anarchy archives

Home

About Us

Contact Us

Other Links

Critics Corner

   
 

The Cynosure

  Michael Bakunin
  William Godwin
  Emma Goldman
  Peter Kropotkin
  Errico Malatesta
  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
  Elisée Reclus
  Max Stirner
  Murray Bookchin
  Noam Chomsky
  Bright but Lesser Lights
   
  Cold Off The Presses
  Pamphlets
  Periodicals
   
  Anarchist History
  Worldwide Movements
  First International
  Paris Commune
  Haymarket Massacre
  Spanish Civil War
  Art and Anarchy
  Education and Anarchy
  Anarchist Poets
  Music and Anarchy
  Bibliography
  Timeline
   
   
   

From: "Objections To Anarchism," by George Barrett, Freedom Pamphlet, Freedom Press, 127 Ossulston Street, London, N.W.1., 1921.

Objections to Anarchism

<--Previous  Up  Next-->

In such a society the organisations or institutions which they will form will be exactly in accordance with their needs; in fact, it will be a representative society.

Free organisation is more fully discussed in answer to Questions 5 and 23.

No. 5.

How would you regulate the traffic?

We should not regulate it. It would be left to those whose business it was to concern themselves in the matter. It would pay those who used the roads (and therefore had, in the main, interests in common in the matter) to come together and discuss and make agreements as to the rules of the road. Such rules in fact which at present exist have been established by custom and not by law, though the law may sometimes take it on itself to enforce them.

This question we see very practically answered to-day by the great motor clubs, which are entered voluntarily, and which study the interest of this portion of the traffic. At dangerous or busy corners a sentry is stationed who with a wave of the hand signals if the coast is clear, or if it is necessary to go slowly. First-aid boxes and repair shops are established all along the road, and arrangements are made for conveying home motorists whose cars are broken down.

A very different section of road users, the carters, have found an equally practical answer to the question. There are, even to-day, all kinds of understandings and agreements amongst these men as to which goes first, and as to the position they shall each take up in the yards and buildings where they work. Amongst the cabmen and taxi-drivers the same written and unwritten agreements exist, which are as rigidly maintained by free understandings, as they would be by the penalties of law.

Suppose now the influence of government were withdrawn from our drivers. Does anyone believe that the result would be chaos? Is it not infinitely more likely that the free agreements at present existing would extend to cover the whole necessary field? And those few useful duties now undertaken by the Government in the matter: would they not be much more effectively carried out by free organisation among the drivers?

This question has been much more fully answered by

11

ANARCHY ARCHIVES

[Home]               [About Us]               [Contact Us]               [Other Links]               [Critics Corner]