But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
Benjamin Tucker
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Benjamin Tucker quotes
Aggression is simply another name for government.
Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves.
And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, - at least in theory.
And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.
But it is precisely my contention that this rule, despite the immense importance which I place upon it, is not absolute; that, on the contrary, there are exceptional cases where invasion -that is, coercion of the non-invasive lessens the aggre- gate pain.
But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.
But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.
Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction.
First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.
For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.
I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.
I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can.
In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails.
It was obvious to Warren and Proudhon that, as soon as individualists should no longer be protected by their fellows in anything but personal occupancy and cultivation of land, ground-rent would disappear, and so usury have one less leg to stand on.
Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.
Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike.
Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State.
Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act.
One thing, however, is sure, - that in all cases the effort should be to impose all the cost of repairing the wrong upon the doer of the wrong. This alone is real justice, and of course such justice is necessarily free.
Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.
Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.
Taking this view of the matter, the Anarchists contend that defence is not an essential of the State, but that aggression is.
That those prominent in the intermediate Socialistic divisions do not fully understand what they are about is evident from the positions they occupy.
The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.
The Anarchists are not only utilitarians, but egoists in the farthest and fullest sense. So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure.
The claim of the State Socialists, however, that this right would not be exercised in matters pertaining to the individual in the more intimate and private relations of his life is not borne out by the history of governments.
The cost of justice can be justly paid only by the invader.
The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.
The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.
The moment that justice must be paid for by the victim of injustice it becomes itself injustice.
The right of such control is already admitted by the State Socialists, though they maintain that, as a matter of fact, the individual would be allowed a much larger liberty than he now enjoys.
The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.
Therefore coercion of the non-invasive, when justifiable at all, is to be justified on the ground that it secures, not a minimum of ' invasion, but a minimum of pain.
This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.
This, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will.
To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
To secure ourselves in this use, each contracts, or will ultimately contract, with his fellows not to encroach upon those portions of the earth which they are actually using, in return for their agreement not to encroach upon that portion of the earth which he is actually using.
We aim to decrease invasion only because, as a rule, invasion increases the total of pain (meaning, of course, pain suffered by the ego, whether directly or through sympathy with others).
We are here, on earth. Not one of us has any right to the earth.
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