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Conclusion [of Part I]
Anarchy represents an attempt to apply the generalisations obtained by the inductive method of the natural sciences to the evaluation of human institutions. It is also an attempt to predict, on the basis of that evaluation, the march of humanity towards liberty, equality, and fraternity, in order to obtain the greatest possible sum of happiness for each of the units in human societies.
Anarchy is the inevitable result of the intellectual movement in the natural sciences which began towards the end of the eighteenth century, was retarded by the triumphant reaction in Europe after the defeat of the French Revolution, and recommenced anew in the full blossoming of its forces since the end of the [eighteen-]fifties. The roots of Anarchy are in the naturalist philosophy of the eighteenth century. But it could not acquire its full foundations until the revival of science which took place at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century and which gave new life to the study of institutions and human societies on a naturalist basis.
The purported "scientific laws" with which the German metaphysicians of the 1820s and 1830s were content find no place in the anarchist conception. It recognises no other method of research than the scientific method. And it applies this method to all the sciences generally known under the name of the humanitarian [or social] sciences.
Taking advantage of this method, as well as of recent research made under the impetus of this method, Anarchy attempts to construct all the sciences concerning man, and revise current notions about law, justice, etc. on the data already obtained by ethnological research and extending them further. Building on the work of its predecessors in the eighteenth-century, Anarchy has sided with the individual against the State; with society against the authority which, by virtue of historical conditions, dominates it. Benefiting from the historical materials accumulated by modern science, Anarchy has demonstrated that State authority, whose oppression grows more and more in our days, is in reality only a harmful and unnecessary superstructure which, for us Europeans, only dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: a superstructure built in the interests of capitalism and which was already, in antiquity, the cause of the fall of Rome and Greece, as well as all the other centres of civilisation in the East and in Egypt.
The authority which was formed in the course of history to unite in a common interest lord, judge, soldier, and priest, and which during the whole course of history was an obstacle to the attempts of man to create for himself a life somewhat secure and free—this authority cannot become a weapon of liberation, no more than caesarism, imperialism or the Church can become instruments of social revolution.
In political economy, Anarchy has come to the conclusion that the actual evil lies not in that the capitalist appropriates the 'surplus value' or net profit but in the fact that this net profit or surplus value is possible. The "surplus-value" exists only because millions of men do not have enough to eat unless they sell their strength and intellect at a price that will make the net profit or surplus value possible. This is why we consider that in political economy it is necessary above all to study the subject of consumption and that in a Revolution the first duty will be to remodel consumption, so that shelter, food, and clothing are guaranteed for all. Our forefathers of 1793–1794 understood this well.
As for "production," it should be organised so that the primary needs of all society should be satisfied from the outset and as quickly as possible. This is also why Anarchy cannot see in the coming revolution a mere substitution of "labour notes" for gold coins or a replacement of the current capitalists by the State [as sole] capitalist. It sees this as a first step towards libertarian Communism, [communism] without the State.
Is Anarchy right in its conclusions? The answer will be given to us by, on the one hand, a scientific criticism of its foundations and, on the other, practical life. But there is one point on which without doubt Anarchy is absolutely in the right. It is when it considers the study of social institutions as a matter of the natural sciences; when it parts for ever with metaphysics; and when it takes for its method of reasoning the method that has served to establish all modern science and the materialist philosophy of our time. It is this [method] that will make the errors into which anarchists may have fallen in their conclusions all the more easily recognised. But to verify our conclusions is only possible by the scientific, inductive-deductive, method—the method on which every science is built and that developed every scientific conception of the universe.
In the following studies, on anarchist-communism and the historical development of the State and its current form, the reader will be able to see what we base our negative attitude towards the State on, and what are the ideas that make us conceive of the possibility of a society which, whilst accepting communism as its basis for economic organisation, at the same time would renounce the organisation of hierarchical centralisation which is termed "State."
