There is to be no
compulsion, no law, no government exercising force;
there will still be acts of the community, but these
are to spring from universal consent, not from any
enforced submission of even the smallest minority.
We shall examine in a later chapter how far such
an ideal is realizable, but it cannot be denied that
Kropotkin presents it with extraordinary persuasiveness
and charm.
We should be doing more than justice to Anarchism
if we did not say something of its darker side,
the side which has brought it into conflict with the
police and made it a word of terror to ordinary citizens.
In its general doctrines there is nothing essentially
involving violent methods or a virulent hatred
of the rich, and many who adopt these general doctrines
are personally gentle and temperamentally
averse from violence. But the general tone of the
Anarchist press and public is bitter to a degree that
seems scarcely sane, and the appeal, especially in
Latin countries, is rather to envy of the fortunate
than to pity for the unfortunate. A vivid and readable,
though not wholly reliable, account, from a
hostile point of view, is given in a book called ``Le
Peril Anarchiste,'' by Felix Dubois,[17] which
incidentally reproduces a number of cartoons from anarchist
journals.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87