracy destroyed
the Chartist organization half a century ago, as it destroyed the
Socialist League only the other day. But it has never gone so far as
the conflict between Social-Democracy and Anarchism. For the Anarchists
will recommend abstention from voting and refusal to pay taxes in
cases where the Social-Democrats are strenuously urging the workers
to organize their votes so as to return candidates pledged to contend
for extensions of the franchise and for taxation of unearned incomes,
the object of such taxation being the raising of State capital for all
sorts of collective purposes, from the opening of public libraries to
the municipalization and nationalization of our industries. In fact,
the denunciation of Social-Democratic methods by Anarchists is just
as much a matter of course as the denunciation of Social-Democratic
aims by Conservatives. It is possible that some of the strangers
present may be surprised to hear this, since no distinction is made
in the newspapers which support the existing social order between
Social-Democrats and Anarchists, both being alike hostile to that
order. In the columns of such papers all revolutionists are Socialists;
all Socialists are Anarchists; and all Anarchists are incendiaries,
assassins and thieves. One result of this is that the imaginative
French or Italian criminal who reads the papers, sometimes declares,
when taken red-handed in the commission of murder or burglary, that
he is an Anarchist acting on principle. And in all countries the more
violent and reckless temperaments among the discontented are attracted
by the name Anarchist merely because it suggests desperate, thorough,
uncompromising, implacable war on existing injustices. It is therefore
necessary to warn you that there are some persons abusively called
Anarchists by their political opponents, and others ignorantly so
described by themselves, who are nevertheless not Anarchists at all
within the meaning of this paper. On the other hand, many persons
who are never called Anarchists either by themselves or others,
take Anarchist ground in their opposition to Social-Democracy just
as clearly as the writers with whom I shall more particularly deal.
The old Whigs and new Tories of the school of Cobden and Bright, the
"Philosophic Radicals," the economists of whom Bastiat is the type,
Lord Wemyss and Lord Bramwell, Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Auberon
Herbert, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. John Morley, Mr.
Leonard Courtney: any of these is, in England, a more typical Anarchist
than Bakounin. They distrust State action, and are jealous advocates of
the prerogative of the individual, proposing to restrict the one and
to extend the other as far as is humanly possible, in opposition to
the Social-Democrat, who proposes to democratize the State and throw
upon it the whole work of organizing the national industry, thereby
making it the most vital organ in the social body. Obviously there
are natural limits to the application of both views; and Anarchists
and Social-Democrats are alike subject to the fool's argument that
since neither collective provision for the individual nor individual
freedom from collective control can be made complete, neither party
is thoroughly consistent. No dialectic of that kind will, I hope, be
found in the following criticism of Anarchism. It is confined to the
practical measures proposed by Anarchists, and raises no discussion
as to aims or principles. As to these we are all agreed. Justice,
Virtue, Truth, Brotherhood, the highest interests of the people, moral
as well as physical: these are dear not only to Social-Democrats and
Anarchists, but also to Tories, Whigs, Radicals, and probably also to
Moonlighters and Dynamitards. It is with the methods by which it is
proposed to give active effect to them that I am concerned here; and
to that point I shall now address myself by reading you a paper which
I wrote more than four years ago on the subject chosen for to-night.
I may add that it has not been revived from a wanton desire to renew
an old dispute, but in response to a demand from the provincial Fabian
Societies, bewildered as they are by the unexpected opposition of
the Anarchists, from whom they had rather expected some sympathy.
This old paper of mine being the only document of the kind available,
my colleagues have requested me to expunge such errors and follies
as I have grown out of since 1888, and to take this opportunity of
submitting it to the judgment of the Society. Which I shall now do
without further preamble.


Individualist Anarchism.

The full economic detail of Individualist Anarchism may be inferred
with sufficient completeness from an article entitled "State Socialism
and Anarchism: how far they agree, and wherein they differ," which
appeared in March, 1888, in _Liberty_, an Anarchist journal published
in Boston, Mass., and edited by the author of the article, Mr. Benjamin
R. Tucker. An examination of any number of this journal will shew that
as a candid, clear-headed, and courageous demonstrator of Individualist
Anarchism by purely intellectual methods, Mr. Tucker may safely be
accepted as one of the most capable spokesmen of his party.

"The economic principles of Modern Socialism," says Mr. Tucker, "are
a logical deduction from the principle laid down by Adam Smith in the
early chapters of his _Wealth of Nations_--namely, that labor is the
true measure of price. From this principle, these three men [Josiah
Warren, Proudhon and Marx] deduced 'that the natural wage of labor is
its product.'"

Now the Socialist who is unwary enough to accept this economic
position will presently find himself logically committed to the Whig
doctrine of _laissez-faire_. And here Mr. Tucker will cry, "Why not?
_Laissez-faire_ is exactly what we want. Destroy the money monopoly,
the tariff monopoly, and the patent monopoly. Enforce then only those
land titles which rest on personal occupancy or cultivation;[2]
and the social problem of how to secure to each worker the product
of his own labor will be solved simply by everyone minding his own
business."[3]

Let us see whether it will or not. Suppose we decree that henceforth no
more rent shall be paid in England, and that each man shall privately
own his house, and hold his shop, factory, or place of business
jointly with those who work with him in it. Let everyone be free to
issue money from his own mint without tax or stamp. Let all taxes on
commodities be abolished, and patents and copyrights be things of the
past. Try to imagine yourself under these promising conditions with
life before you. You may start in business as a crossing sweeper,
shopkeeper, collier, farmer, miller, banker, or what not. Whatever
your choice may be, the first thing you find is that the reward of
your labor depends far more on the situation in which you exercise it
than on yourself. If you sweep the crossing between St. James's and
Albemarle Streets you prosper greatly. But if you are forestalled not
only there, but at every point more central than, say, the corner of
Holford Square, Islington, you may sweep twice as hard as your rival in
Piccadilly, and not take a fifth of his toll. At such a pass you may
well curse Adam Smith and his principle that labor is the measure of
price, and either advocate a democratically constituted State Socialist
municipality, paying all its crossing sweepers equally, or else cast
your broom upon the Thames and turn shopkeeper. Yet here again the same
difficulty crops up. Your takings depend, not on yourself, but on the
number of people who pass your window per hour. At Charing Cross or
Cheapside fortunes are to be made: in the main street at Putney one
can do enough to hold up one's head: further out, a thousand yards
right or left of the Portsmouth Road, the most industrious man in the
world may go whistle for a customer. Evidently retail shopkeeping is
not the thing for a man of spirit after Charing Cross and Cheapside
have been appropriated by occupying owners on the principle of first
come first served. You must aspire then to wholesale dealing--nay, to
banking. Alas! the difficulty is intensified beyond calculation. Take
that financial trinity, Glyn, Mills and Currie; transplant them only
a few miles from Lombard Street; and they will soon be objects of
pity to the traditional sailor who once presented at their counter a
cheque for L25 and generously offered to take it in instalments, as he
did not wish to be too hard on them all at once. Turning your back on
banking, you meddle in the wheat trade, and end by offering to exchange
an occupying ownership of all Salisbury Plain for permission to pay a
rack rent for premises within hail of "The Baltic" and its barometer.

Probably there are some people who have a blind belief that crossing
sweepers, "The Baltic," Lombard Street, and the like, are too utterly
of the essence of the present system to survive the introduction of
Anarchism. They will tell me that I am reading the conditions of the
present into the future. Against such instinctive convictions it is
vain to protest that I am reading only Mr. Tucker's conditions. But at
least there will be farming, milling, and mining, conducted by human
agents, under Anarchism. Now the farmer will not find in his perfect
Anarchist market two prices at one time for two bushels of wheat of the
same quality; yet the labor cost of each bushel will vary considerably
according to the fertility of the farm on which it was raised, and the
proximity of that farm to the market. A good soil will often yield
the strongest and richest grain to less labor per acre or per bushel
than must be spent on land that returns a crop less valuable by five
shillings a quarter. When all the best land is held by occupying
owners, those who have to content themselves with poorer soils will
hail the principle that labor is the measure of price with the thumb
to the nose. Among the millers, too, there must needs be grievous
mistrust of Proudhon and Josiah Warren. For of two men with equally
good heart to work and machinery to work with, one may be on a stream
that will easily turn six millstones; whilst the other, by natural
default of water, or being cut off by his fellow higher up stream, may
barely be able to keep two pairs of stones in gear, and may in a dry
season be ready to tie these two about his neck and lie down under the
scum of his pond. Certainly, he can defy drought by setting to work
with a steam engine, steel rollers, and all the latest contrivances
for squashing wheat into dust instead of grinding it into flour; yet,
after all his outlay, he will not be able to get a penny a sack more
for his stuff than his competitor, to whose water-wheel Nature is
gratuitously putting her shoulder. "Competition everywhere and always"
of his unaided strength against that of his rival he might endure; but
to fight naked against one armed with the winds and waves (for there
are windmills as well as watermills) is no sound justice, though it
be sound Anarchism. And how would occupying ownership of mines work,
when it is an easier matter to get prime Wallsend and Silkstone out
of one mine than to get slates and steam fuel out of another, even
after twenty years' preliminary shaft-sinking? Would Mr. Tucker, if
he had on sale from a rich mine some Silkstone that had only cost
half as much labor as steam coal from a relatively poor one, boldly
announce:--"Prices this day: Prime Silkstone, per ton, 25s.; best steam
ditto, 50s. Terms, cash. Principles, those of Adam Smith--see 'Wealth
of Nations' _passim_"? Certainly not with "competition everywhere
and always," unless custom was no object to him in comparison with
principle.

It is useless to multiply instances. There is only one country in
which any square foot of land is as favorably situated for conducting
exchanges, or as richly endowed by nature for production, as any other
square foot; and the name of that country is Utopia. In Utopia alone,
therefore, would occupying ownership be just. In England, America
and other places, rashly created without consulting the Anarchists,
Nature is all caprice and injustice in dealing with Labor. Here you
scratch her with a spade; and earth's increase and foison plenty are
added to you. On the other side of the hedge twenty steam-diggers will
not extort a turnip from her. Still less adapted to Anarchism than
the fields and mines is the crowded city. The distributor flourishes
where men love to congregate: his work is to bring commodities to
men; but here the men bring themselves to the commodities. Remove
your distributor a mile, and his carts and travellers must scour the
country for customers. None know this better than the landlords. Up
High Street, down Low Street, over the bridge and into Crow Street, the
toilers may sweat equally for equal wages; but their product varies;
and the ground rents vary with the product. Competition levels down
the share kept by the worker as it levels up the hours of his labor;
and the surplus, high or low according to the fertility of the soil or
convenience of the site, goes as high rent or low rent, but always in
the long run rack rent, to the owner of the land.

Now Mr. Tucker's remedy for this is to make the occupier--the actual
worker--the owner. Obviously the effect would be, not to abolish his
advantage over his less favorably circumstanced competitors, but simply
to authorize him to put it into his own pocket instead of handing it
over to a landlord. He would then, it is true, be (as far as his place
of business was concerned) a worker instead of an idler; but he would
get more product as a manufacturer and more custom as a distributor
than other equally industrious workers in worse situations. He could
thus save faster than they, and retire from active service at an age
when they would still have many years more work before them. His
ownership of his place of business would of course lapse in favor
of