The Social Monster

By Johann Most

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ciation. --- As often as we have tried to set forth our views of modern, that is, communistic anarchism, we have been contradicted at the same time from two opposite directions.

From one side we have been told, that we went too far, that we overlooked the necessary transition-forms of the social evolution, that the subreptitiously substituted anarchism for socialism, and when we tried to explain that anarchism is simply a social order without government, such as it must present itself to the eyes of every consistent socialist, who fights for true liberty and equality, our explanation, was suppressed and the old assertion re-iterated, that socialism and anarchism are direct contradictions.

From the other side we have quite recently been told that our tendencies are of completely reactionary character, that we run after the fala morgana of a by-gone individualism of mall-industry, etc.

But how could we or anybody else perform the ledgerdemain: at the same time to pursue the ideal, of an ante-deluvian small-industry and yet make propaganda for some altogether too distant ideas of the future? Verily, we want some "scientific" Count Oerindur to tell us which is which!

In reality the case stands thus: when our adversaries tell their followers that we deal in the ideas of an antiquated small-industry, they simply tell a lie, and when for the sake of argument they point to Benjamin Tucker, the black of their lie does not become whiter.

Mr. Tucker is a pupil of the Manchester school, who has come too late into the market. He stands outside of the modern class-movement of the great mass knows not the laws according to which social development nowadays proceeds.

He is ignorant both of the tendencies and the technical achievements of our industrial life, and when he speaks of anarchism, he represents no known social order at all, but simply paints out an illusion fostered by his own brain.

In Europe he is nobody, and in America he is somebody only in certain literary circles which, without any real understanding of the matter, follow a loose, sentimental longing to reform the world.

To use that man as an argument against us, is simply a trick, but tricks are not legitimate weapons in a serious discussion.

Sometimes also Krapotkin [sic] is quoted against us as a "true" anarchist and, of course, always on the supposition that he, like Tucker, rejects communism.

But that is a grievous mistake. Krapotkin is namely the most decided communist who ever existed. It is