The Reader Critic
Reading edition
What Is Anarchy?
Alan Adair, London:
In the March number of The Little Review, Miss Alice Groff criticises Anarchy. She criticises it badly and unfairly. She writes as though she did not understand what anarchy is. Have you room in your paper for me to tell her?
Anarchy is the name given to those periods in the life of a people during which the principle of domination is held in abeyance and men are no longer accountable to any magistracy. It is properly a political word. It has no philosophical significance. All it means is absence of material government. It is in that sense that Milton uses it and Swift uses it. It is in that sense that writers of history books employ it. It is a term, and the only correct term, for a certain condition of society. That condition has occurred in the past and will doubtless occur in the future. It is the result of an equality of strength among the different elements, or “social-egos” that make up a community. There is Anarchy only so long as these forces remain equal. Once they cease to be equal, so soon as one begins to tend towards dominance, so soon does the Anarchy end. According to the “social-ego” that has triumphed, the changed commonwealth becomes an oligarchy or a kingdom; a military republic, an ochlocracy or a federation of communes. But until then, while there is still absence of supreme coercive power, while there is still no dominant “social-ego,” so long is the community correctly termed an Anarchy.
Between this, the Anarchy of fact and of history, and the Anarchy of theory and modern revolutionists, there is no substantial difference. The anarchist, in any age, is simply and without qualification, a man who desires an end put to the political power under which he lives. The reason why he desires such a thing does not matter. He may think government to be eternally an evil or only presently an evil. He may be egoist or communist. What makes him an anarchist is that he hates the social order around him and would precipitate its destruction by paralyzing the centers of its administrative and legislative authority.
The theoretical case against government has little part in the mind of the modern anarchist. Miss Groff altogether overestimates the importance that he attaches to it. The war against authority as authority is past. We are beyond that kind of mysticism. Scepticism is a big ingredient of Anarchy and the anarchist knows only too well that we know too little of psychology and too little of philosophy to judge the worth of abstractions like justice or liberty or the principle of domination. We can only fix temporary, conditional values to such things. Actual, modern authority is the only sphinx that troubles the contemporary anarchist. He has no desire to control the destinies of his people and, as anarchist, he has no theories about the future form of its political institutions. His business is solely with present facts. His task is simply destruction. It may be that he does not start from a “basis of reason.” He has seen and thought too much to trouble greatly about reason. He knows too many books to have much optimism. He sees sprawled across the earth a tragic and incoherent civilization and he sees the most virile of the races of man lose under its influence the spontaneity of their actions and the region of their instincts. That, possibly more than the desire to “complete a circuit of reason,” is at the root of his attitude to society. The question of the moral significance of archist or an-archist is beyond the answering of Miss Groff or any one else. The question of whether it is well to endure the present order; to be dwarfed and poisoned by its ideals; to be devoted by its economy to contemptible pursuits; to be forced to conjunction with base influences by every circumstance that past power has created for the control of present humanity; that is at least an answerable question. Of the value of the anarchist answer there may be many opinions, but that it is an intelligible answer is not to be denied. It is simple and coherent. Society is sick of its many counsellors and rulers. Its sources of spiritual vitality are dried up. It is full of confusion; bereft of consistent purpose; continuing only in mechanical existence. To precipitate its decay is the one wise action possible to mankind. All things are grown fatigued; without simplicity of soul or rigour of desire. Religions, institutions and codes of law are no longer animated; solely the dead weight of the past holds them in position. Of what use to plan, meditate or invent, to conquer elements or to evoke from the earth new, fantastic and wonder-working metals, when that which has custody of all such things, that which alone can give continuity to the works and achievements of man our mother civilization itself is in dissolution?
To the mind of the anarchist, there are but two courses open to humanity. First: there may be a continuance of the present conditions: a society stratified as now, stupidified as now, completely organized, of antique institutions, growing perpetually enfeebled in spirit, the current of its vitality becoming attenuated until lost in the morass of an enormous racial degeneracy. Or else, secondly, the mechanism of civilization may break and a period of administrative and moral chaos not easily distinguishable from barbarism supervene upon dilatory decadence. It is this second course that commends itself to the anarchist. Only in a partial cessation of its continuity, only in a barbaric forgetfulness of its eternal problems and speculations can an exhausted humanity come once more to a zest for existence and the will to achievement.
And an Anarchy is commonly an epoch of such confusion and recovery.
Impressions of the Loop
A Boy Reader, Chicago:
Is the following good enough for you to print?
As I walk through the streets of the Loop, Big, fat, double-chinned women fan by; They reek of Melba perfume: They might have used some other kind, But they like Melba: fat women, I mean. Then there are whining old ladies; They look disdainfully at the gay styles, Whining, because they are disgusted— (Envious disgust). They are old, you know, and can’t do such things. And drunken men tumble from the corner saloons; I envy them, for they are very happy. Miserable, begging men and women sit in comfort On every corner. Some have an arm, some a leg, But they had another once. Why don’t the rich people take care of them? They might lose their arms and legs! Big limousines glide by; Painted blonde ladies sit on soft cushions. They must sit there! What would the jewelry stores do without them! Diamonds glitter on their perfumed hands; They cannot smile, for the paint would crack And fall from their faces. Besides, they are select. Ragamuffins weave in and out. They hop cars, scream, and envy the blossoming windows Of cheap Delicatessens. Flip stenographers flit by; Their ankles are gay with many-colored stilty shoes, But their stockings are full of holes and Jacob’s ladders Under it all. Terrible odors fill the air: Fish, gasoline, booze, sachet-powder (lots of Melba), Gas, cheap roses, and peanuts; coffee, smoke, And other things. Dirty men, clean men, dudes, street mashers, Cheap Musicians and Artists.... This is life!
Statement of Ownership, Management, Circulation, Etc., Required by the Act of Congress of August 24, 1912
Of The Little Review, published monthly at Chicago, Ill., for April 1st, 1916.
State of Illinois, County of Cook—ss:
Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State and county aforesaid, personally appeared Margaret C. Anderson, who, having been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says that she is the Editor of The Little Review, and that the following is, to the best of her knowledge and belief, a true statement of the ownership, management (and if a daily paper, the circulation), etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date shown in the above caption, required by the Act of August 24, 1912, embodied in section 443, Postal Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of this form, to wit:
1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business managers are:
Publisher, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building; Editor, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building; Managing editor, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building; Business manager, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building.
2. That the owners are: (Give names and addresses of individual owners, or, if a corporation, give its name and the names and addresses of stockholders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of the total amount of stock.)
Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building.
3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: (If there are none, so state.) None.
4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving the names of the owners, stockholders, and security holders, if any, contain not only the list of stockholders and security holders as they appear upon the books of the company but also, in cases where the stockholders or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting, is given; also that the said two paragraphs contain statements embracing affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the company as trustee, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner; and this affiant has no reason to believe that any other person, association, or corporation has any interest direct or indirect in the said stock, bonds, or other securities than as so stated by him.
MARGARET C. ANDERSON.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 31st day of March, 1916.
(SEAL)
MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public. (My commission expires December 20, 1917.)