Anarchy
A Tract for the Times

I claim credit for no originality on account of the pages which follow, except such as may be implied in putting together the discoveries of my predecessors so that they may support and illustrate each other better than this has been done previously.

Anarchy, from the Greek a or an (not) and arche (the first, the chief) or archon (a magistrate) means that state of society in which there is no government. It is, therefore, very improperly applied to that state in which there are two, or more, governments contending for the supremacy. What Anarchists desire, is the permanent abolition of all government. It is contended, and is doubtless true, that this would involve the abolition of all property, understanding by property, not the mere right of using or possessing anything (which is inseparable from man’s life on earth) but the right to keep anything even without using it, and to impose a tax on whoever does use it, which is derived from government and law, and not from nature. Hence Anarchists are often called, though I think tautologically, Anarchistic Socialists, or Anarchist-Communists.

It is the fashion to assume that mankind, with very few exceptions, are engaged in producing and exchanging different kinds of wealth, to which process the world owes its material prosperity; and that the producers receive their due; but that a few persons, such as singers, artists, authors, etc. are employed in producing those higher mental enjoyments which it is the best use of wealth to procure; while a few others still, prefer to live by stealing, or in other pernicious and illegitimate ways. Governments, it is further assumed, are organized by a “social contract,” into which the immense majority have entered for the purpose of protecting each other against that small minority who would rather steal than work, and who (it is very inconsistently assumed) would, though a small minority, be able to terrorize this great majority, but for the machinery of magistrates, legislatures, courts, policemen, soldiers, tax-gatherers etc. That the industrious laboring people in all countries are poor, cannot, indeed, be denied, but this, it is asserted, is due to their own improvidence, their love of liquor, their too rapid multiplication, etc., etc. “Wherever there is a man who to industry adds temperance, economy, and prudence, he, we are assured, can certainly grow rich; and ergo, or rather argal, all men could be rich if they thought proper. And finally, it is asserted, that the existing institutions, if abolished, would soon be reproduced.

It would be childish to select any particular place at which to begin pulling to pieces this mesh of contradictions and absurdities. I affirm, as an Anarchist, that the above propositions are false from A to Izzard; that the producers are a minority, that they are a subject, enslaved, degraded class; that the majority consists, not, indeed, of the idle rich, but the rich plus their creatures, whom they employ in what I have somewhere seen classified as sham work, dead work, and wicked work; that governments were not organized to suppress theft and other crimes, but to enable one nation or class, to subdue and oppress another; that in the absence of government, crime could, and would, be corrected far more promptly, humanely, and inexorably, than at present; that the cause of continued poverty is the expense imposed on the producers of maintaining so many idle, or worse than idle, people; that self-denial does not enrich producers but impoverishes them ; that though too rapid multiplication does, indeed, go in company with poverty, it is rather an effect of oppression than its cause. And I affirm that the positive institutions which I thus impeach can be subverted; and that it is not at all necessary they should ever be restored.

Here, then, is a definite issue. At every point I contradict, not the reasonings, but the tacit assumptions of the ordinary sociologist. I call on him to prove them, if he can, by something else than dogmatic assertions ; and I, (who claim no novelty for my premises, as I have said,) propose to disprove them by the first authorities in archeology, history, economy, and other positive sciences on which the subject impinges; authorities which only Anarchists compare, but which everybody quotes; as parrots utter truths, but cannot apply them.

Varying, for convenience, the order of my propositions, I begin with the historical, and affirm that governments are organized only for the purpose of conquest and oppression.

In support of this proposition, I remark, first, that governments are not of universal institution; but that many primitive nations are without them. One of these is the Esquimaux, but there are also numerous others.[1] I have heard it objected that these are all barbarous tribes, but the fact is that some of them are much more civilized than others which have governments. The Esquimaux, with no opportunity to learn the arts of other nations, and no material but ice, snow, water, and the bones and other remains of animals, have learned to construct houses adapted to economize heat,[2] lamps,[3] clothing,[4] harness,[5] boats,[6] sledges,[7] whips,[8] weapons,[9] balls, hockey-sticks;[10] they have learned to draw with considerable skill and spirit;[11] and, though they have no letters, they have a considerable cycle of oral legendery and poetry.[12] All this marks them as a more intelligent people than the North American Indians, who have governments. It is not stupidity but isolation which has preserved them from this curse. All nations have governments which are sufficiently in contact with others to have war.[13]

The earliest form of government everywhere appears as that of the strong man, or best warrior. Among nomadic people, like the Arabs and Tartars, a new tribe begins with a seceder from an old one, like Cain, Ishmael, or Esau, whose desertion proves his spirit, and who has only his skill and courage to depend on. Among the Polynesians, the chiefs are regarded with the utmost awe, as gods, or rather demons, whose spirits live on the souls of common men,[14] but who have the merit of protecting their own people against the still more malignant chiefs of other tribes. Not very different is the idea of a king which we find among the negroes, the early Greeks, or the early Teutons. The Iliad gives us the best possible type of it. The king is the hero, the aristos, the human god, whose superiority of body and mind make him the natural ruler of a warlike people. Originally, perhaps an outlaw,[15] he becomes a king by his own merit. He bends the bow which no one else can use,[16] he throws a stone two strong hinds could not lift He alone knows how to tame a horse,[17] to plow,[18] to make a ship,[19] to build a castle.[20] His wealth, acquired by superior strength and skill, enables him to have a fortified house, a chariot, an armed retinue, while his people have nothing of the sort. Under him they sally out to a neighboring state, destroy the men, and carry off the chattels and the women; and when similar calamities threaten them, he only can protect them.[21] He rules with absolute power, gives a friend a few cities as a compliment,[22] disdains to reason with the populace except with blows.[23] All forms of government are modifications of this primitive tyranny.

In proof of this proposition, let us run over the known and important ones of earlier date than the Roman Empire, whose institutions are the direct ancestors of our own. The Chinese established themselves in the Flowery Land by driving out the earlier inhabitants.[24] Their first emperors were despots, and often tyrants. After many revolutions, there followed a division of the country among many petty princes. Confucius, building on strictly historical foundations,[25] brought about the present constitution, under which the emperor is theoretically absolute, but the whole administration is in the hands of the mandarins, who are appointed, after examination, by bureaux of their predecessors, and thus constitute a permanent oligarchy of the learned office-holding class. In Egypt and in India the king was a despot, and in the former country the name of the first king was held in the utmost detestation. But in both we find the remarkable institution of varna or caste, which shows that the race to which the king belonged was small, and was afraid of absorption by the conquered people.[26] The priests, as the guardians of morals, and therefore caste, were very much honored and respected, and shared, in various proportions, the power of the king. The Semetic constitutions were variations of the old nomadic type. The “princes of the people” ruled in ordinary times; but certain officers called sephotes (the “Judges” of Hebrew scripture, the suffetes of the Roman accounts of Carthage) were sometimes elected, and invested with dictatorial powers. Sometimes they made themselves kings.[27] The old Asiatic monarchies, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, and the Persian, rested purely on conquest, and, outside the king’s hereditary dominions, discharged no function of government, except, of course, raising taxes.[28] In Greece, the power of the hero-kings went out, though not without many fluctuations, during the sixth century B. C. when each city became rich enough to have walls, as well as the king’s castle, and to oppose his retainers with an organized militia.[29] Where all were armed alike, the majority ruled — because it seemed evident that they could, beat the minority. Thus originated those forms of government which since the time of Aristotle have usually been recognized among us. It was observation of Greek custom which led this philosopher to the conclusions that there were three chief types of government, the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the democracy; that each was liable to degenerate — the monarchy into tyranny, or the merely selfish rule of one; the aristocracy into oligarchy, or the similar abuse of power by a clique; and the democracy into ochlocracy, or the rule of the ignorant and vicious, any one of which changes would ruin the state and induce a reaction. During the interval there might, says Aristotle, be an anarchy, but this could not last.[30] Of course, the reason it never lasted in his time, is that the Greek states were always at war, and that government is usually necessary to conduct a war.[31] Changes similar to those which occurred in Greece during the sixth century B. C. befell about the same time and from similar causes throughout Europe. And the wars of so many small republics ended in their absorption by the Roman Empire. This may be regarded as the beginning of our own constitutional history. Let us pause here to look about us.

I have said that the productive laborers are a subject degraded class, and that governments were instituted to put and keep them in subjection. With regard to the nations of which we have been talking, I conceive this proposition can hardly be disputed. But the method of oppression, or in common phrase, the status of the laborers, is very different in different countries, and the various methods could hardly be described here without more space than their individual importance requires us to give them. There is, however, a rule by which they may be briefly classified. The science of economy teaches that the factors of production are labor, land, and capital, and the shares of each in the product are designated as wages, rent, and profit. Rent, in this technical sense, called with more precision “farmer’s rent,” does not mean a price paid by one man to another for the use of land, but that part of the landlord’s income which is derived from his title to the land and not from his own acts, whether he lets his land to a tenant, or holds it idle to raise the price, or cultivating it himself, gets more from it than his neighbor, on account of its better quality. Thus the man to whom by the customs of the country the land belongs, is sure to get his rent; and this rent must be equal to the difference between the productiveness[32] of his land and that of the poorest in use. If he also tills the land, using his own cattle and machinery, he gets the whole product. But if not, then, the laborer’s share of the produce, or his wages, are by no means sure to be equal to his share in the task of production. The landlord can force them down to the lowest point at which the laborer will consent to live, work, and reproduce his kind, and this may give the landlord a margin in what has been called “peasant rent,” which does not come under the above definition of “farmer’s rent,” but remains unclassified by ordinary economists, probably because they did not like to call it plunder. Or under certain circumstances, the capitalist, by witholding his capital, can bring down the landlord to farmer’s rent and the laborer to bare existence. This, however, cannot last long, for when capitalists form combinations for such purposes, some of them are sure to be tempted into breaking their agreement on account of the quick profit to be realized by this kind of treachery. It is, however, of the very essence of commercial speculation to attempt something of the sort — that is to anticipate a rise of values, from which it is but a step to creating one. Accordingly the capitalist, far from being sure of his profit, is perpetually engaged in a game of mixed chance and skill by which he may be either enriched or ruined. To adjust these conflicting tendencies, governments, as one or other predominated, have adoped laws of one or other of these types — laws making the laborers articles of personal property, or establishing chattel slavery; laws attaching the laborers to the soil, or establishing serfdom; or laws regulating the process of production and trade according to the assumed interest of the masses, or approaching to what is called State Socialism. Not that any one of these institutions was ever established to the exclusion of the others. Under most constitutions we may find something of all three. But one or the other usually predominates in a decided manner; and (of course) they correspond in the main to the rule of one class or another, — slavery to that of a citizen aristocracy, serfdom to that of a warlike and rural aristocracy, and approximate State Socialism to that of “the masses,” which does not, however, mean the whole people, but rather the class of professional trimmers and politicians. Let us understand this clearly. The economic administration, though regulated by law on which it powerfully reacts, is not to be confounded with the political. It has nothing to do with Aristotle’s distinctions of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. As the factors of production are land, labor, and capital; the classes which respectively own these three, when they are not all in the same hands, give rise to three fundamental factions — the landlords, the capitalists, and the laborers. The capitalists prefer slavery to any other system, the landlords serfdom, and the laborers socialism. But it is only a highly privileged class of capitalists, like the merchants of Athens, Eome, or Venice, who can have slavery. Without epeeial and ancient prerogatives they have to consult not, indeed, the interest but the external dignity, of the common people. The great differences between the ancient and the modern republic are that in the former the free poor were few, and belonged to the same privileged class as their neighbors, while the mass of the laborers were slaves; but now there is (ostensibly) no privilege.

For the reason above given, the system of chattel slavery prevailed generally throughout the Roman Empire; the free laborers being reduced by its competition to a condition more wretched than slavery itself.[33] In these fundamental facts were bound up the causes of the Empire’s decay. Slavery rapidly developes a new country, but it bankrupts and exhausts an old one, inducing slovenly agriculture, idleness, extravagance, decay of public spirit, and actual degeneracy of race. It cannot, therefore, thrive after its extension has been checked. In the Roman state, the warning symptom was the disappearance of the free agricultural people of Italy, during the Marian and Social wars,[34] and the formation of immense latifundia or slave-plantations, out of the deserted farms. When the defeat of the Romans by Hermann put an end to the growth of the Empire, severe distress began to be felt throughout its limits. Even the soldiers, on whom the emperors depended for their power, were ill fed, ill clothed, ill paid and ill treated;[35] and military revolutions accordingly “became increasingly common. The misery of the smaller tax payers; the incredible extravagance of the rich; the increase of pauperism, and brigandage;[36] the idle, profligate, and dangerous character of the poor in the great cities; the embarassment of the government;[37] the frequency of mutiny;[38] the desertion of arable land;[39] the actual decrease of population;[40] such are the larger facts of Roman history during the interval between Commodus and Odoacer. It is not difficult to see that they are organically associated. The immediate cause of the empire’s dissolution was the substitution of foreign mercenary troops for native, which was doubtless due to the fact that they were more plentiful and cost less, since they expected in lieu of pay to be quartered on the proprietors of the country whither they came to settle.[41] The barbarian generals became virtually independent magistrates in different provinces,[42] and thus the Empire expired. It is a mistake to suppose that it was overthrown by external violence. To the very last it proved able to repel that upon occasion.[43] Most of the slaves appear to have become free during the interval between Alaric (410 A. D.) and Odoacer (475).

It was during the last epoch of the Roman Empire that serfdom, the prevailing system of the Middle Ages, began to assume large proportions. Since the Roman curial, or small landowner, could not pay his taxes, and would do anything to escape them, the emperors adopted various expedients to attach him to the soil. Spasmodically, his tax was remitted.[44] Marriage being avoided, in despair, a premium was placed on concubinage.[45] Tenants (coloni) who ran away were returned to the landlords, like slaves.[46] Cuiales were forbidden to leave their estates without permission,[47] to escape taxation by becoming soldiers, or to take holy orders without first surrendering their property.[48] At last the tenant was formally declared the slave of the land, (servus, adscriptus gleboe) and transferable therewith.[49] Of course, it is quite an error to say, as often has been said, that Christianity, or anything else, raised the Roman slave into the serf of the Middle Ages. The slaves, so far as they were emancipated at all, were emancipated by the barbarians, and the serfs were not partially emancipated slaves, but partially enslaved citizens. The arrival of the barbarians was hailed with delight, for the reason that it swept away the Roman system of taxes altogether.[50] The new masters of Europe also very early put rims into the hands of the people, which the Romans had been afraid to do since the time of Galienus (about 360).[51] But the system of the barbarian conquerers, like all others founded on violence and injustice, contained within itself the seeds of its own ruin. From the fifth to the eighth century, history is marked by the rapid return of cultivated lands to the wild state; which must have been accompanied by a great decrease of the population.

The growth of serfdom received a great impetus during the ninth century, when the Scandinavians from the north, the Hungarians from the west, and the Arabs from the south, were carrying war and desolation throughout Europe. It was then that those castles began to be built, whose ruins are still such picturesque features of the scenery among the mountain chains and along the rivers. It was then that the local nobility occupying these fortified dwellings became practically independent of any general government, and themselves assumed the sole power of protecting and oppressing the peasantry. It was then that the majority of the small landowners voluntarily became vassals of the men who lived in stone castles and wore armor, for the sake of their protection against the Norsk galleys and the Magyar horsemen. It was then that laws against vagrancy were first adopted — every man must be a lord or have a lord, else he might be taken up and sold for a slave.[52] It was then that the organization of military societies (orders of knighthood) began. It was then in short that the feudal system assumed a definite shape. Although we can seldom assign precise dates to great changes of this sort, I am of the opinion that this one can be definitely placed within a period of about fifteen years (A. D. 861–877).

It would be beside our purpose to follow into detail the intricacies of the Feudal System, which were very complicated. The fundamental points were these — The military tenure of land (feudum, feovum, apparently a barbarous corruption of beneficium) had become the only tenure. The greater feudatories called counts, and the smaller ones (barons) held their fiefs by hereditary right. They were practically quite independent, but in case of invasion were bound to assist — the baron the count, the count the king, etc. — with a force proportioned to their valuation. Subfeudation, or subletting of land, also on condition of military service, was common. The subfeudatory did a very abject homage to his lord, but this was a form, in no way inconsistent with great actual freedom. The peasant class were attached to the soil. Some of them, called socage men, held their farms by a pledge of military aid to a less extent than a knight’s fee,[53] the lowest obligation of the kind which was considered worthy of a gentleman. All were required on occasion to fight for their lord; but the serfs, unlike the socage men, were united to him by no definite contract; and the steady increase of their burdens constitutes the horrible and appalling feature of the feudal system. Chattel slavery was still an institution, but it was in a decayed condition. The church condemned it, and there was no strong general government to enforce the return of the fugitive slaves. The serf paid his rent in kind, or labor, and being wholly in the power of his lord, was fain to buy off his tyranny by presents which became taxes. At marriage he was required to pay to the baron the expiation formerly exacted by the tribe,[54] and as in the one case, so in the other, this was often immorally commuted. On coming into his land, he was required to pay the heriot, or heir’s complimentary present — that is, when a serf died, the agent came to take away from the widow’s home the best chattel, often the cow or horse on which the family chiefly depended. Minor exactions and oppressions, such as setting the peasants to quiet the frogs near the baron’s castle all night, or making them gather strawberries on holidays for his repast, were less cruel, indeed, but perhaps even more galling. Unlike the slave of earlier date the peasant had a strong sentiment of personal right, and the fables of the Middle Ages show plainly enough that he considered the baron no better than what he was — a robber. The result of all this rapacity was that the peasant, though in possession of a considerable farm, was unable to acquire anything without a probability of having it taken from him under one pretense or another. He must still wear the coarse frock, and the wooden shoes, and eat the brown bread of his forefathers, or suffer. Let us pause to observe that this is everywhere the state of a serf, or tenant, class. In Ireland and Scotland, the thing is done by means of rack-renting. In India the ryots, or small farmers, are unable to pay their taxes, and so are the fellahs in Egypt. In Mexico, the bulk of the peasantry are peons, working out debts, which, as they buy everything from their masters, they can never pay. These observations may be explained consistently with the generalizations of orthodox economy, by observing that where there are no capitalists, the product is divided between the landlord and the laborer, and the latter as usual receives only that minimum for which he will consent to live, work, and marry. But they demand a modification of Ricardo’s law that rent is the “unearned increment” of wealth. That is, as shown by Richard Jones, the minimum, or “farmer’s rent.” The “peasant rent,” or income received by a landlord from tenants, is all he can get out of the victim; and reconducts us to our old conclusion that property-right means robbery with force and arms.

The causes of the dissolution of the feudal system were various, and their operation somewhat gradual. In the tenth century it might have seemed as if the age of Odysseus and Peleus had returned. Yet there was a great difference. The cities, which from the days of Pisistratus to those of Alaric, ruled the world, had lost their power, but most of them retained their walls and franchises, and new boroughs were continually springing up. These cities were not, like the old ones, the seats of hero-government, for the Germanic hero hated the confinement of town life, and chose for the site of his castle, the wildest crag, or most lonely island, he could find. Thus the citizen, or bourgeois, and the noble, or landlord, confronted each other. The former had already some advantage over the latter. It was in the cities that such capital as existed was to be found, and from the time of the Visigoths in Spain, the power of accumulated capital in the hands of the Jew usurer was great.[55] The baron needed money too much to break his bond with impunity — though he often broke it — and the city militia, even during the Middle Ages, were a good match for the knights in battle, which the peasants, except in very peculiar cases, like that of Switzerland, were not. With the voyages of Columbus and Gama came a great increase of commercial enterprise, a great expansion of the currency, and a corresponding advance in the importance of the monied class. During the sixteenth century the kings became generally able, with the aid of the merchants, who sided with them against the knights, to keep regular standing armies which could overawe the feudal levies. But of all other changes the most important was one whose long and little known history deserves, for several reasons, to be told. The Grecian generals who accompanied Alexander into India, state that the enemies whom they met there fought with thunder and lightning, produced by magic. This is not the description of a cannon by such intelligent writers. It is the description of a paltry grenade — a wooden block, stuffed with the inferior gunpowder of the far East. This gunpowder — still used for fire works, but containing far too large a proportion of sulphur for other purposes — was brought west by the Saracens,[56] and so again reached the later Greeks, who put it into tubes, and used it to propel, not, as yet, bullets, but something which would burn under water — probably rags saturated with naphtha. Our word “cracker,” is not from the Saxon verb to crack, but from Grecque.[57] — i. e. Greek fire, in the form of pyrotechnics, became known in England under the Norman kings, and no doubt during the Crusades. Early in the fourteenth century, gunpowder begun to be granulated. In the wars of Edward III against the Scotch, were employed something known as “cracks of war” — most likely grenades again. At the battle of Crecy (26^th August, 1346) we find perhaps the first positive mention of cannon.[58] But European genius and capital rapidly improved these formidable appliances. The cannon became large enough to beat down a castle — though at the date of Crecy they could not have been cast larger than shotguns. Then small ones were mounted on sticks, for the use of foot-soldiers. Then the stick was dispensed with for a stock. And now amidst curses and lamentations,[59] the invincible knights retired hopelessly from the field of battle and from history, unable to contend against the new “villein weapons” of the bourgeois. The military tenure was abolished, and the war-tax assessed on capital. Nor did progress stop here. Each improvement in the manufacture of fire arms increased the cost of mobilizing a modern army,[60] so that, now, when gunpowder is known to almost all barbarians, it is a maxim of civilized nations, that the longest purse must win. Thus the power passed from the rural nobility to the bourgeois. This was the great revolution of modern times — one which sinks into insignificance the overthrow of the Stuarts in England, or the Bourbons in France, the establishment of an Italian constitutional monarchy, or an American republic. In all these states the bourgeois rules. It is immaterial to the bourgeois whether the government be called aristocratic, democratic, or autocratic, but he can usually cement his own power by balancing the fanatical partisans of these superficially different systems against each other.

In the bourgeois republics of Venice, Genoa, etc., slavery was practised, as at Rome and Athens. But this form of tyranny was not destined to be generally restored. The complexity of modern commercial relations, the size and unity of modern states, and the new methods of fighting, so much more rapidly destructive, and, therefore, (by a familiar paradox) so much less close and deadly than the old, had substituted in the minds of statesmen the balance of power for universal empire. Thus the extension of slavery was soon checked, except in new countries, like America. But, as we have already remarked, slavery begins to decline as soon as this occurs. In the rural districts, serfdom, though much decayed, lingered a long time — in fact there are parts even of France, where it is not yet extinct; and in Russia and some other countries, it is well known to have been lately general. But the expansion of the currency, and the nature of commercial pursuits, rendered limited contracts and money payments more convenient to the bourgeois than the fixed relation of lord and serf. The serf fled to the city and the bourgeois employed him, till the landlord — often stimulated by parliamentary legislation or royal decree — imitated the example of the bourgeois, by taking cash for rent and paying it for wages, instead of receiving rent in kind and exacting customary services. Thus came in the modern system of “capitalism and wage labor” — the only one which any man will now assert to be equitable.

We shall presently see, however, that this system is not essentially different from its predecessors. Like them, it rests on a military force — gunpowder. In it, as in them, this force is not used by those who wield it to preserve their own freedom simply, but to enable them to rule over others. In it, as in them, the object of ruling is to plunder the subject class, as I shall proceed to prove. In it, though not in them, the chief power belongs to the modern capitalist, the bourgeois, the man whose position trims between slavery and socialism. The economic correlative of modern democracy, is, as we have said, approximate State Socialism, and by observing how it works, we may discover how tyrannical and rapacious a monster State Socialism is.

Since the bourgeois is certainly the representative man of modern times, and the one whose convenience is principally consulted in all our political and social innovations, let us inquire whence the bourgeois derives his income. The answer, of course, is, from the profits on his capital. Now political economy teaches that the profits on capital are divisible into wages of superintendence, insurance against loss, and interest. Of these three items only the last concerns us. Wages of superintendence are merely wages; they may be received by a laborer who is not a capitalist; and a capitalist who is not also a master-work-man, or laborer, does not get them. As to insurance, the idea of mutual insurance is to minimize loss by dividing it. An individual capitalist may gain something by this item ; but the capitalists as a class neither gain nor lose by it. It is, then, from the interest on his capital that the bourgeois derives his income. It is, indeed, possible for our bourgeois to be a landlord, and in that case, his income derived from the land, would not be called interest but rent. The distinction, however, is not very material at this point, for the power to collect “peasant rent,” like all those other powers of robbery wielded by the wealthy class, is specially conferred by government. Where land is plentiful and is bought and sold like any commodity, the rent cannot permanently either rise above or fall below the usual rate of interest. If it could rise above it (which it probably never did except in the minds of speculators) the rush of investment from floating capital to fixed, would soon restore the equilibrium. If it fell below it, which is a much more common occurrence, the ensuing cheapness of land would divert capital to that line of investment, til rent rose to about the level of interest again.

Since the bourgeois derives his income from the interest on his capital, let us consider a little more closely than we have yet found necessary, the nature of capital and interest, and the relation of both to government At the outset of this inquiry, we may observe this very remarkable fact, that neither the orthodox economists nor the State Socialists have ever been able to agree on a definition of capital, familiar as the word is. It is instructive to trace their discussions of the subject from Adam Smith to Henry George.[61] The idea floats cloud-like in their brains that capital is power directed to the purpose of production. But because they have never grasped the truth that the power of the capitalist is conferred by government, and takes hold of other men, whose subjection to him is not natural but legal, they are all at sea on such fundamental points as whether a man’s food and clothes — not to mention his talents, education, etc., — are capital or not. For clear views on this important question we must refer to an Anarchist — Karl Marx. Capital, says Marx, is first of all stored up labor. To call either brains or muscles capital is to speak metaphorically. But all stored up labor is not capital. If Alexander the Great had carried out his idea of carving Mount Athos into a statue, he would have “stored up” much labor, but hardly created any capital. Capital, proceeds Marx, has always an exchangeable value. And here we may see the fallacy of the nebulous idea generally prevailing among writers unacquainted with Anarchism, that capital consists of machinery, working cattle, or other aggregates of power used in production. These things are no more capital than a saloon keeper’s stock of liquor, which is not used in production but rather in destruction. What in each case is essential to the character of the property as capital is its capacity to be exchanged for something else. But once more, proceeds Marx, and here we reach the point, all exchangeable property is not capital. One pin is as much exchangeable property as Bessemer’s foundry. Yet between the pin and the foundry there is a difference not merely of degree but of kind. The owner of the foundry can command the labor of other men, because there is a class of men who must work for an employer or starve. For the same reason, the saloon keeper has a similar power. But the possessor of the pin has not Capital, then, is the power, not merely to use, but to withold from use, something which is needed for subsequent labor. It is property, as distinguished from possession. It is in the words of Cicero, the jus utere vel abutere, applied to all exchangeable commodities. And this right is not natural, but is bestowed by government upon actual possessors, their heirs and assigns, forever. It is the power of witholding from use which enables the capitalist to charge interest on his capital.

The ways in which capitalists raise interest and rent by witholding from use the necessary antecedents of labor are quite various. It is often done purposely, and with a view to profit, by forestalling, or buying large quantities of goods in expectation of a rise. This kind of speculation is most frequently applied to land, because as the population of any country increases, the price of land must rise. Investment in land is a process which never ceases except for a short time after a commercial crisis. During “hard times” when both rent and interest are low, it forces rent up to the level of interest. And if rent ever rose above interest, then, as has been said, it would force interest up to the level of rent. But besides speculative investment, capitalists sink a great deal of money in “sham work, dead work, and wicked work.” If we consider the extent of this evil, we shall find, as has been said, that it is the real cause of poverty.

The type of wicked work is killing people and destroying the means of life and comfort. At this moment there are in Europe three million men, in the prime of life, engaged solely in doing, or making elaborate preparations to do, just this. And to these three million soldiers, we must add the clothiers, wagon makers, horse-breeders, cattle farmers, grain farmers, chemists, armorers, doctors, nurses, etc., whose function is to feed and lubricate this infernal machine, the army, which serves at last, no purpose but destruction. This is not because the European nations really hate each other so much that they need these colossal military establishments for protection. It is because the governments (supported by the bourgeois class) need them to preserve their power; and the wars happen because the politicians composing the governments find those national animosities which they assiduously foment, a convenient means of disguising the true purpose of the army. After finding one such leak as this, it would be childish to talk of the rumseller, the gambler, or any minor parasite whose work does harm instead of good, though they too are supported by the floating capital of the country. It may be said that in America we have no soldiers to speak of; but it must be remembered that the revenue of our capitalists — our share holders in the Credit Mobilier, our cattle kings, princes of Erie, bonanza farmers, silver miners, etc., is not spent in America but where good Americans are said to go when they die. It is spent in Europe. It goes to pay European taxes, and to support European flatterers and courtesans. Whence it comes from we shall see in good season. Dead work is the labor of flunkies, coachmen, and various other people, who minister only to the ostentation of the rich.[62] Sham work is an incident of bad economic organization, and false pride, the fruit of plutocracy. The profits of capital, like the prizes in the lottery, are so tempting a bait, that though not the capitalists in a hundred escape bankruptcy, all the minor branches of trade are overcrowded with petty merchants who do almost nothing, and almost always fail. And the “ respectability “ of a profession is so sweet, that in all countries, but especially America, we have a swarming multitude of useless professional men, briefless lawyers, patientless physicians, pulpitless clergymen, vagrant schoolmasters, disappointed politicians, “Bohemian” authors, good-for-nothing artists, and shabby-genteel “agents,” of every description. I would ask the reader to reflect seriously on these things, all of which are manifestly, not maladies, but features of the bourgeois civilization. Bourgeois society is flowering itself to death. While “respectable” mendicancy blossoms like the rose of Sharon, the inexorable census shows that, as I have said, only a minority of the people are producing anything,[63] and this minority, which pays for all, exists only in misery and squallor. In India it starves by the million, in Italy it rots with pellagra, in Ireland it shares its potatoes with the pig which goes for rent, in England it besieges the doors of the poor house and the jail, in South Carolina it fills its empty stomach with clay, and in Wisconsin — but I reserve that. Now if all this could be changed — if the worse than useless soldiers, the repulsive flunkies, the sorrowing harlots, the struggling minor capitalists, the ten thousand kinds of reputable beggars, could have the opportunity and the stimulus to go to honest work, it is unnecessary to say that the world could sustain a far larger population in far greater comfort than at present, with shorter hours of labor, and consequently general mental and moral improvement.

Let us see now whether the system of capitalism and wage labor offers any greater prospect of permanency than its predecessors. This appears to be a natural introduction to the consideration of my assertion that government can be subverted, and that there is no necessity for it ever to be restored.

We have seen that the profits of the capitalist (exclusive of wages of superintendence, which do not fall to him as a capitalist, and of insurance against loss, which is not a source of profit to the capitalist class at large) are derived from his power to withold his capital from use either by hoarding it, or spending it in pleasure, as he prefers. But it is also common experience that as soon as one capitalist resorts to hoarding as a means of raising the price of his goods, and so obtaining a profit on his capital, other capitalists will aim to undersell him. Even if he enters into a “pool,” or treaty, with these other capitalists to put the prices at a given rate, it is reasonably certain that, rather than forego any profit, some one will soon violate the treaty, or, in Wall Street language, “break the pool.” And the person who does so is always likely to be the biggest capitalist in the pool, for the reason that he can realize a larger amount to a smaller percentage of profit than any other. Hence the maxim of orthodox economy, that competition reduces prices to the cost of production. Now if this were all — i.e. if there were only one commodity, exclusive of money, and all capitalists had therefore to invest in that one commodity, or not at all, the matter would be very simple But the case is far different. Commodities are innumerable. There is tobacco, beer, whisky, bread, meat, clothing, boots and shoes, lumber, hardware, wool, silk, flax, hemp, and other raw material, there are all sorts of manufactured products, there is gold bullion, there is silver bullion, there are all manner of stocks and securities, etc., etc. And the “price” which competition reduces to the cost of production, is merely the rate at which one commodity will exchange for another, reduced to the common measure of money. So that the rate at which commodities finally exchange is that of the work stored in them. Leaving, then, out of consideration, the money-lender, whose profits are determined by the ratio between the supply of, and the demand for. his peculiar commodity — the circulating medium, — which ratio as we have also seen, and as the axiom about the cost of production teaches, must, as it does, continually approach equality during the increase of population, the improvement of the land, and the advancing goodness of the security — it appears that the capitalist can only realize a profit by investing in some commodity for which, at the time being, the demand exceeds the supply of it — that is some commodity for which there are more people willing to give their commodities than producers willing to give it for anything else. It follows that capital, always seeking remunerative investment, will rush to this line of business until it is no longer remunerative, and then pass to some other. But unless all payments were made in cash, and all stocks sold as soon as bought (which is entirely contrary to the idea of capital and its use) this transfer cannot be effected gently. It involves what is termed a commercial crisis. Therefore the general reduction of price to the cost of production is secondary, and the commercial crisis primary. “It is precisely these fluctuations” says Marx “although they bring the most terrible desolation in their train, and shake the fabric of bourgeois society like earthquakes; it is precisely these fluctuations which in their course determine price by cost of production.” A general knowledge of this truth among orthodox economists, would, some nine years ago, have saved a great deal of idle discussion.

Since, then, commercial crises are the regulators of competition, which is said to be the life of trade — since these appalling calamities are to bourgeois society what the motion of the pendulum is to the clock or that of the balance wheel to the steam-engine — let us see how they operate, and to what result they are tending. In the first place they mean driving of the laborers, as a class, to desperation. It is a formula of orthodox economy that as capital increases, the capitalists gains increase absolutely, but decline relatively to the amount of his investment; while the laborer’s wages increase both absolutely, and relatively to the profits of capital. But, like other aphorisms of this school, it is only half the truth. The laborer’s wages doubtless increase relatively to the rate of interest, which, declines as capital increases, but relatively to the capitalist’s incomes they decrease. The ordinary wages of labor, are now, as they always were, the least for which the laborers would consent to live, to work, and to marry, and the difference between the laborer’s standard of comfort now and in the days of Charles II is certainly not as great as between the annual increase of wealth in any country then and now. Thus the lot of the laborer is really becoming harder. His knowledge and his wants are increasing at a far higher rate than his opportunities; a combination which abundantly accounts for the condition of impending revolution now everywhere so visible.

The commercial crises also mean an increase in the power of the capitalist over the laborers as individuals. That improvement in machinery which constitutes the great feature of modern industry, would, under an equitable system, be the greatest boon to the laborer. It would not only cheapen the commodities which he has to use, but would shorten the hours of toil, relieve the weak from the necessity of hard work, convert labor into a pleasure, and convert poverty into abundance. But property makes this blessing a curse. The subdivision of labor enforced by competition and machinery, destroys the technical skill which used to make a carpenter or blacksmith independent; it drives the child to the loom and the nursing mother to the plow; and it degrades the workman into a part of the machine he tends. While times are good, that is when some branch of business is sufficiently remunerative to attract large quantities of capital, the laborers have their bread, and the drones their silks and wines; but when the crisis comes; when the invested capital is sacrificed; when production ceases; when the mortgagee and tax-holder alone are making money; when confusion and terror are in every house; and when burying dollars in the ground is the only way to save them for the discovery of a new investment; then the human chattel is cast out like other damaged and useless stock, to beg for work on any terms; to “scab” when other laborers are trying to secure living wages by combination; to sell, not only his labor, but his vote or the honor of his wife or daughter, or anything, to avert actual starvation. The laborers who stoned Appius Claudius had not read the Pall Mall Gazette.

The commercial crises involve the destruction of the smaller capitalists. It is true there are more of them in commercial than agricultural communities, not only absolutely but relatively to the number of larger capitalists ; and it may be even that the proportion increases, on account of their numbers being recruited from the better paid class of laborers. Nevertheless, the man who engages in productive industry with insufficient capital, is but a sheep led to the slaughter; and what was sufficient capital last year is never so this year in any branch of industry. Thus the gulf of Curtius widens. The annuitant class of capitalists — voluntary pensioners of the conquerors in this war of the Titans — is undoubtedly one of those social buffers which prevent Dives and Lazarus from getting near enough to fight. But these retired warriors are of little hope for any cause. The classes which are being arrayed against each other by the progress of events, are the gigantic monopolists on the one side, and the pauper laborers on the other, and it is towards the latter that the small capitalist gravitates as the rate of interest declines. In the day of reckoning, he will be found on the side of Lazarus, not of Dives.

It is the nature of the commercial crises to increase in number and severity, and that not to a limited extent, but with the resistless progress of a disease hastening to its own crisis. Such a disease in fact capitalism is; and that the final crisis must come, is not an occasion for mourning, but for hopeful, though sufficiently awe-inspiring, expectation. That capitalists may realize larger returns with lower rates of profit, they must invest on a larger scale. Business is a battle in which the winners hope to secure monopolies, while the losers perish. The winners extenninate the losers by larger shops, improved machinery, more energetic advertising, larger stocks at lower rates — in short by applying more capital to production and distribution on a grander scale. This active growth of production, would, as we have already said of one among its factors, be an universal blessing if the producers got the product It is not at all probable that there was ever a genuine overproduction of any kind of commodity — that is that the amount of any commodity was ever so great as to present the least danger of its perishing for want of use, could those who needed it but have exchanged their own product for it. But while more than half the people are non-producers; while the dominant class of these non-producers and its creatures have to be helped first, while the wages of the laborers fall continually to the lowest point at which the laborer will consent to live, to work, and to marry; and while the nature of competition perpetually lowers that point relatively to the amount which he produces; there must ensue with increasing frequency, those overproductions which give rise to financial crises. The line along which profit, like a marsh light, has been leading capital, terminates in a quagmire. The railroads, or whatever else have assumed the character of speculative investment, are discovered to be unremunerative. Their creditors become pressing. Some one of them — generally the largest plant — goes into bankruptcy. This is followed by the collapse of all the other enterprises founded on capital represented largely by the obligations of the broken firm. This is the true process of a panic, and it is one which necessarily tends to recur more frequently. It is at once aggravated and obscured by the fluctuations of an uncertain currency and of those various forms of fictitious capital, such as stocks and bonds, which are not themselves wealth but its questionable representatives. We need not much sagacity to see after a financial crisis that discounting the future and running in debt have a natural tendency to end in bankruptcy. But few look far enough into the matter to see that these hazards are imposed on every rising capitalist by the increasing pressure of competition. Hitherto the stringency of overproduction has been averted by the continual opening of new markets in America, India, China, Egypt, the Soudan, etc. But when this process reaches the inevitable end, and one commercial system overspreads the world, then, if not before, the system of capitalism and wage labor must perish. With prices actually reduced to the cost of production, there would be no alternatives but to get rid of non-producers or stop producing. The first involves a complete social and economic revolution. The second would cause one.

Before propounding the Anarchistic remedy, let us consider the various others which have been proposed. And first let the bourgeois speak for himself, by the mouth of his prophets, the orthodox economists.

There is something in this word orthodox, suggestive at once of unsubstantiated tradition, and uncertain interpretation. Economy before Ricardo, was, what Adam Smith called it, an “inquiry” into the laws of wealth. But Ricardo substantiated a style of dogmatical deduction from premises now very generally admitted to be too narrow, which was greatly improved by MacCulloch and others of later date, so that there are really two schools, which, for want of a better name, we may call the ante- and post-Ricardian. According to MacCulloch, capital is the employer of labor. Of course, this generalization ignores such obvious truths as that labor existed before capital; that the man who labors, assisted only by his own capital, cannot, without the grossest perversion of language, be said to be employed by it; and last, but not least, that capital derives all its profit from its ability, not to employ labor, but to keep it unemployed. In short the dogma is the reverse of the truth. Nevertheless it continues to be repeated, not, indeed, by economists of learning, but by ignorant polemical writers on the side of capitalism, and invariably draws with it this assumption that the man who abstains from expense in order to accumulate capital is bestowing a benefit on mankind and employing other laborers. Is he? A producer who abstains from buying what he wants, necessarily does so at the expense of another man. Competition is a reciprocal relation of winner and loser. It is a game of freeze-out in which a few gain to the cost of all. If a shoemaker proposes to grow rich by going without tobacco, is it not evident that in so doing he makes the man who raises the tobacco poor? And is it not clear that the poorer the tobacco man is, the less boots and shoes he will be apt to buy? If so, my proposition is fully made out that self-denial by the producers does not enrich but impoverishes them. They must, of course, begin by denying themselves articles of luxury, but as the pressure of competition sharpens, one luxury after another must be discarded, till all come down to potatoes and rags. Under the wage system this process would be greatly accelerated by the fall of wages; for the laborer’s wages are the least at which he will consent to live, work, and marry. It is as impossible for all to grow richer in this way as for all to gain on one another in a race. It is in a way just opposite to this — it is by luxury, it is by exchange, that producers improve their condition. The self-indulgence of non-producers impoverishes, — but that of producers, unless it is of a kind immediately destructive to bodily health, enriches. It follows that self-denial for the purpose of acquiring wealth is not at all a moral virtue, as it is so generally represented. Universally adopted, it would have the effect of a vice. It does not answer Kant’s test “Act so that the immediate motive of thine act may be a rule for all intelligent beings.” Must we not rather say, that though, in the battle of competition, some praise belongs to the victor, yet his laurels are stained with blood, his banquets seasoned with the teais of others’ children; and that the remedy of economy for poverty is the very whisper of the Tempter telling the poor man not to sympathize with the wrongs of his brothers, for, if he can but prove himself sharper than they, he may come to be a tyrant instead of a slave?

The advice of the ante-Ricardian economists to the poor is a good deal more sensible and moral. The celebrated doctrine of Malthus, when rightly understood (which it very seldom is) must, indeed, be considered worthy of preaching. Malthus taught with consistency and firmness, that population, under the most favorable conditions, as in new countries like the United States, increases faster than the means of subsistence can continue to increase. But, for evident reasons, population cannot outrun the means of subsistence, except for a very short time, during actual famine. It follows that there are certain checks which equalize the increase of population with that of food. These checks must be, either preventive, which diminish the proportion of births, or positive, which increase the proportion of deaths. Whatever the positive check gains, must, then, be at the expense of the preventive, and vice versa. If the positive check is increased, by pestilence for example, or wars, unaccompanied by desolation, the increase of births makes up for that of deaths, and the population, though deteriorated in quality, remains constant as to quantity. If the positive check is weakened, as by long peace, the increase of prices relatively to wages will make marriage less frequent and restore the balance, unless, indeed, other positive checks come in, as in British India, where famine has taken the place of war. If the preventive check is weakened, by the facility of getting a bare living for instance, as in Ireland after the introduction of the potato, some dire positive check, like famine, comes into play. If it is strengthened, as by an improvement in the intelligence and freedom of the people which raises the standard of comfort, life will be lengthened. These are weighty truths. They deal deadly blows at the tyranny of marriage, the folly of indiscriminate charity, the absurdities of State Socialism. They are a real aid to the Anarchistic argument. And their bearing on biologic science is well known to all readers of Darwin. But they constitute no apology for property and government. Malthus, in his first pamphlet (1798) contended that they did, and argued against Godwin that the abolition of legal restraints would cause overpopulation, while prudence about marriage would tend to equalize conditions and render these restraints to some extent necessary. But, having dropped his polemics (in 1803) he came by degrees to confess that he had confounded effect with cause. A people must be free and hopeful before they can be induced to adopt continence, or enabled to maintain the high standard of comfort to which continence aspires.[64] Malthus, in short, lived to perceive, in a measure, the truth of Proudhon’s aphorism, “Liberty is not the daughter, but the mother of Order.” Liberty is always the mother of Virtue.

By the State Socialists, it is proposed that the government should assume the regulation of all industries, becoming the sole capitalist and landlord, and employing the proletariate, or actual laborers, with a view to their own benefit. Now since State Socialism is the natural end of democracy or ochlocracy, and since modern governments (the result of an alliance between the serfs and the bourgeois against the feudal nobility) are in the main democratic, it need not surprise us to find that our economic system is, to a great extent, State Socialistic, as has been said. The post-office, the tariff, the laws about child-labor and female-labor, the regulation of savings’ banks, and other loan, offices, the state ownership of the railroads, telegraphs, etc., which exist in so many countries, are evidently arrangements of this type. And when we hear it proposed with applause that the government shall take possession of the land,[65] it is evident how popular this remedy for prevailing wrongs is becoming in America. We often hear it pronounced impracticable. But the remark needs qualification. Impracticable for good, it may, I fear, be a “coming slavery” much too feasible for ill. Surely the State Socialists forget to give us their reasons for thinking that the government would make a better landlord or capitalist than any other. It cannot, surely, be the manner in which governments originate that makes them think so; nor the simplicity of governmental machinery and the directness of its methods; and if it is the character of the individuals composing the administration, they must estimate the wisdom and virtue of professional politicians at a figure which argues very little actual acquaintance with this class of our fellow citizens. The truth is that their faith in government is a superstition, our inheritance from days when kings were gods. The remarks of Lord Macauley on this point always seemed to me extremely pertinent. “It scarcely ever happens that any private man or body of men will invest property in a canal, a tunnel, or a bridge, but from an expectation that the outlay will be profitable to them. No work of this sort can be profitable to private speculators, unless the public be willing to pay for the use of it. The public will not pay of their own accord for what yields no profit or convenience to them. There is thus a direct and obvious connection between the motive which induces individuals to undertake such a work, and the utility of the work. Can we find any such connection in the case of a public work executed by a government? If it is useful are the individuals who rule the country richer? If it is useless are they poorer? A public man may be solicitous about his credit. But... the fame of public works is a much less certain test of their utility than the amount of toll collected at them. In a corrupt age, there will be direct embezzlement. In the purest age, there will be abundance of jobbing... In a bad age the fate of the public is to be robbed outright. In a good age, it is merely to have the dearest and worst of everything... We firmly believe that five hundred thousand pounds subscribed by individuals for railroads or canals would produce more advantage to the public than five millions voted by parliament for the same purpose. There are certain old saws about the masters eye and everybody’s business in which we place very great faith.” These observations are fully borne out by the actual result of State Socialistic experiments. In Russia, the land still belongs to the village, and is annually divided among the people by an elective magistrate. And Russia is the only country left in Europe which is periodically scourged by famine. In France, after the Revolution of 1848, the government set up workshops known as ateliers, which failed to pay their expenses. In our own country, examples crowd on the memory like shrieking ghosts. The post office, in the more settled portions of America, is only protected against the competition of individuals by penal laws. In the wilder portions, it produces more frauds than any other part of our public institutions, which is saying a great deal. In all, it is the well-known sanctuary of office-brokerage and corruption. With the best patronized system of schools in the world, we have, for all the purposes of education, very nearly the worst. The protective tariff, having destroyed our most thrivkig industries, such as that of ship-building, has reduced the laborers ui all others to “starvation wages” as we are every day informed. The subsidies and lands granted by the government of the nation, states, and towns, to railroad, and other, corporations, have reduced the agricultural class to a condition not materially different from that of the serfs in the Middle Ages.[66] From experience of the State Socialistic tendency on a small scale, we may infer how it would work upon a great. It would at once create a swarming army of office-holders — that is so many more non-producers for the rest of us to support. It would create a corresponding multitude of office-seekers, as if we had not far too many of them already. It would entail on all branches of business and trade, the slowness, clumsiness, inefficiency, and corruption, which always characterize officialism.[67] It would reduce the standard of labor to the capacity of the least intelligent, industrious, and successful workman. It would either require a system of impressed labor, like that of the Egyptian fellahs, or convert a large portion of the people into State-supported paupers, desiring only “bread and shows.” It would paralyze invention, progress and improvement. It would discourage manufactures, continence, and luxury, and promote overpopulation with that slovenly kind of agriculture in which each family lives on the produce of its own garden-patch. Of course, famines would be frequent. And finally, we should NOT all be equal, even in our misery. The new office-holding aristocracy would tind means to feather their nests after all. The pons asinorum of the subject is that people do not take the trouble to govern for nothing, nor for the meager wages of republican legislators. Ambition, the love of power, is what calls government into being — in other words, under no form of government can the people really be the masters. That the evil consequences of State Socialism, predicted here, as they are also by the bourgeois economists, would NOT follow from Anarchistic Socialism, will be demonstrated in due course.

I am ready now to maintain my thesis — that government can be abolished, and that there is no necessity for it to be restored. That it can be abolished, is perhaps too readily admitted by most people. We hear the assertion continually repeated that it has been overthrown and restored many times ; but the truth is. that government in general, never was overthrown since it was first established. A government has frequently been overthrown, but always by some hostile, foreign, or revolutionary government; and a struggle of two or more rival governments, such as sometimes followed, is not anarchy, though it has often been so incorrectly called by historians and publicists. To appreciate the feasibility of abolishing government,- we must consider the social changes which have taken place since it was instituted. All government rests, as we have said, on armed force, and all governments originated among savages, except those of new countries, like America, which were imported by the colonists. Now savages have certain propensities predisposing them to establish government, which civilized men have not, at least in the same degree. They are very warlike, often living on human flesh, by the slave trade, or by pillage; while, as wealth increases, war becomes increasingly inconvenient and undesirable. They are very patriotic after a narrow fashion, devoted to the tribe, eager to revenge a family, or national, wrong, and destitute of any sense of duty towards foreigners. They have an idolatrous reverence both for the personal qualities of a ruler and for all kinds of precedent, custom, and authority.[68] The evolutionary philosopher will see in these traits the instincts of a gregarious and imitative animal, which lose power as man becomes a rational and commercial animal, an individualist towards his relations and neighbors, among strangers a citizen of the world. Accordingly, with the progress of civilization, the sphere of government and the reverence for its authority tend to spontaneously contract. It is true, as a writer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica has recently pointed out, that the mere number of laws of the State Socialistic type, by which modern governments encroach on individual freedom, has, of late, materially increased. But the magnitude of those relations which governments, as a rule, have at least partially ceased to regulate, such as religion, contract, foreign trade, speech, literature, bequest, marriage, far exceeds that of their encroachments. And besides, the State Socialistic arrangements of modern times are, at least ostensibly, in the interest of freedom. They are quack remedies for bourgeois tyranny. It by no means follows, therefore, that government, if abolished now, would be reproduced, because savages, who were without it, instituted it. The argument is a familar fallacy — a case of undistributed middle. A somewhat similiar criticism applies to the argument from the restoration of government after the quasi-anarchistic revolutions of modern times. If such events prove anything, they prove not only that some sort of government, but much the same kind which previously existed, must be restored. But it was the bourgeois class which in every case effected the restoration. Nothing, therefore, can be inferred as to what will happen when the reign of the bourgeois terminates, either by its inherent tendencies to decay, or by a forcible revolution. The reign of the bourgeois rests, as we have said, on gunpowder. It cannot survive the use by the proletariate of a weapon requiring no capital, and against which gunpowder would be as impotent as armor and casties against gunpowder. Such a weapon is dynamite, using that word by a synecdoche to denote all the cheap and rapid agents of destruction described in Herr Most’s now famous pamphlet. In a war with such weapons, the rich man’s capital, instead of his tower of strength, would be his vulnerable point. And the same machinery of destruction is destined to remove the prime reason for the existence of government, by putting an end to international wars. That war, which has become much less deadly since the invention of long-range weapons, will cease when the weapons become too deadly to let sane combatants get together at all, is a commonplace; though, like the others which we have cited, it is applied only by Anarchists.

Thus we come to our last thesis, that after the abolition of government, crime, instead of increasing, will be more promptly, humanely, and inexorably dealt with than at present; to which we may add, that all the social functions, as if relieved of an incubus, will work at increased pressure, and with the energy of a new life. There are almost innumerable illustrations of the truth that repression has no tendency to prevent crime; but that freedom has, — that liberty, as Proudhon said, is not the daughter but the mother of order.

With regard to past extensions of freedom, this is hardly likely to to be disputed. Very few probably will maintain that the exertions of the Inquisition really promoted piety, or even theoretical orthodoxy; that that Puritan legislation of which the Blue Laws are scarcely a caricature, proved especially conductive to morals, or the cat-o-nine-tails to intelligent military obedience. If history teaches anything, it teaches that repression never produces more than hypocritical outward conformity; and that salutary regard for the reason of a good law is a much more natural consequence of being left free to try the effects of disregarding it. But to apply this to restrictions which still exist. The ostensible object of laws regulating the relations of sexes is to restrain the sexual passion. Their real object and effect is to subject the least amorous sex to its unrestricted exercise; and the effect of abolishing them would be to reduce its indulgence to a minimum. Similarly, the abolition of all laws regulating the trade in liquor, including license and excise, would be to do, what prohibitory legislation continually counteracts — make drinking so emphatically “cheap and nasty” that it would cease to be a social custom, and be reduced to the smallest amount compatible with the existing craving for stimulants, which, moreover, natural selection continually tends to diminish. The collection of debt occupies an enormous place in litigation; but debts for which there is no law, are always paid, which others are not. Theft has been more legislated against than any other crime; but he would indeed be a sanguine man who could say he saw any tendency to a decrease of theft. The abolition of all laws against it would utterly destroy the trade of the receiver, whose power over the thief consists in his ability to give him up to punishment. And it is a maxim among moral reformers that the receiver makes the thief. Crimes of gross violence, as murder, rape, and arson, are far more promptly and severely punished in new territories, where the condition of things approaches to anarchy, than in the older States. Were Judge Lynch the only magistrate, every one who committed a crime of this sort would be either promptly hanged, or what would be more likely after a time, taken care of by his relatives or philanthropic individuals under the same conditions of public security now applied to dangerous lunatics. In nature we have a sovereign law-maker whose laws have the admirable property of executing themselves. Government, at best, is but an impertinent attempt to better them.

It is a fashion among bourgeois economists to say that the profits of capital are the reward of abstinence, and that abstinence benefits mankind by providing enlarged means of productive industry. We have already analyzed one side of this fallacy, but it has another. That which creates enlarged means of productive industry is not economy of commodities but of time and labor — it is the propensity to invent, to construct, to improve. Abstinence may, indeed, be necessary to give effect to this propensity, but the propensity, when it exists, will produce the necessary abstinence, while no amount of stinginess will produce it. We may illustrate this truth by a case of which bourgeois economists are fond. A savage who lives by picking shell-fish, devotes a portion of the time, when he might be loafing, to the construction of a spade. He can now get more shell-fish in the same time than before, and can employ the rest of his time in making other spades to exchange for other shell-fish, which he may sell to savages in the interior for skins or meat. He may proceed to make spades without digging at all ; and he may hire a man to carry the shell-fish inland and bring skins to the coast. Our savage has now become a capitalist, but how? He did not increase capital by eating less shell-fish than his neighbors, but by using more brains and effort. If the law, or the absence of it, were such that he could not command the services of his carrier at a less rate than the full difference between the respective values of skins and shell-fish at the two points, would that circumstance have prevented his making the first spade, or quelled his inventive spirit after he had made it? Surely not. He made the spade for his own convenience; and, having gained time by making it, he would for the same reason, apply that time to making something else — perhaps a cart to carry the commodities in which he had begun to deal, or a loom to make woven clothes for suits of hide. In the early days of steam- engines, a boy was set to open and shut the valves of one. He observed that by attaching a brick to each end of the beam, he could make the engine do that for itself. It is to such boys that the material progress of the modern nations is due. It is not to men like Gould, who have accumulated a hundred millions by operations in Wall Street, which ruined thousands of dupes in an hour; but to men like Edison, for whom wealth was not an end, but a means to invention and improvement.

Anarchy, being universal liberty, would exercise on the human faculties an effect the reverse of that general paralysis induced by State Socialism, which is universal restraint and regulation. Its practical effect, if it were peaceably, or even forcibly, established, to-morrow, would be about as follows: The useless class would at once be driven to work, and the free land would give them abundant opportunities. The farmer, relieved from his mortgages and taxes, would call on the country merchant for* some unaccustomed luxury, as a meerschaum pipe. The answer, at first, would probably be, “ We have none. “Since law has been abolished, we are afraid of our lives and our “property.” But the farmer insists, and the merchant at last succeeds in finding a meerschaum, which he exchanges for the farmers produce. Within four-and-twenty hours, a score of other farmers come in inquiring for similar luxuries. The merchant writes to his wholesale house, to report that trade is sensibly reviving. He gets about the same answer which he gave the farmer. “Since law is abolished, we are afraid to import.” But, in a few days, similar communications come in from all parts of the country. The wholesale house determines to engage an importing agent; and business resumes with double its accustomed energy. Kent, which seems so great an evil to Mr. George, would be no evil if only actual cultivators received it. Of course, those engaged in trade and transportation could expect no profit beyond the wages of superintendence. But their success in getting that, would depend absolutely upon the value of their services to the public ; while, at present, the profit s of the capitalist depend, too commonly, not on the value of his work, but on its noxiousness — that is, on his skill in making a “corner,” manipulating a legislature, procuring a prohibitory tariff, or in some other way hindering, instead of facilitating production and trade. The hours of labor would be reduced to two or three a day. Increased consumption might raise them, but new machinery would cut them down again. Anarchy, to be short, is but the laissez faire of the economists, pushed to its logical result. It requires no one to work who would rather be idle. It forbids no man to hoard who wants to — if he can stand guard over his own treasure, or get some one else at his own cost, to do so for him. It forbids no one to worship the Virgin — or Mumbo Jumbo, if he likes it better. If one man chooses to get a fine house, while another is content with beer enough and a lodging in a cellar, the Anarchist is willing that one man should have his house, and the other his beer. Anarchy allows every one to assume authority so far as others are willing to accept ii Anarchy does not even forbid any one to be a slave who likes — provided his slavery lasts only as long as both slave and master are content. Similarly, it is willing that men and women should contract to live together, for a year, a day, a month, an hour, or as they can agree, provided each expects to take the natural consequences of his or her own wisdom or folly, relieved only by such voluntary compassion as he or she can excite among the more experienced. It has faith enough in women to believe that their absolute freedom would destroy prostitution. It would also remove all the evils which attend on marriage. The Malthusian dilemma would solve itself. We have heard of free trade, free religion, free rum, free love. Anarchy is free everything. It leaves free to commit even arson or murder, those who choose to run the risk of being lynched, or confined as dangerous lunatics. It sees that competition, if really free, might do as much good as it does harm.[69] It antagonizes no natural instinct. Like other systems of philosophy, it recognizes this truth, that all natural instincts have a normal limit — benevolence and ideality just as much as alimentiveness and destructiveness — but it also sees that natural selection reduces them all to this limit; and that with this beneficent process arbitrary regulation can only interfere; albeit natural selection finally governs after all. Anarchy is Liberty; Liberty is Justice; Justice is Virtue. And it is not the nature of Virtue to hurt anyone. “ Length of days are in her right hand, and in her left riches “and honor; her ways are the ways of pleasantness, and all her “paths are Peace.”

It remains only to point out that Anarchism is but the application to social science of that view of philosophy described by this singular term the Relativity of Knowledge. This is not at first very easy to understand; but as I write for the people, I will try by a few simple illustrations to explain it. The man who says he has gone a long way to the west since morning, has (with the earth) gone much farther to the east. The sun appears to move round the earth ; but the common astronomy teaches that the earth moves round the sun. A deeper astronomy teaches that the earth does not move round the sun, but moves about it in a cycloid or perhaps epicycloid, while both earth and sun are moving through space in a direction as yet very imperfectly ascertained. To most people’s eyes the sky is blue and the trees are green; but a color-blind man cannot tell the difference. And if we call this a defect, let us remember, that the color-blind man may be able to hear the cry of a bat and the groaning of a horse-fiddle, while to ordinary people, neither one, nor the other, is audible. Blind Tom cannot distinguish colors, and may not be able to see that the cause must precede the effect; but is the mind of Blind Tom inferior to that of Gradgrind, in which both colors and syllogisms are named, arranged, and classified, like the books on his library shelves? The propositions of geometry are reckoned the most absolute of truths; and so they are, for us, yet it is a familiar paradox that hypothetical creatures, who existed only in two dimensions, would require a very different system. Besides, to raise even geometry above what transcendentalists call empiricism, we must assume certain starting points, such as the negation of one or more of the dimensions of space, which are not at all capable of being realized in consciousness; so that all absolute ratiocination postulates an absurdity When from these common observations we come to consider historically the systems of ethics or metaphysics it becomes very evident that their truth or falsehood depends on the point of view from which they are regarded. Optimism teaches that everything is as good as it can be; pessimism that everything is as bad as it can be. Both views are possible to men; both have shaped the lives of millions. Surely neither can be more than a half-truth. The fierce ethics of the north forgive everything to the brave man. The subtle ethics of Italy forgive everything to what we should call the “smart” man.

“Grey, worthy friend, is all your theory,
*‘And green alone life’s golden tree.”

It is not from those treatises which reason of morality or its opposite in the abstract that we gain a sound philosophy of life; but from practical experience, and from the works of such writers as Shakespeare, who represent men as they really are. Government, like ethics, like theology, like metaphysics, assumes that falsehood, which is the opposite of all this truth. It assumes to be final, perfect, divine. It is the perfection of human wisdom, the fountain of justice, the source of morals — according to its own maxims. With other dogmatical systems of the same antiquated type, it is discarded by the new philosophy, which yet is not a new philosophy, but the last results of sound thinkers in all ages applied and made the starting point. This philosophy, though often termed Nihilism, is by no means materialism or unbelief. It believes in that which it refuses to define. Behind governments, creeds, theories, which all perish, there remains a reality which transcends their puny definitions — a divine, eternal life, of which all sincere action is the worship, and all self-approbation the communion. “ It rolls in music through the ages,” it rests in glory on the sea of ever-lasting peace and love. All things, men’s faults and errors, no less than their immortal strife for the perfection which it inspires them to seek, are seen from a sufficiently lofty standpoint to be but “the modulations of its rhythm” as the waves of the ocean round themselves into the spheral harmony of the planet.

[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica. article Eskimo; Wallace, “Malay Archipelago.”

[2] The teepees made by the Indians about here, though hot inside, waste fuel, which is to them a very grave consideration, while the snow hut of the Esquimaux, heated only by lamps is constantly warm amidst the severest weather.

[3] Article Eskimo. Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[4] ib.

[5] ib.

[6] ib.

[7] ib.

[8] See Kaue’s account of their manners.

[9] Encyclopaedia Britannica. 10, ib.

[11] See specimens in “Origin of Civilization/’ by Sir J. Lubbock, pp. 27.

[12] Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[13] See examples in the “Origin of Civil Nation,” “Prehistoric Times” and Wallace’s “Malay Archipelago.”

[14] Origin of Cizilization pp. 135 etc.

[15] The case of Orestes, Aeneas, Cadmus, are familiar.

[16] Odyssey Book XXI.

[17] Widely spread traditions attribute all this to the first kings who were also gods.

[18] Odyssey XVIII 305–375.

[19] Odyssey V 246–255.

[20] Odyssey XXIII 188. Iliad VI 314.

[21] Odyssey Book IX.

[22] Iliad IX l.->4-I2tf.

[23] Iliad il 1SS-196.

[24] “Confucianism and Taoism,” by R. K Douglas (“Introduction”).

[25] ib. Chap II, III, V.

[26] The Sanskrit word varna means color. Its full force will readily be understood in America.

[27] Judges IX. I Samuel VIII, XI 13.

[28] S e full particulars in Rawliuson’s “Ancient Monarchies.”

[29] See Grote’s history Chap. XX, and compare with Schlieuiann’s discovery of the small size of Troy.

[30] Polit III 4. 5, 7.

[31] As a remedy for the tendency of each governmental form to degenerate, Aristotle recommends a mixed constitution something like that of modern England.

[32] By productiveness is understood nut mere fertility, but the sum of all circumstances, such as nearness to the market, wnich can affect the value of the crop.

[33] Homer (Odyssey XI. 490) considers the lot of a wage worker among slaves the worst possible. Lactautius says (De Mortibus Persecutorium c. 7, 23.) “So numerous were the receivers in comparison with the payers and no enormous the weight of taxation, that the laborer broke down; the plains became deserts, and woods grew where the plow had been... But the public distress, the universal mourning, was when the scourge of the census came... The faithful slave was tortured for evidence against his master, the wife to depose against her husband, the son against his sire.”

[34] These wars are said by Eutropiusto have cost three hundred thousand lives— all Italian. The country ci. lied the Mareuima, now worse than a desert, on account of the pestilential air, but a fine place under the republic, was made into latifundia by Sulla. See Forsyth’s account of it (“Italy” pp. 156). Pliny, in a now familiar passage, asserts that the latifundia ruined Italy.

[35] Tacitus Annals I, 17. “Our blood and our lives are valued at ten asses a day. Out of this, we must pay for our dress, our arms, our tents, must pay for our furloughs, and buy off the tyranny of the centurion.”

[36] The Bugaudse. or revolted peasants of Gaul, were the pest of the empire for many years. See Prosper, Acquit, in Chronic; Eutropius 4. 9.; Euinon de Schol. instaurat.; Idatius; Salvian, De vero jud. et provid. IV.

[37] See some interesting particulars and citations in Michelet’s History of Prance.

[38] The emperors Caligula, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Pertinax, Jnlianus, Caracalla, Macrimus. Elagabalus, Alexander Severus, Maximin Maximus, Balbinus. Gordian, Aurelian, all perished in this manner, not to mention others less known, or whose title may be disputed.

[39] In the reign of Hoiiorius three hundred thousand acres were formally declared vacant in the Campania, the best part of Italv.

[40] Eusubius VII 21 . Ecclesiastical History.

[41] They were called “tenants” and “guests,” and this euphemism, begun by authority of the emperors, wub kept up after they had virtually conquered the country. See Sidou’. A poll in, carmen XII np Scr. R. Fr I, 811.

[42] Adolphus, brother of Alaric, accepted the title of a Roman general. Alaric himself had borne it. Clovis, in the last year of his life, was made consul and Augustus. The independence of his successors was not formally recognized till the reign of Dagobert. On the other hand, the generals Aetius, Boniface, Stilicho, Ricimer, all of barbarian origin, were, at a much earlier period, reckoned dangerously powerful.

[43] Aetius defeated Attila at Chalons; and the insignificant town of Azimuntium repulsed him in the east; an abundant proof that the unwarlike emperor might have done so.

[44] Constantine in Code of Theodosins, I. XI, tit. 28. leg 16a.

[45] By the Julian law, an unmarried man could not inherit, unless he kept a concubine, “for the sake of a family.”

[46] Constantine in Code Theodosius 1. v. leg 9 u 1. 1.

[47] ib. 1 x. t. 31.

[48] ib. KVlIIt. 4; 1.X1I. t. 1; L 104.

[49] Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius in Code of Justinian 1. XI, tit. 49, leg 2a.

[50] Adolphus, brother of Alaric, and the celebrated queen Brunehaut, incurred much unpopularity by partially restoring it.

[51] Zosiinus 1. 1. p. 34. Clovis armed the people in his Gothic war.

[52] In England, this was enacted by Alfred.

[53] A knight’s “fee,” or military duty, was to bring four fully armed cavalrymen into the field.

[54] Nothing in archeoiogy is less known, and yet nothing better attested, than that marriage sprang from forcible capture, and is not known among those happy nations who have never had war. The female captive, claimed by her captor as his own, was either first outraged by other warriors, or their common right to her was commuted for or disproved in some way, as is still the custom of the Indians. Relics of these atrocities remaining anion? ourselves are 1. the expiation for marriage treating, enforced by a charivari. 2, Temporary sexual communism (kissing the bride). 3, A show of force at the wedding (the employment of a “best man” to assist in effecting the capture.) 4, An estrangement of the two families (the honey moon trip). 5, Resistance on the part of the bride’s relations (throwing the old shoe); and last, but not least, the law of marriage itself, of which the central idea is the subordination of the woman to the man; and the customs and laws which exclude women from almost all useful callings that they may be forced to live by this kind of legalized slavery and concubinage. It is unnecessary to say that Anarchists entertain for legal marriage and prostitution two phases of the same institution, neither of which can get along without the other) and for all that is associated and connected with them, an unmixed abhorrence, a loathing disgust and hatred, to which it is difficult to give expression without descending to abusive language. See on the origin of these enormities McLennan Primitive Marriage. Bachofen Das Mutterrecht, and Origin of Civilisation.

[55] See Gibbon Decline and Fall c LI. Coppee Conquest of Spain. B II. c. VII.

[56] About 711 4. P.

[57] This was proved by Sir Francis Palgrave. See Chambers’ Ency. Article “Firearms.”

[58] Villani 1. XII. c. 67.

[59] The sentiment of the dandy in Henry IV was familiar:
It was great pity, so it was.
This villainous saltpeter should be digged
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth;
Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed,
So cowardly.

[60] The revenue of the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus was about equal to that of the United States under Lincoln. During Lincoln’s administration the United States annually consumed some four times the the amount, contracting the debt without difficulty, notwithstanding very bad financial legislation; while Rome, as we saw, could hardly raise her expenses.

[61] Adam Smith (B II C I) “That part of a man’s stock which he expects to afford him a revenue, is called capital.” Ricardo (Prin. Pol. Econ c. I) “Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is employed in production.” McCulloch (notes on Wealth of Nations B. II c. I) “The capital of a nation really comprises all those portions of the produce of industry in it which may be directly employe I either to support human existance or facilitate existing production.” Henry George (Progress and Poverty B. I c. II) defines capital as wealth in the course of exchange.

[62] Mr. Van Buren Denslow, in his Modern Thinkers, contends that this kind of labor is useful because it saves the time of the employer. But surely one bootblack can do the work of twenty valet*, one restauranteur of twenty family cooks, etc.

[63] The population of the United Stales by the tenth census (1880) is 36,761,607, exclusive of children under ten; the total numbt-r engaged in all callings 17,392,099. The total number engaged in agriculture is 7,670,493, in manufactures, mechanics, and mining, 3,837,112, in trade and transportation 1,810,256, and in professions and personal service 4,074,238.

[64] Third Report of Emigration Committee (1827) Evid. qu 3225, 3306–7, 8311–12.

[65] See Progress and Poverty, by Henry George, lately labor candidate for mayor of New York.

[66] If there are those who still think that what has been said has nothing to do with America— that we do not inhabit an “effete” country, but an immense, spread-eagle country, where “Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm,” and the ordinary canons of political economy do not apply; it is perhaps vain to argue with them. Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain. But I would suggest to such a man that he read, first Mrs. Hunt’s “Century of Dishonor.’” then Vice President Wilson’s “Rise and Fall of the Slave Power.” and lastly the articles in the North American Review, between February and April 1886, on Landlordism in America, together with whatever papers he can find on the growth of the Credit Mobilier aud other great monopolies. These will teach him, if the thing be possible, that our government, like others, sprang from war and oppression; that it was organized to drive out the Indians, to enslave the negroes, and to prevent others from sharing the spoil; that for a hundred years our flag enjoyed the honor of being the only one which fostered the growth and extension of slavery; and that since this accursed evil was abolished (because it did not suit northern capitalists so well as tenant farming) the same flag has the proud exception of being the only one under which landlordism is increasing. The railroad corporations have received, either through the States or direct from Congress, 172,000,000 acres. Only about 200,000,000 acres remain “ available “ in the whole country and subject to entry! Of the 172,000,000 given to railroads, 20,047,000 have passed to great foreign syndicates— all In the form of vast estates. There were In America, in 1880, no less than 1,024.000 tenant farmers— more than Ireland ever contained. Their general condition is very bad. Almost all are tenants at will, and it is no uncommon thing for them to receive their tools from the landlord and pay him in kind to the extent of half the crop, like the French metayers. If we add to these the mortgagors, we shall have little difficulty in believing thai not half the American farmers are freeholders. Mr. Lincoln was certainly mistaken in thinking that under northern institutions every laborer could become an independent capitalist. It is not independence, but serfdom and raetayerage, which lies ahead of. and not far from, our agricultural class— all of whom began with some capital.

[67] For many interesting and instructive illustrations, see Herbert Spencer’s essays on “Over Legislation” and “The Coming Slavery.”

[68] See many striking proofs of this tendency in Origin of Civilization, chap. Laws.

[69] See the essay on Fourier in Mr. Denslovv’s Modern Thinkers.