IS ANARCHISM VIOLENCE? and " isms" produced similar deeds. I have given as the reason individual temperament and the general feeling about violence. Here is the crux of the matter. What is this general feeling about• violence ? If we can answer this question correctly, the whole matter will be clear to us. If we speak honestly, we must admit that every one believes in violence and practices it, however he may condemn it in others. In fact' all of the institutions we support and the entire life of present'society are based on violence. What is the thing we call government ? Is it anything else but organised violence ? The law orders you to do this or not to do that, and if you fail to obey, it will compel you by force. We are not discussing just now whether it is right or wrong, whether it should or should not be so. Just now we are interested in the fact that it is so-that all government, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or the fear of punishment. Why, even spiritual authority, the authority of the church and• of God rests on force and viblence, because it is the fear of divine wrath and vengeance that wields power over you, compels you to obey, and even to believe against your own reason. Wherever you turn you will find that our entire life is built on violence or the fear of it. From earliest childhood you are subjected to the violence of parents or elders. At home, in school, in the office, factory, field, or shop, it is always some one's authority which keeps you obedient and compels you to do his will. The right to compel you is called authority. Fear of punishment has been made into duty and is called obedience. In this atmosphere of force and violence, of authority and obedience, of duty, fear and punishment we all grow up ; we breathe it through our lives. We are so ~teeped in the spirit of violence that we never stop to ask whether violence is right or wrong. We only ask if it is legal, whether the faw permits it. You don't question the right of the government to kill, to confis~ate and imprison. If a private person should be guilty of the thmgs the g?vernment is doing all the time, you'd brand him a murderer, thief and scoundrel. But as long as the violence committed i~" lawful," you approve of it and submit to it. So it is not ~,eally violence that you object to, but to people using violence unlawfully." This lawful violence and the fear of it dominate our· whole existence, individual and collective. Authority controls our lives from the_ ~radle to the grave-authority parental, priestly and divine, pohtical, economic, social, and moral. .But whatever the character 15 Biblioteca G ro Bianco
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