Freethinkers--that is, without intellectual Anarchists--will
share the fate of China. It is also true that our criminal law,
based on a conception of crime and punishment which is nothing
but our vindictiveness and cruelty in a virtuous disguise, is an
unmitigated and abominable nuisance, bound to be beaten out of
us finally by the mere weight of our experience of its evil and
uselessness. But it will not be replaced by anarchy. Applied to
the industrial or political machinery of modern society, anarchy
must always reduce itself speedily to absurdity. Even the
modified form of anarchy on which modern civilization is based:
that is, the abandonment of industry, in the name of individual
liberty, to the upshot of competition for personal gain between
private capitalists, is a disastrous failure, and is, by the
mere necessities of the case, giving way to ordered Socialism.
For the economic rationale of this, I must refer disciples of
Siegfried to a tract from my hand published by the Fabian Society
and entitled The Impossibilities of Anarchism, which explains
why, owing to the physical constitution of our globe, society
cannot effectively organize the production of its food, clothes
and housing, nor distribute them fairly and economically on any
anarchic plan: nay, that without concerting our social action to
a much higher degree than we do at present we can never get rid
of the wasteful and iniquitous welter of a little riches and
a deal of poverty which current political humbug calls our
prosperity and civilization. Liberty is an excellent thing; but
it cannot begin until society has paid its daily debt to Nature
by first earning its living. There is no liberty before that
except the liberty to live at somebody else's expense, a liberty
much sought after nowadays, since it is the criterion of
gentility, but not wholesome from the point of view of the common