the rate-supported hospitals ought to be abolished, and the whole public provision for the sick and insane placed under an elected public authority.

The provision for the sick should be separated entirely from the Poor Law administration.

V. Reform of the Casual Ward.

The casual wards have encouraged a class of habitual vagrants, who make no attempt to better their condition. Habitual casuals and demoralised loafers should be sent to a reforming labor colony, where they could earn their subsistence by the performance of some useful work. Willing workers of good character, when the uncertainty of employment under our present industrial system forces them to resort to the casual ward, should be helped to find employment.

VI.-Improvement of the Administrative
Machinery.

Reform of Poor Law machinery is much needed, especially in London. For the election of Guardians an elector has from one to six_votes, according to his rating. An occupying owner has votes both as owner and occupier. Thus one person often has twelve votes. The legislative reforms immediately needed are:

1. Abolition of plural voting; no person to have more than

one vote.

2. Disfranchisement on acceptance of Poor Law relief to be

abolished.

3. Elections to be triennial and by ballot on a combined County Council and Parliamentary register.

4. Removal of the remaining £5 rating qualification for Guardians.

5. Exclusion of the present ex-officio Guardians (Justices of

the Peace).

The Boards of Guardians should sit at times when workers can attend. A Poor Law Council should be elected triennially for the whole of London, to have supreme control over all asylums, workhouses, and, so long as they are retained, the Poor Law schools. In its hands should be the fixing of a Poor Rate for the whole metropolis, thus doing away with the present gross inequality between rich and poor neighborhoods.

A Royal Commission is now sitting to enquire into the condition of the aged poor. Now is the time to press forward demands for reform.

Before the election for Guardians comes on, get from the Fabian Society the "Questions for Poor Law Guardians," and form your judgment of the fitness of the candidates by the answers they return. Wherever possible, run Democratic candidates.

The figures in the above are obtained from Local Government Board Reports, C 6725, p. vi.; C 6745, pp. 378, 376, 380; C 6801, p. 4; and "Pauperism and Old Age Pensions," by C. Booth, p. 130.

ment of its Rules, etc., and the following publications can be obtained from the Secretary, at the Fabian Office, 276 Strand, London, W.C.

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I (Tract No. 30).—The Unearned Increment.

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3 (Tract No. 32).-Municipalization of the Gas Supply.

4 (Tract No. 33).-Municipal Tramways.

5 (Tract No. 34).-London's Water Tribute.

6 (Tract No. 35).-Municipalization of the London Docks.

7 (Tract No. 36).-The Scandal of London's Markets.

8 (Tract No. 37).-A Labor Policy for Public Authorities.

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THE IMPOSSIBILITIES OF ANARCHISM.

BY

BERNARD SHAW

PUBLISHED BY

THE FABIAN SOCIETY.

PRICE TWOPENCE.

LONDON:

TO BE OBTAINED OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY, 276 STRAND, W.C.

JULY, 1893.

THE IMPOSSIBILITIES OF ANARCHISM.*

Anarchists and Socialists.

SOME years ago, as the practical policy of the Socialist party in England began to shape itself more and more definitely into the program of Social-Democracy, it became apparent that we could not progress without the gravest violations of principles of all sorts. In particular, the democratic side of the program was found to be incompatible with the sacred principle of the Autonomy of the Individual. It also involved a recognition of the State, an institution altogether repugnant to the principle of Freedom. Worse than that, it involved compromise at every step; and principles, as Mr. John Morley once eloquently showed, must not be compromised. The result was that many of us fell to quarrelling; refused to associate with one another; denounced each other as trimmers or Impossibilists, according to our side in the controversy; and finally succeeded in creating a considerable stock of ill-feeling. My own side in the controversy was the unprincipled one, as Socialism to me has always meant, not a principle, but certain definite economic measures which I wish to see taken. Indeed, I have often been reproached for limiting the term Socialism too much to the economic side of the great movement towards equality. That movement, however, appears to me to be as much an Individualist as a Socialist one; and though there are Socialists, like Sir William Harcourt, to whom Socialism means the sum total of humanitarian aspiration, in which the transfer of some millions of acres of property from private to public ownership must seem but an inessential and even undesirable detail, this sublimer shade of Socialism suffers from such a lack of concentration upon definite measures, that, but for the honor and glory of the thing, its professors might as well call themselves Conservatives. Now what with Socialists of this sort, and persons who found that the practical remedy for white slavery was incompatible with the principle of Liberty, and the practical remedy for despotism incompatible with the principle of Democracy, and the practical conduct of politics incompatible with the principle of Personal Integrity (in the sense of having your own way in everything), the practical men were at last driven into frank Opportunism. When, for instance, they found national and local organization of the working classes opposed by Socialists on the ground that Socialism is universal and international in principle; when they found their Radical and Trade Unionist allies ostracized by Socialists for being outside the pale of the Socialist faith one and indivisible; when they saw agricultural laborers alienated by undiscriminating denunciations of allotments as "individualistic"; then they felt the full force of the * A paper read to the Fabian Society by G. Bernard Shaw, on 16th October, 1891.