Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - The Commune of Paris (1896).djvu/5

Rh experience, replied that it would be a miracle if such a State could ever exist; but if it could, it would surely be the worst of tyrannies. This ideal of the all-powerful and beneficent State is merely a copy from the past, they said ; and they confronted it with a new ideal: An-archy, i.e., the total abolition of the State, and social organisation from the simple to the complex by means of the free federation, of popular groups of producers and consumers.

It was soon admitted, even by the more liberal-minded State Socialists, that Anarchy certainly represented a much better sort of organisation than that aimed at by the popular State; but, they said, the Anarchist ideal is so far off that just now we cannot trouble about it.

At the same time, it was true that the Anarchist theory did need some short, clear mode of expression, some formula at once simple and practical, to show plainly its point of departure and embody its conceptions, to indicate how it was supported by an actually existing tendency amongst the people. A Federation of Workers' Unions and groups of consumers, regardless of frontiers and quite independent of existing States, seemed too vague; and, moreover, it was easy to see that it could not fully satisfy all the infinite variety of human requirements. A clearer formula was wanted, one more easily grasped, one which had a firm foundation in the realities of actual life.

If the question had merely been how best to elaborate a theory, we should have said, Theories, as theories, are not of so very much importance. But as long as a new idea has not found a clear, precise form of statement, growing naturally out of things as they actually exist, it does not take hold of men's minds, does not inspire them to enter upon a decisive struggle. The people do not fling themselves into the unknown without some positive and clearly formulated idea to serve them, as it were, for a springing-board when they reach the starting-point.

As for this starting point, they must be led up to it by life itself.

For five whole months Paris had been isolated by the German besiegers; for five whole months she had lived as she listed and had learned to know the immense economic, intellectual and moral strength which she possessed. She had caught a glimpse of her own force of initiative and realised what it meant. At the same time she had seen that the prating crow who took upon them to