in Paris, 1909, the French syndicalists endeavored to
persuade the trade unions to hold periodical international trade-union
congresses that would rival the international socialist congresses. The
proposition was so strongly opposed by all countries except France that
the motion was withdrawn.

[AC] The comments are by Plechanoff.[20]

[AD] It should, however, be pointed out that the German social democrats
voted at first against the State ownership of railroads, because it was
considered a military measure.

[AE] The committee on the general strike of the French Confederation
said despairingly in 1900: "The idea of the general strike is
sufficiently understood to-day. In repeatedly putting off the date of
its coming, we risk discrediting it forever by enervating the
revolutionary energies." Quoted by Levine, "The Labor Movement in
France," p. 102.

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."[1] 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, it did not exist. When Bakounin wrote his startling and now
famous decree abolishing the State, he created no end of hilarity among
the Marxists, but had Bakounin been Napoleon with his mighty army, or
Morgan and Rockefeller with their great wealth, he could no doubt in