Page:Anarchism- Its Aims and Methods (Yarros, 1887).pdf/14

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

13

is experienced in maintaining harmony among the sovereign members of the association. As long as one finds it to his interest or pleasure to be a unit of a particular body, he is certain to zealously guard it against dissolution or partial derangement.

Mr. Andrews's illustration disposes with thoroughness of the quasi-philosophic argument often made against the central doctrine of Anarchy, to the effect that freedom is anti-social, and that Individual Sovereignty implies a return to barbarism. For the command of a man to himself is essentially different from the command of governor to governed. The freedom here contended for is freedom from arbitrary authority and compulsory regulation assumed by men against the will and interest of other men fully equal, if not superior, to them, and not freedom from natural limitations or restrictions imposed by conditions outside of the control of man. The cultured and refined member of society who, in order to command the respect of his peers, to win the confidence and love of his inferiors, and to gain self-approval, minutely analyzes his conduct and thoroughly disciplines himself, is in no sense less free than the isolated savage with his strong, uncontrollable passions and fierce instincts. The savage having become civilized, savage freedom no longer attracts him. But no change affects his aversion for dictatorial government; on the contrary, the deeper his social attachments, the more intense his hatred of direct coercion.

To abolish government and extend personal freedom, then, is not to endanger social stability, but to surround it with additional guarantees.

Next to the principle of voluntaryism, as a basis and condition of social existence, stands the principle of equality. Not the authoritarian equality of the paternal reformers, but