GIOVANNI BALDELLI contirm its negativity even perhaps tocus some aspects of lt more sharply than Wieck has done, just as some aspects of its positivity may be tound more convinclng in Wieck's paper than here. That anarchism has something quite positive to offer 1s made plain by the tact that it is embraced by people of difterent classes .and psychological type. or all polltical creeds it 1s the least likely to be cherished out ot selt-interest or class solidarity, the last to be chosen in order to be on the winning side, or even as a «pis-aller>, as the least of many evlls. Social mlstlts and people with patently antisocial leanlngs have (nom1nally) espoused the cause of anarch.fsm but it does not requlre much imagination to see how mlsgulded such people w~re, particularly the latter, when our society has more rewardlng actlvltles to otter them than any anarchist mllleu. The attraction of anarchlsm lies in lts purlty and rightness. It is all the more purely embrased, the more exclusively and stncerely rightness 1s sought. St. Augustine said of the soul that it 1s naturally Christian («anima naturaliter chrtstlana>) ; lt 1s ~ery tempting to say that, more Ukely, man 1s naturally anarchist. But, be lt as lt may, lt can hardly be dlsputed that the pro~ptings or both reason and love cannot be tully generalized, when applled to social matters, without coinclding with anarchlsm, and that only an anarchlst society can fully satisfy them. Anarchism 1s for what 1s rlght, and that is what makes 1t so trenchantly and lncompromlsingly a condemner of might. Because of its condemnation of might, anarchism ~ondemns itself to powerlessness. By the same token lt dlstingutshes· ltselt from all other political doctrines as being other than poutlcal and more than a doctrine. If whlle denounclng power yet it would rnake an exception when it 1s a matter allegedly to promote its own cause, anarehlsm would be o.n a par wlth communisrn which, while condemning exploitation ln capltallst countries, yet admlts and exalts lt (calling it something else, of course) when carried out in countries allegedly free !rom the capltalist yoke and for the purpose of strengthening and expanding the communist dispensatlon. If anarchism vindicated power, however exceptlonally, and as a means to an end, it would be a political doctrine, not in the sense ot descrlbing and judging polltics, but 1n that of serving polltlcal ends. But by not putting the success of their doctrine above · its· spirit and contents, anarchlsts may claim a conslstency whlch upholders of other doctrines usually lack. More important stm, by denying that the legislator 1s above the law, by 106
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