The Nomadic Alternative – Page 224

Proportion to the force which binds its component parts. And "all

that is founded on force is fragile and denotes the absence of

genius." (Fourier)

'Anarchist' is commonly used as a term of abuse for a psycho-

pathic hooligan. The public assumes bombs to be an integral part

of his anatomy, and the whole definition and direction of the

Anarchist Movement has been - to say the least - unfortunate.

Anarchists have repeatedly fallen into the fallacy of "propaganda

by the deed", dynamic restlessness finding its outlet in dynamite.

Anarchists rightly believe that a revolutionary situation does not

necessarily need a disciplined organization, but random appeals

to cut the throats of the rich finally alienate popular will. The

"cold passion" and "merciless destruction" demanded by Nechaev only

prejudices would-be revolutionaries in favour of authoritarian

control and plays into the hands of the megalomaniac.

But Anarchism - proper - is the very antithesis of chaos and

proposes a "primitivist" return, however gradual, to an archetypal

blueprint for a simpler human society established before the economic

Fall. Like the Taoist, the Anarchist thinker moves forward by

looking backward. And it is significant that one of the greatest

Russians of his generation, Prince Kropotkin, lost among the hunting

peoples of Siberia "whatever faith in state discipline I cherished

before". Anarchism is revolution through the individual, not revolu-

tion through the state. While an Anarchist would agree with Nietzsche

that "War is the health of the State", he would deny that the state

of war has anything to do with a healthy individual. Anarchism

presumes the Society of Equals to be an innate disposition in man

and to answer an organic code of laws inherent in the minds of all.

The true Anarchist will try, despite outside pressures and the

limitations of his own upbringing, to enact them, not to slop about

in search of inner harmony in anti-social rejection of the outside

world. The unbounded, total anarchy of the savage cannot be resurr-

ected, but this does not detract from its relevance to the condition

of man. After all, Christianity faced this problem and rendered to

Caesar the things that were Caesar's.