Comrade Holmes did have such a conversation with me as he states; but because his position is such as I stated in No. 13 is the very reason why the Communist-Anarchists should cease using the word Communist.
Some Anarchists may believe in the medical school of homœpathy and others in allopathy, but that is no reason why they should call themselves homœpathic-Anarchists or allopathic-Anarchists. Those who have become familiar with the fundamental principle of Anarchy should know that there is no qualification to the term Anarchy
necessary. It is immaterial whether one be a Communist or an individualist so long as he be an Anarchist. Anarchy, as I see it, admits of any kind of organization, so long as membership is not compulsory. Give us Anarchy,—freedom to those who desire freedom,—and I presume no one will object to any number of persons going by themselves and being ruled by a despot if they so wish.
When I proposed a conference of Anarchists in Detroit next summer, I anticipated the very objections made by Comrade Tucker. Now, supposing it did cost four hundred dollars, or even a thousand dollars, would not such a conference and the discussions had in it and the principles agreed upon by it get a larger circulation through the Associated Press and other channels than could possibly be got in any other way? What is necessary, it seems to me, is to keep the newspapers talking about Anarchy and having the public mind directed towards it. A conference such as I suggest will in my opinion give Anarchy a much better advertisement and advancement than the cost of it would directed in any other channel.
Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward has painted just about such a picture of the future as others have painted before him, but, unfortunately for his fancy picture, the fact is that wherever government steps in to control industry and social relations the tendency is in the opposite direction of Mr. Bellamy’s civilization of the twenty-first century. I wonder if the State control
craze has much longer to run?
When Comrade Tucker considers that his presumption is erroneous when he says I presumably did not refer to patents in classing machinery as a monopoly, he will see how impossible it is to discard machinery from my classification. The most popluar classification of monopolies is land, money, and transportation
; but land, money, and machinery
seems to me to be a better classification, because transportation is made by machinery, and there is but a small portion of the total amount of machinery used in transportation. The place for the patent office and all its appurtenances is the bottom of the ocean.