CHAPTER VII.
The Smaller Fry.
Among our present-day Anarchists some, like John Mackay, the author of "Die Anarchisten, Kulturgemälde aus dem Ende des xix. Jahrhunderts," declare for individualism, while others—by far the more numerous—call themselves Communists. These are the descendants of Bakounine in the Anarchist movement. They have produced a fairly considerable literature in various languages, and it is they who are making so much noise with the help of the "propaganda by deed." The prophet of this school is the Russian refugee, P. A. Kropotkine.
I shall not here stop to consider the doctrines of the Individualist-Anarchist of to-day, whom even their brethren, the Communist-Anarchists, look upon as "bourgeois."[1] We will go straight on to the Anarchist-"Communist."
What is the standpoint of this new species of Communism? "As to the method followed by the Anarchist thinker, it entirely differs from that of the Utopists," Kropotkine assures us. "The Anarchist thinker does not resort to metaphysical conceptions (like 'natural
- ↑ The few Individualists we come across are only strong in their criticism of the State and of the law. As to their constructive ideal, a few preach an idyll that they themselves would never care to practise, while others, like the editor of Liberty, Boston, fall back upon an actual bourgeois system. In order to defend their Individualism they reconstruct the State with all its attributes (law, police, and the rest) after having so courageously denied them. Others, finally, like Auberon Herbert, are stranded in a "Liberty and Property Defence League"—a League for the defence of landed property. La Révolte, No. 38, 1893, "A lecture on Anarchism."
