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

74 / ANARCHISM
fe deral authority, finally, is no longer a government; it is an agency created by the
states fo r the joint execution of certain fu nctions which the states abandon, and
which thus become federal powers ... Thus the federal power is in the full sense of the
word an agent, under the strict control of his principals, whose power varies at their
pleasure.}
In summary, the federal system is the contrary of hierarchy or administrative
and governmental centralization which characterizes, to an equal extent, democratic
empires, constitutional monarchies, and unitary republics. Its basic and essential law
is this: in a federation, the powers of central authority are specialized and limited
and diminish in number, in directness, and in what I may call intensity as the confederation
grows by the adhesion of new states. In centralized governments, on the contrary,
the powers of the supreme authority multiply, extend, and become more
direct, bringing the business of provinces, towns, corporations, and individuals under
the jurisdiction of the prince, as a direct function of territorial scale and the size
of the population. Hence arises that suppression of all liberties, communal and provincial,
and even individual and national.
On the Political Capacity of the Working Classes (1865)
What, then, is mutualism's intention and what are the consequences of that doctrine
in terms of Government It is to fo und an order of things wherein the principle of the
sovereignty of the people, of man and of the citizen, would be Implemented to the
letter: where every member of the State, retaining his independence and continuing
to act as sovereign, would be self-governing, while a higher authority would concern
itself solely with collective matters; where, as a consequence, there would be certain
common matters but no centralization: and, to take things to their conclusion, a
State the acknowledged sovereign parts of which would be free to quit the group and
withdraw from the compact, at will. For there is no disguising it: if it is to be logical
and true to its principle, the federation has to take things to these extremes. Otherwise
it is merely an illusion, empty boasting, a lie ...
What must be done in order to render confederation indestructible is at last to
fu rnish it with the sanction for which it is still waiting, by proclaiming economic
Right as the basis of the right offederation and all political order. ..
Thus, under the democratic constitution ... the political and the economic are
one and the same order, one and the same system, based upon a single principle, mutuality.
As we have seen, through a series of mutualist transactions, the great economic
institutions free themselves one after another, and form this vast