Liberty and Love Rise and Fall Together

From ‘Why?: No Consecrated Absurdity Would Have Stood its Ground If Man Had Not Silenced Child’s Objections’, Tacoma, Wash., April 15, 1914, published by S. Hammersmark

Liberty is the first condition of growth, because we are not all alike. Life presents an infinite variety of gift and endowment.
No bird is like another; each flower is its own counterpart. The biologist knows that there are no real species: there are only individuals. As we ascend in the scale of evolution, individuality clamors incessantly for recognition. It perplexes and bewilders us. It gives the world the appearance of a tangled tropical jungle, sublime in its immense confusion. We stand mute with wonder at the spectacle of billions of living beings striving for enjoyment and development, each of which is a universe to itself. There is no rule nor measure or model or pattern for them all. Each one is a comet, with an orbit of its own; it comes and goes and no one but itself knows why. This principle of differentiation makes life rich and beautiful. It is an intellectual stimulant. It cheers up the sick and weary spirits, who may otherwise drug themselves with the opiate of pessimism.

Nature does not seem to send forth men and women like coins from a mint; she appears to mould them as a sculptor chisels statues. Some of us are born poets: others are born mathematicians. Each child-birth is a new act of creation.

And this is another reason why liberty is sunshine and air to human life. It is one of my deepest convictions that every individual is endowed with some valuable gifts. No one comes empty-handed into the world. No one is a disinherited child of Time. Every newborn babe is heir to a portion of the wealth that life has accumulated through ages of travail — an eye for beauty and color, or an ear for harmony, or a talent for literary expression, or a sense of humor, or skill in synthesis and analysis, or a retentive memory, or an aptitude for imitation. Bacon said, “Some are born great: some achieve greatness.” I think that all are born great, but through lack of opportunity, only a few achieve greatness. We are not so commonplace as we look. Genius of some kind or other is latent in every man and woman. And liberty is necessary for its unfoldment.

As all are diverse, no universally valid law can be discovered. Mankind cannot be grouped into brigades and battalions. There is no one ideal for all. Each of us must find the law of his or her being. Humanity is an abstraction; men and women are concrete entities. They who violate the freedom of others in the name of social welfare sacrifice a reality for a phrase. If society cannot thrive without crushing the individual, so much the worse for such society. And what is this same society? John I know and Jane I know: but where is society? Prophets and lawgivers, who set forth absolute rules and precepts for the guidance of others, forget that there is no common denominator for mankind. Hence the failure of all static regulation that crushes liberty.

All officious counsel and interference would disappear from the world if we learned this simple and grammatically unimpeachable sentence: “I am I, and you are you, and he is he.” The popular mind even now dimly perceives that there is something wrong in prescribing a line of conduct for others. We often hear the apologetic phrase: “If I were you, I should act thus.” But the conditional clause is absurd and destroys the validity of all that follows.

Liberty must be tasted before it can be loved. Arguments and appeals will not rouse the dormant love of liberty in an enslaved person or class. That is why slaves seldom strive for freedom. When their bonds are partially relaxed by some external agency, they begin to learn that liberty is sweet. Then, like Oliver Twist, they ask for more. This law of human psychology is a cogent argument for optimism. Like a stone rolling down hill, liberty creates its own momentum as it speeds along its path. Thus it acquires that explosive force, which shatters ancient institutions founded on ignorance and slavery. Therefore, whoever loses, liberty always wins.

Liberty is incompatible with certain weaknesses of undeveloped natures. He who would be free must conquer these failings.

Liberty cannot live long with slavery to the senses and the appetites. Alone among living beings, man is cursed with the craving for overstimulation. Man’s nervous system is the crown and flower of evolution, but it is also his worst enemy. While it brings ineffable joys within his reach, it can also be the instrument of the blackest misery and slavery. It is a two-edged sword, which man must learn to wield before he be free.

Slavery to things is unworthy of a rational being. Slavery to meats and spices, alcohol and opium is the very negation of liberty. Slavery to sensation pleasant and unpleasant keeps us wallowing in the mire of sensuality, while we take the name of liberty in vain. Pleasure in many alluring disguises forges new fetters for us, and we allow ourselves to be enslaved by ignoble lust.

Slavery to the appetites often paves the way for slavery to persons. Thousands of well-educated men and women are willing slaves of capitalism and government on account of their ungoverned passions and unworthy aims. They prostitute their talent for filthy gold, which they spend on still more filthy things. Food, drink, clothes, houses, women, honor, notoriety — for these baubles they sell themselves body and soul to the propertied classes. They cannot complain that circumstances compel them to serve the system. The people are enslaved by property and government; but the intellectual classes enslave themselves.

Liberty is also incompatible with excess of emotion. Emotion is a good servant but a bad master. It should be regarded as a means of growth, but many take it as an end in itself. It must not be allowed to overwhelm reason and conscience, or nothing will remain of the personality but dust and ashes. Love not any one overmuch. A finger near the eye can shut out the heavens from view; our loved ones — father and mother, brother and sister, friend and sweetheart — make us forget the ideal. He who would be free must travel alone. Irrational love makes cowards and suicides of us all. Man is not born to dote on this or that individual, but to develop himself and serve his kind. Personality is too precious a possession to be maimed and marred for the passing pleasure of others. No sweetheart can give me what I lose if I love her too much. He who entwines his life too closely with others for mere emotional indulgence is unfit for liberty.

Liberty is also killed by vanity. The vain man is the most miserable of slaves. He is always thinking of the opinion of others. A compliment can make him happy, and a disparaging remark can plunge him in grief. Many great men unconsciously lose their freedom on account of this weakness.

Some thinkers have feared that unrestrained liberty may lead to discord and violence. They have tried to discover some law to limit the liberty of each for the good of all — a phrase which contains a contradiction in terms. Herbert Spencer’s famous formula of equal liberty covers a multitude of fallacies beneath a mass of words. John Stuart Mill also groped in the dark for a solution of an impossible problem.

There is no such thing as qualified freedom. Liberty cannot be limited. Like a diamond, it loses its identity if it is divided and portioned out. The very concept of “equal freedom” is untenable. Quantitative terms cannot be used in speaking of freedom.

These philosophers seem to think of freedom as something given to each, whereas it is really a mark of quality of personality. It springs from within, not from without. Language often leads us astray. Free persons exist; “freedom” is an abstract noun. Spencer and Mill talk of freedom as if it were a heap of grain to be equitably distributed among a number of people. They regard it objectively and quantitatively, and would fain weigh and measure that which cannot be weighed and measured.

Both Spencer and Mill really discuss the legal and political concept of freedom. Both presuppose a coercive state as the guardian of liberty! Both devise permissive formula.

“Every one is free to do that which he will, provided he infringes not the equal liberty of any other man.”

“In self-regarding actions, every man should be free; in other-regarding actions, his liberty should be curtailed.”

Who is to judge? Who is to administer these laws? Who is to maintain the equilibrium of liberty among erring and contending mortals? Clearly some supernatural regulative agency is required for the realization of these ideals. Thus we are face to face with the same old question, “Who is to be in authority?” If all men are disposed to violate their neighbors’ freedom, who would be interested in enforcing Spencer’s canon? If only a few have such a tendency, why are they abnormal in the midst of a normal world? Spencer and Mill attempt to reconcile law with liberty. One might as well try to square the circle. Law and liberty cannot live together. One of them must perish. Philosophers, who seek a middle path, are crushed between the upper and the nether millstone. They conserve neither law nor liberty.

I hold that absolute freedom brings no evils with it, for it is the foster-nurse of fraternity. Free men love one another. In proportion as men are free, they exhibit a fraternal spirit in social life. Even today, completely enslaved populations are mean, cruel and unjust in comparison with those which are partially emancipated. The level of character is much higher in England, Holland and Switzerland than in Germany, Russia and Morocco. Liberty and love rise and fall together. Spencer and Mill forgot this great truth. They were hypnotised by government and of linking liberty to love. They distrusted Liberty even while they sang its praise, and fell into the arms of her arch-enemy, Law.

All lovers of freedom should realize the import of this principle. We are free — to grow, to serve, to love. Our freedom must not degenerate into caprice or selfishness. Freedom without love is a misnomer. It is sheer egoism masquerading in the garb of freedom.

Liberty has no essential connection with political democracy. These two may exist together, or they may not. Liberty can advance or decline under any form of government. All governments are destructive of liberty; only some are worse than others. It is a wrong notion that monarchy and oligarchy are necessarily inimical to liberty. Liberty grows where the sphere of government is restricted, whatever its constitution may be. Parliaments can smother liberty as effectively as despots or oligarchs. The history of modern France proves that arbitrary exercise of power may be as frequent in a democratic republic as under an irresponsible bureaucracy. The Dutch, under a monarchy, are freer than the citizens of the American republic. The German with a parliament encumbered with more than hundred Socialist deputies, are more enslaved than the subjects of the Turkish empire.

Democracy is no safeguard of liberty. The greatest democracy of the ancient world condemned Socrates to death. The Holy Inquisition was to a large extent only an executive of the popular will in the Middle Ages. Modern democracies sanction bloody wars and absurd laws that crush those who vote for them. When the spirit of freedom is abroad, the rights of minorities are carefully protected. That is a great test. Judged by this standard, democracy often compares very unfavorably with other forms of government. The unenlightened mass of mediocrity, that constitutes the basis of democracy, is at bottom blindly conservative and loves conformity and uniformity more than freedom and progress. It does not value individuality and prefers to obey and adore and follow. The people should get bread and freedom and culture and all the good things of life; but power must not be given to the few or the many, for they have so little knowledge or wisdom. Philistinism and vulgarity are the characteristics of democracy today. The privileged classes have, as a rule, persecuted in defence of their economic interests, but the people have often persecuted from passion and prejudice, ignorance and fanaticism.

At the present moment, liberty is menaced by many hostile forces. What little freedom some communities have been able to wrest from governments and churches is being curtailed in many ways on account of the thoughtlessness of the multitude. In the United States, government has recently extended its control over personal life. Municipal ordinances for the moral improvement of the people come thick and fast. A particularly backward state has enacted that marriage cannot be contracted without the consent of one parent of either party. All sex-relations out of wedlock have been declared criminal in some states. The Mormons are persecuted on account of an institution which is voluntarily accepted and which inflicts no injury on others. Prohibition is a favorite device for the promotion of temperance. Sterilization of the “unfit” is the latest fad of the law-lovers and law-mongers of this great democracy. In this respect, America presents a curious spectacle of retrogression in comparison with Europe.

Slowly the cloud is creeping over other civilized countries. The cry for state regulation swells in volume as manhood decays and society seeks short cuts to efficiency and happiness. This phenomenon saddened and embittered the last days of Herbert Spencer. We should awaken the people from their torpor and teach them not to surrender themselves bound hand and foot to bureaucracy. It is uphill work, for the people are inert and ignorant. But we should remember that humanity is still in its infancy.

It is an encouraging sign of the times that social tolerance is growing apace on account of a clearer recognition of the relativity of belief and conduct. Advocates of unpopular causes and opinions are not ostracized as completely as before. Friendly intercourse among members of different churches and parties is on the increase.

The radicals will soon have to add another phrase to the vocabulary of the emancipatory movement. We are familiar with the dear old war cries: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of the Press. Now the time has come to rally our forces for a long and bitter struggle to secure Freedom of Education for our children. Modern democratic states insist on driving all children to the shambles called the public schools. They trample on the rights of those who detest the state as the heretics detested the Catholic church in the Middle Ages. But we declare that we will not give up our children to be brought up as conservatives and patriots even though all the governments of the world should persecute us as Rome persecuted the Christians. And we should mature our ideas and perfect our organization for the impending struggle.

We, the Anarchists, heirs of a glorious tradition of heroism and sacrifice, are the trustees of the future of humanity. We are the enlightened ones, lovers of truth, defenders of the weak and the oppressed, harbingers of love and joy and peace. The rich and the mighty tremble at our name. Let us do our duty to our martyrs and heroes, to ourselves and to posterity. Comrades, cast your bread on the waters and after many days it will come back to you. Liberty calls you to her service.

HAR DAYAL.