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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