About the Book
From the PREFACE.
"INSTEAD of a book!" I hear the reader exclaim, as he picks up this volume and glances at its title;" why, it is a book." To all appearance, Yes; essentially, no. It is, to be sure, an assemblage within a cover of printed sheets consecutively numbered; but this alone does not constitute a book. A book, properly speaking, is first of all a thing of unity and symmetry, of order and finish; it is a literary structure, each part of which is subordinated to the whole and created for it. To satisfy such a standard this volume does not pretend; it is not a structure, but an afterthought, a more or less coherent arrangement, each part of which was created almost without reference to any other. Yet not quite so, after all; otherwise even the smallest degree of coherence were scarcely possible.
The facts are these. In August, 1881, I started in Boston, in a very quiet way, a little fortnightly journal called Liberty. Its purpose was to contribute to the solution of social problems by carrying to a logical conclusion the battle against authority, -to aid in what Proudhon had called "the dissolution of government m .the economic organism." Beyond the of which Liberal was generally recognized as the organ. Since that time, through Varying fortunes, the paper has gone on, with slow but steady growth, doing its quiet work. Books inspired by it, and other journals which it called into being, have made their appearance, not only in various Paris of the United States, but in England, France, Germany, and at the antipodes. Anarchism is now one of the forces of the world. But its literature, voluminous as it already is, lacks a systematic text-book. I have often been urged to attempt the task Of writing one. Thus far, however, I have been too busy, and there is no prospect that I shall ever be less so. Pending the arrival of the man having the requisite time, means, and ability for the production of the desired book, it has been determined to put forth, as a sort of makeshift, this partial collection of my writings for Liberty, giving them, by an attempt at classification, some semblance of system; the thought being that, if these writings, scattered in bits here, there, and everywhere, have already influenced so many minds, they ought in a compact and cumulative form to influence very many more.
The volume opens with a paper on " State Socialism and Anarchism," which covers in a summary way nearly the entire scope of the work. Following this is the main section, "The Individual, Society, and the State," dealing with the fundamental principles of human association. In the third and fourth sections application of these principles is made to the two great economic factors, money and land. In these two sections, moreover, as well as in the fifth and sixth, the various authoritarian social solutions which go counter to these principles are dealt with, -namely, Greenbackism, the Single Tax, State Socialism, and so-called "Communistic Anarchism...".
...Undamaged by the constant fire of twelve years of controversy, they are proof, in my judgment, against the heaviest guns. Apologizing, therefore, for their form only, and full of faith in their power, I offer these pages to the public INSTEAD OF A BOOK.
