Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Modern Science and Anarchism (1912).pdf/46



Anarchism, as we have already said, arises from the course taken by practical life.

Godwin, contemporary of the Great Revolution of 1789–93, had seen with his own eyes how the authority of the Government, created during the Revolution and by the Revolution itself, had in its turn become an obstacle to the development of the revolutionary movement. He was also aware of what went on in England under cover of Parliament: the pillage of communal lands, the sale of advantageous posts, the hunting of the children of the poor and their removal from workhouses, by agents who travelled all over England for the purpose, to the factories of Lancashire, where masses of them soon perished. And Godwin soon understood that a Government, were it even that of the Jacobin "One and Indivisible Republic," would never be able to accomplish the necessary Social, Communistic Revolution; that a Revolutionary Government, by virtue of its being a guardian of the State, and of the privileges every State has to defend, soon becomes a hindrance to the Revolution. He understood and openly proclaimed the idea that for the triumph of the Revolution men must first get rid of their faith in Law, Authority, Unity, Order, Property, and other institutions inherited from past times when their forefathers were slaves.

The second Anarchist theorist, Proudhon, who came after Godwin, lived through the Revolution of 1848. He was able to see with his own eyes the crimes committed by the Republican Government, and at the same time convince himself of the impotence of Louis Blanc's State Socialism. Under the recent impression of what he had seen during the Revolution of 1848 he wrote his powerful work, "General Idea on the Revolution," in which he boldly proclaimed Anarchism and the abolition of the State.

And lastly, in the International Working Men's Association the Anarchist conception also asserted itself after a Revolution