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

454 / ANARCHISM
of men. Only under such conditions is a relationship possible where social union and
the freedom of the individual are so closely intergrown that they can no longer be
recognized as separate entities.
Just as in every revealed religion the individual has to win the promised heavenly
kingdom for himself and does not concern himself too greatly about the salvation
of others, being sufficiently occupied with achieving his own, so also within the
state lllan tries to find ways and means of adjusting himself without cudgeling his
brain too much about whether others succeed in doing so or not. It is the state which
on principle undermines man's social feeling by assuming the part of adjuster in all
affairs and trying to reduce them to the same formula, which is for its supporters the
measure of all things. The more easily the state disposes of the personal needs of the
citizens, the deeper and more ruthlessly it dips into their individual lives and disregards
their private rights, the more successfully it stifles in them the feeling of social
union, the easier it is for it to dissolve society into its separate parts and incorporate
them as lifeless accessories into the gears of the political machine.
Modern technology is about to construct the "mechanical man" and has already
achieved some very pretty results in this field. We already have automatons in human
form which move to and fro with their iron limbs and perform certain services-give
correct change, and other things of that sort. There is something uncanny about this
invention which gives the illusion of calculated human action; yet it is only a concealed
clockwork that without opposition obeys its master's will. But it would seem
that the mechanical man is something more than a bizarre notion of modern technology.
If the people of the European American cultural realm do not within reasonable
time ievnt to lheir best traditions there is real danger that we shall rush on to the era
of the mechanical man with giant strides.
The modern "mass man, " this uprooted fellow traveller of modern technology
in the age of capitalism, who is almost completely controlled by external influences
and whirled up and down by every mood of the moment-because his soul is atrophied
and he has lost that inner balance which can maintain itself only in a true communion-already
comes dangerously close to the mechanical man. Capitalistic giant
industry, division oflabour, now achieving its greatest triumph in the Taylor system
and the so-called rationalization of industry, a dreary barracks system drilled into the
drafted citizens, the connected modern educational drill and all that is related to
it-these are phenomena whose importance must not be underestimated while we
are inquiring about the inner connections among existing conditions ...