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CHAPTER XI
THE OLDEST ANARCHISM
It is
perhaps % just as well to begin this chapter by
reminding ourselves that anarchy means literally no
government. Consequently, there will be no laws. "I
am ready to make terms, but I will have no laws," said
Proudhon; adding, "I acknowledge none." (i) However
revolutionary this may seem, it is, after all, not
so very unlike what has always existed in the affairs of
men. Without the philosophy of the idealist anarchist,
with no pretense of justice or "nonsense" about equality,
there have always been in this old world of ours those
powerful enough to make and to break law, to brush
aside the State and any and every other hindrance that
stood in their path. "Laws are like spiders' webs," said
Anacharsis, "and will, like them, only entangle and hold
the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will
easily break through them." He might have said, with
equal truth, that, with or without laws, the rich and
powerful have been able in the past to do very much
as they pleased. For the poor and the weak there have
always been, to be sure, hard and fast rules that they
could not break through. But the rich and powerful have
always managed to live more or less above the State or,
at least, so to dominate the State that to all intents and
purposes, other than their own,
Bakounin wrote his startling and now famous decree
it did not exist. When
abolishing the State, he created no end of hilarity among
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