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

502 / ANARCHISM
conditions of industrial production, unaware ofthe routine and atmosphere of proletarian
life-or life of any real kind.
Every country has the bureaucracy it deserves. Ours, trained in public school
and university, is efficient, unimaginative, unfeeling, dull, and honest. In other countries
the bureaucracy has no such gentlemanly traditions; it is lazy, lousy, and corrupt.
In any case, lazy or efficient, honest or corrupt, a bureaucracy has nothing in
common with the people; it is a parasitic body, and has to be maintained by taxation
and extortion. Once established (as it has been established fo r half a century in England
and as it is newly established in Russia) it will do everything possible to consolidate
its position and maintain its power. Even if you abolish all other classes and
distinctions and retain a bureaucracy you are still fa r from the classless society, fo r
the bureaucracy is itself the nucleus of a class whose interests are totally opposed to
the people it supposedly serves ...
The syndicalist-the anarchist in his practical rather than his theoretical activity-proposes
to liquidate the bureaucracy first by federal devolution. Thereby he
destroys the idealistic concept of the State-that nationalistic and aggressive entity
which has nearly ruined Western civilization. He next destroys the money monopoly
and the superstitious structure of the gold standard, and substitutes a medium of exchange
based on the productive capacity of the country-so many units of exchange
for so many units of production. He then hands over to the syndicates all other administrative
functions-fixing of prices, transport, and distribution, health, and education.
In this manner the State begins to wither away! It is true that there will remain
local questions affecting the immediate interests of individuals-questions of sanitation,
fo r example; and the syndicates will elect a local council to deal with such questions-a
council of workers. And on a higher plane there will be questions of
co-operation and exchange between the various productive and distributive syndicates,
which will have to be dealt with by a central council of delegates-but again
the delegates will be workers. Until anarchism is complete there will be questions of
fo reign policy and defence, which again will be dealt with by delegated workers. But
no whole-time officials, no bureaucrats, no politicians, no dictators. Everywhere
there will be cells of workers, working according to their abilities and receiving according
to their needs ...
The degeneration of political consciousness in modern democratic states is not
a moral degeneration. It is due to this very process of centralization and collectivization
which is taking place independently, and in spite of the particular political system
we supposedly enjoy. There was a time when the relationship between the