WHAT A STATE TO BE IN...
Saverio Craparo
Part I - The birth of the State and what came before it
1.1 Social relations under feudalism
When Anarchists rightly denounce the ill effects that the State as a bourgeois organization of society has on the underlying classes, they abstract in an overly superficial way from the situation of those classes before the birth of the "liberal State". The total absence of rules allowed the holders of power to behave as they wanted towards the weak, and there is no shortage of evidence for this, even in literature (the Italian novel "I promessi sposi" is a fine example). Even a little reflection will confirm that this is the real essence of absolute power.
Poor countries were not only very poor (and still are), but they also provided manpower in the extreme form of slavery.
Even the very concept of rights did not exist, and idea which was strictly reserved for the free citizens of city states, which in the degeneration of feudalism became limited further still to the aristocracy and the higher clergy. The vast majority of the populace lived in conditions where human dignity was totally denied.
1.2 The liberal State and rights
"Liberté, fraternité, égalité". The slogan which founded the modern liberal State. We know only too well the hypocrisy that lies behind it. What is of interest, though, is another consideration. The shift from social organization without rules (except for that of the strongest) to a form of social organization which claims to be based on certain groundrules which go beyond the individual. This is anything but irrelevant. The principle exists (even though generally ignored) and it does have its effects, despite the arrogance of the powerful.
By way of example, a workers' organization would have been unthinkable in a feudal society - keeping in mind that a revolt does not count as "workers' organization". In fact, before the bourgeois revolution there were many bloody revolutions (even victorious ones). But what was not possible was the gradual conquest of growing portions of wealth. It is obvious that these conquests are partial and often temporary due to the fact that they can be re-absorbed by the power (as we see only too well today) and that the only road that counts is that of revolution. But this does not deny two things. On the one hand, as Malatesta used to say, the gymnastics of struggle are a form of preparation for the revolution. This is especially important for us as we believe in a revolution which is conscious and aware and thus impossible to re-absorb at the hands of a new dominant class which considers itself more knowledgeable. On the other hand, the fact that everything which serves to improve the quality of someone's life is by no means to be scorned simply because it is not libertarian communism.
By cloaking itself with the mantle of rights, necessary for its struggle against the old dominant classes, liberal society gives its approval for a principle which is progressive (both in fact and in its results), even with regard to those clases which remain the weakest.
1.3 Progressive participation
"Kropotkinist solidarity, which was developed in the naturalist and ethnographical field, confused the biologically necessary harmony of bees with the
discordia concors and concordia discors of social aggregation and had too many (sic!) present primitive forms of society/association to understand the
ubi societas ibi jus which exists in all non-prehistoric political forms".[1]
This quotation provides us with two useful bases for reflection. The first is that no society is possible without rules. One can discuss (and anarchists do) how these rules can be formulated, who has the power to establish them, how they can be equally applied to all, and so on. However, in the absence of rules there can be no anarchy, only a jungle - and that is something that always penalizes the weakest and rewards the strongest.
The second is that rules (of whatever sort) have a dual function: coercive, placing limits on the individual's freedom on the one hand, but a guarantee and protection for all on the other. And it is exactly this second aspect, even if considered an undesirable but inevitable side-effect, which led to the emergence of inalienable rights of the individual becoming the mechanism for full participation by all in the structure of bourgeois society, which otherwise would tend to be exclusivist. It is hard to think that this was not a factor of the progress that we enjoy today.
1. C. Berneri, unpublished note reported in P. C. Masini, La formazione politica di Camillo Berberi, in Various authors, Atti del Convegno di studi su Camillo Berberi, Milano 9 ottobre 1977, La cooperativa Tipolitografica Editrice, Carrara, 1979, p. 17.
Next section: Part II - The 19th-century State and the birth of Anarchist theory