Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

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all human activity to a single pattern. Thereby it comes into irreconcilable opposition
with the creative forces of all higher culture, which is ever on the lookout for new
forms and new organizations and consequently as definitely dependent on variety
and universality in human undertakings as is political power on fixed forms and patterns.
Between the struggles for political and economic power of the privileged minorities
in society and the cultural activities of the people there always exists an
inner conflict. They are efforts in opposite directions which will never voluntarily
unite and can only be given a deceptive appearance of harmony by external compulsion
and spiritual oppression ...
The very fact that every system of rulership is founded on the will of a privileged
minority which has subjugated the common people by cunning or brute force, while
each particular phase of culture expresses merely the anonymous force of the community,
is indicative of the inner antagonism between them. Power always reverts to
individuals or small groups of individuals; culture has its roots in the com munity.
Power is always the sterile element in society, denied all creative force. Culture embodies
procreative will, creative urge, formative impulse, all yearning for expression.
Power is comparable to hunger, the satisfaction of which keeps the individual alive
up to a certain age limit. Culture, in the highest sense, is like the procreative urge,
which keeps the species alive. The individual dies, but never society. States perish;
cultures only change their scene of action and fo rms of expression ...
But although power and culture are opposite poles in history, they nevertheless
have a common field of activity in the social collaboration of men, and must necessarily
find a modus vivendi. The more completely man's cultural activity comes under the
control of power, the more clearly we recognize the fixation of its forms, the crippling
of its creative imaginative vigour and the gradual atrophy of its productive will.
On the other hand, the more vigorously social culture breaks through the limitations
set by political power, the less is it hindered in its natural development by religious
and political pressure. In this event it grows into an immediate danger to the permanence
of power in general. ..
Compulsion does not unite, compulsion only separates men; fo r it lacks the inner
drive of all social unions-the understanding which recognizes the facts and the
sympathy which comprehends the feeling of the fe llow man because it feels itself related
to him. By subjecting men to a common compulsion one does not bring them
closer to one another; rather one creates estrangements between them and breeds
impulses of selfishness and separation. Social ties have permanence and completely
fulfill their purpose only when they are based on good will and spring from the needs