It is upon the contention that “man is too evil to know how to govern himself,” that authoritarians base their justification of the power they wish to establish. “Power is necessary to reform mankind” is the reply to the Anarchists when they speak of establishing a society based upon solidarity, entire equality, and absolute autonomy for the individual, without authority, rule, or constraint. “Man is evil.” Undoubtedly! But may he become better, and may he become worse? Is any change in his present condition possible, either for good or ill? Can he be improved or deteriorated physiologically and morally? And if evolution in one sense or another be possible (as history proves that it is) does the heritage of ancient laws, the harness of old institutions, tend to make men better, or do they help to make him worse? The answer to this question will tell us which of the two, modern man or the social state, must be reformed first.

Nowadays no one denies that the physical environment has an enormous influence upon the physiological constitution of man; now, with still greater reason the intellectual and moral environment must influence his psychological constitution.

Upon what is our present society based? Does it tend to create harmony among men? Is it so managed that the adversity of one shall be felt by others, in order that all may be led to diminish or prevent it? Does personal well-being flow from general well-being, and is no one interested in disturbing the operation thereof? This society of kings, priests, merchants, and employers⁠—does it permit all generous ideas to come forth, or does it not rather tend to stifle them? Has it not at its command, for the purpose of crushing the weak, this brute force⁠—money⁠—which puts the most generous and least egoistic at the mercy of the most greedy and least scrupulous?

To study the mechanism of capitalistic society is sufficient to discover that it can produce nothing good. Aspirations towards the good and the beautiful must be perennial in the human race, not to have been choked by the rapacity and narrow, unreasoning egoism which official society has inculcated in it from the cradle. This society, as we have observed in the preceding chapter, is based upon the antagonism of interests, and makes every individual the enemy of his neighbor. The seller’s interest is opposed to the buyer’s; the stock-raiser and the agriculturist ask for nothing better than a “good epidemic and a good hailstorm” among their neighbors, in order to raise the price of their commodities, when they do not have recourse to the State which “protects” them, while seizing, by virtue of “superior right,” the products of their competitors; the development of mechanical appliances tends to greater and greater division of the workers, throwing them out of employment and leading them to disputes among themselves for the chance to take each other’s jobs, and the number of these is increasing largely beyond the demand. In fine, everything in our traditional “society” tends to split up mankind.

Why is there idleness and misery at the present moment? Because the stores are glutted with products. How is it that it has not yet occurred to anybody to set them on fire or take possession of them, and thus procure that employment which is refused, by creating among the workers themselves the markets which their exploiters go so far to seek?⁠—“Because we are afraid of the soldiers and militia,” does someone say? This fear is real, but it does not of itself suffice to explain the apathy of the starving. How many occasions present themselves in the course of one’s life to do wrong without the slightest risk, and yet one does not commit it for other reasons than for fear of the soldiery. And besides, the starving, if they should all unite, are numerous enough, in Paris, for instance, not to be afraid of the troops, to hold the police-force in check for a whole day, empty the stores, and have a good feast for once. In the case of those who go to prison for tramping and begging, is it in reality the fear of prison which makes them beg for that which it would cost them no more to take? It is because in addition to cowardice there is a sentiment of sociability which prevents people from returning evil for evil, and makes them submit to the heaviest shackles in the belief that these are necessary to the functioning of society. Does anyone believe that force alone would suffice to ensure respect for property, were it not mingled in the people’s minds with a character of legitimacy which makes them accept it as the result of individual labor? Have the severest penalties ever prevented those who, without troubling themselves whether it were legitimate or not, have wished to live at the expense of others, from carrying out their intents? What would it be, then, if people, studying over their misery and discovering its cause in property, were of a nature so given to evil as is popularly alleged? Society would not endure another moment; there would then be “the struggle for existence” in its most ferocious expression, a return to pure barbarism. It is precisely because man has tended towards what is better, that he has allowed himself to be ruled, enslaved, deceived, exploited, and still repudiates violent measures to effect his final enfranchisement.

This declaration that “man is born to evil,” and that there is no change to hope for, means, when analyzed: “Man is bad society is therefore bad, and there is nothing to hope for, either from one or the other. What is the use of losing one’s time in seeking for a perfection which humanity cannot attain? Let us look out for ourselves as best we can. If the sum of gratifications we obtain is made up of the tears and blood of the victim we have sown along our route, what does it matter to us? One must crush others to escape being crushed himself. So much the worse for those who fall.”⁠—Well, let the privileged ones, who have thus far managed to bolster up their sway, to send the workers to sleep, to transform them into defenders of their masters’ privileges, first by promising them a better life in the other world, then, when they ceased to believe in God, by preaching to them morality, patriotism, social utility, etc., and today by making them hope to gain, through universal suffrage, a multitude of reforms and improvements impossible to effect, (for the ills which flow from the very essence of the social organization cannot be prevented so long as we attack the effects only, without finding the cause, so long as society itself be not transformed)⁠—let the exploiters of the poor, then, proclaim the unadulterated right of force, and we shall see how long their sway will last! Force will balance force.

When man first began to group together with his fellows, he must still have been much more of an animal than a human being; ideas of morality and justice did not exist in him. Having had to struggle against other animals, against all nature, his first groups were formed out of the necessity for an association of forces, not by the desire for solidarity. No doubt these associations were, as we have already said, temporary at the start, limited to the capture of the game to be hunted or the overthrow of the obstacle to be conquered, later to the repulse or killing of an assailant. It was only by thus practicing association that men were brought to understand its importance; and the societies thus formed continued to live and became permanent. But on the other hand this life of continual struggle could not help developing the sanguinary and despotic instinct in people. The weaker had to submit to the rule of the stronger when they did not serve the latter as food. It could not have been till much later that cunning gained a precedence equal to that of force.

When we study man in his earliest appearance it must be admitted that he was then a wicked enough animal indeed; but since he has reached his present development and formed conceptions of which he was formerly incapable, what reason is there why he should stop and go no further? To attempt to deny that man may still progress is to be as much in error as if one had affirmed, at the time he dwelt in caves and had nothing but a club or a stone weapon as a means of defense, that he would not one day become capable of building the opulent cities of today, of utilizing electricity and steam. Why shall man, who has reached the point of guiding the selection of domestic animals in the direction of his needs, not reach the point of guiding his own tastes in the direction of the good and beautiful of which he begins to have conceptions? Little by little man has evolved and does evolve every day. His ideas are constantly modified. Physical force, though sometimes thrusting itself upon him, is no longer admired in the same degree. Ideas of morality, of justice, of solidarity have developed; they have so much weight that the privileged, to succeed in maintaining their privileges, are obliged to make people believe themselves exploited and gagged in their own interest. This deception cannot last. People begin to feel themselves too cramped in this illy-balanced society. Aspirations which began to come to light centuries ago, at first isolated and incomplete, today begin to assume definite shape; they are found even among those who may be classed among the privileged of the present organization. There is not a single person who has not at times uttered his cry of revolt or indignation against this society, still governed by the dead, which seems to have undertaken the task of crushing all our sentiments, acts, aspirations, and from which we suffer the more in proportion to our development. Ideas of liberty and justice are becoming more defined; those who proclaim them are still in the minority, but a minority strong enough to make the possessing classes uneasy and afraid.

Man, then, like all other animals, is but the product of an evolution worked out under the influence of the environment in which he lives and the conditions of existence he is forced to submit to or combat; only, more than other animals, or at least in a higher degree, has he come to reason upon his origin, to formulate aspirations for his future. It depends upon him to conjure this fatality of “evil” alleged to be attached to his existence. By succeeding in creating for himself other conditions of life he will succeed in modifying himself also. For the rest, without going further the question may be summarized thus: “Has every individual, good or bad, the right to live as he likes, to revolt if exploited, or if others seek to bind him to conditions of existence repugnant to him?” The pets of fortune and those who are in power claim to be better than others; but it would suffice that “the bad” should overthrow them and establish themselves in their place, thus inverting the roles, to have equal reason with the first for being “good.” The system of private property, by putting all our social wealth in the hands of a few, has permitted these to live as parasites at the expense of the mass whom they have enslaved, and whose product only serves to keep up their show and idleness, or to defend their interests. This condition, recognized as unjust by those who submit to it, cannot last. The workers will demand free possession of what they produce, and will revolt if the denial of the request continues. Vainly does capitalism seek to entrench itself behind the argument that “man is evil;” the revolution will come. Then it will appear either that man is indeed incapable of perfectibility, (we have just seen the contrary) in which case there would be a war of appetites, and whatever theirs might be the capitalistic classes would be doomed in advance, since they are the minority⁠—or that man is evil because institutions help to make him such; in which case he may elevate himself to a social state which will contribute to his moral, intellectual, and physical development, and manage to transform society in such a way as will effect the solidarity of all its interests. But however it be, the revolution will come! The sphinx interrogates us and we answer without fear, for we Anarchists, destroyers of laws and property, we know the key to the enigma.