ABSTRACT
Most Americans are instinctive laissez-faireists in the respect that they dislike being reminded of government, believing in their capacity and that of their neighbors to manage their own affairs and their mutual affairs on terms of fair play without the surveillance of public authorities. And most incline subconsciously to philosophical anarchism, in so far as they assume, with Spinoza, that if man were completely socialized in his nature, as some day he may be, there would be no need for the state. Unless there is an energy of personal growth great enough to carry its self-assertion into new fields, while leaving the socially shared self in the region of habit, the political man is surely in some ways less noble than the semi-anarchic pioneer. In sum, the ultimate animus of anarchism is a deep sense of the crime which an enforced organization inflicts upon life, which is by birthright free, individual, varied.
