Page:Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov - Anarchism and Socialism - tr. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1906).pdf/78

 And yet, since it might be that we are making the Communists responsible for the Collectivists, let us glance at the "Communist" publications, not only according to the spirit but the letter. In the autumn of 1892 a few "companions" appeared before the Assize Court of Versailles in consequence of a theft of dynamite at Soisy-sous-Etiolles. Among others there was one G. Etiévant, who drew up a declaration of Anarchist-Communist principles. The tribunal would not allow him to read it, whereupon the official organ of the Anarchists, La Révolte, undertook to publish this declaration, having taken great pains to secure an absolutely correct copy of the original. The "Declaration of G. Etiévant" made a sensation in the Anarchist world, and even "cultured" men like Octave Mirbeau quote it with respect along with the works of the "theorists," Bakounine, Kropotkine, the "unequalled Proudhon," and the "aristocratic Spencer!" Now this is the line of Etiévant's reasoning:

No idea is innate in us; each idea is born of infinitely diverse and multiple sensations, which we receive by means of our organs. Every act of the individual is the result of one or several ideas. The man is not therefore responsible. In order that responsibility should exist, will would have to determine the sensations, just as these determine the idea, and the idea, the act. But as it is, on the contrary, the sensations which determine the will, all judgment becomes impossible, every reward, every punishment unjust, however great the good or the evil done may be. "Thus one cannot judge men and acts unless one has a sufficient criterion. Now no such criterion exists. At any rate it is not in the laws that it could be found, for true justice is immutable and laws are changeable. It is with laws as with all the rest (!). For if laws are beneficent what is the good of deputies and senators to change them? And if they are bad what is the good of magistrates to apply them?"

Having thus "demonstrated" "liberty," Etiévant passes on to "equality."