#title Liberty Vol. IV. No. 18.
#subtitle Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order
#author Benjamin Tucker
#LISTtitle Liberty Vol. 04. No. 18.
#SORTauthors Benjamin Tucker, Gertrude B. Kelly, Victor Yarros, David Andrade, James L. Walker, George Schumm, Dyer D. Lum, Sidney H. Morse, John F. Kelly
#SORTtopics Liberty Vol. IV.
#date March 26, 1887
#source Retrieved on August 27, 2022 from [[http://www.readliberty.org/liberty/4/18][http://www.readliberty.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2022-08-27T20:21:32
#notes Whole No. 96. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and to [[https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/periodicals/liberty-1881-1908/][www.libertarian-labyrinth.org]] for the original scans.
“For always in thine eyes, O Liberty!
*** On Picket Duty.
Besides the article by Tak Kak which appears elsewhere, I have another article from him in reply to John F. Kelly’s “Morality and Its Origin.” It is very long, and I could not find room for the whole of it in this issue; so, rather than divide it, I hold it over for the next.
I am at a loss to understand the opposition of Anarchists (?) to the Pinkerton men on the ground that they constitute a private police force. As a private police — that is, protective — force, the Pinkerton men exemplify Anarchism: it is only as a private army of invasion that they become objectionable and Archistic. Nothing could show better than such criticism how ignorant certain so called Anarchists are of the fundamental principle of Anarchism.
The New York “Truth Seeker” says that Aveling and Liebknecht “have no more sympathy with the opinions of such gentlemen as Benjamin R. Tucker and Henry Appleton than they have for the teachings of the Communist of Judea.” Bless you, Macdonald, not half as much! The teachings of Aveling and Liebknecht bear a very close resemblance to those of the Communist of Judea, and are diametrically opposed to those of Appleton and Tucker.
In the fifth of his sermons on the land question the reverend Pentecost of Newark dealt a very severe blow at the reform he was advocating. Supporting Henry George’s proposition to tax land values, he said that, if it were carried out, probably not ten men in his church would be affected to the extent of a penny. If Mr. Pentecost told the truth, either his church is a very extraordinary one, or Henry George’s plan utterly fails to secure justice to labor. Protestant congregations are not apt to be recruited exclusively or even principally from the proletariat; as a general thing, three fourths of the members subsist, not on the wages of labor, but on the income derived from capital. If, then, out of Pentecost’s doubtless bourgeois church, not more than ten members will be affected in their incomes by the taxation of land values, where is the enormous increase in the wages of labor to come from? No reform that does not strip capital of its income and make the price of labor the only means of support is adequate to the solution of the social problem.
The New Haven “Workmen’s Advocate,” official organ of the Socialistic Labor Party, prints the following: “A Boston paper publishes the Anarchists’ March. As might be expected, the alignment is very uneven, each member of the ‘guard’ keeping his own time and whistling his own tune and marching in any direction regardless of his neighbor. Fun, though.” The “Advocate,” when it said this, had had no opportunity of seeing its contemporary of the same date, the Denver “Labor Enquirer,” another organ (not official, but very prominent) of the Socialistic Labor Party, in which appears the poem referred to, but under the head, “The March of the Workers.” What does the editor of the “Workmen’s Advocate” think about the alignment of the workers? Are they having “fun,” too, “each keeping his own time and whistling his own tune”? Or has the unevenness suddenly become to him divinest harmony? On the other hand, by what rule of right or decency does Burnette G. Haskell, editor of the “Labor Enquirer,” print this poem over the signatura of J. Wm. Lloyd, its author, but with a title quite other than that which Mr. Lloyd chose, without giving his readers a word of information to that effect or doing anything to take the responsibility of this change upon himself? In the past I have convicted this man of lying. Since then the world’s not grown honest, nor has he.
*** Resistance to Taxation.
Shines that high light whereby the world is saved;
And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.”
John Hay.
To the Editor of Liberty:
I have lately been involved in several discussions leading out of your refusal to pay your poll-tax, and I would like to get from you your reasons, so far as they are public property, for that action. It seems to me that any good object could have been better and more easily obtained by compromising with the law, except the object of propagandism, and that in attaining that object you were going beyond the right into paths where you could not hid any one follow who was trying to live square with the truth, so far as we may know it.
It seems to me that we owe our taxes to the State, whether we believe in it or not, so long as we remain within its borders, for the benefits which we willingly or unwillingly derive from it; that the only right course to be pursued is to leave any State whose laws we can no longer obey without violence to our own reason, and, if necessary, people a desert island for ourselves; for in staying in it and refusing to obey its authority, we are denying the right of others to combine on any system which they may deem right, and in trying to compel them to give up their contract, we are as far from right as they in trying to compel us to pay the taxes in which we do not believe.
I think that you neglect the grand race experience which has given us our present governments when you wage war upon them all, and that a compromise with existing circumstances as much a part of the rigid as following our own reason, for the existent is the induction of the race, and so long as our individual reasons are not all concordant it is entitled to its share of consideration, and those who leave it out do, in so far, wrong.
Even granting strict individualism to be the ultimate goal of the race development, still you seem to me positively on a false path when you attempt — as your emphatic denial of all authority of existing governments implies — to violently substitute the end of development for its beginning.
I think that these are my main points of objection, and hope that you will pardon my impertinence in addressing you, which did not come from any idle argumentative curiosity, but a genuine search for the truth, if it exists; and so I ventured to address you, as you by your action seem to me to accept the burden of proof in your contest with the existent.
Yours truly,
[Mr. Perrine’s criticism in an entirely pertinent one, and of the sort that I like to answer, though in this instance circumstances have delayed the appearance of his letter. The gist of his position — in fact, the whole of his argument — is contained in his second paragraph, and it is based on the assumption that the State is precisely the thing which the Anarchists say it is not,— namely, a voluntary association of contracting individuals. Were it really such, I should have no quarrel with it, and I should admit the truth of Mr. Perrine’s remarks. For certainly such voluntary association would be entitled to enforce whatever regulations the contracting parties might agree upon within the limits of whatever territory, or divisions of territory, had been brought into the association by these parties as individual occupiers thereof, and no non-contracting party would have a right to enter or remain in this domain except upon such terms as the association might impose. But if, somewhere between these divisions of territory, had lived, prior to the formation of the association, some individual on his homestead, who for any reason, wise or foolish, had declined to join in forming the association, the contracting parties would have had no right to evict him, compel him to join, make him pay for any incidental benefits that he might derive from proximity to their association, or restrict him in the exercise of any previously-enjoyed right to prevent him from reaping these benefits. Now, voluntary association necessarily involving the right of secession, any seceding member would naturally fall back into the position and upon the rights of the individual above described, who refused to join at all. So much, then, for the attitude of the individual toward any voluntary association surrounding him, his support thereof evidently depending upon his approval or disapproval of its objects, his view of its efficiency in attaining them, and his estimate of the advantages and disadvantages involved in joining, seceding, or abstaining. But no individual today finds himself under any such circumstances. The States in the midst of which he lives cover all the ground there is, affording him no escape, and are not voluntary associations, but gigantic usurpations. There is not one of them which did not result from the agreement of a larger or smaller number of individuals, inspired sometimes no doubt by kindly, but oftener by malevolent, designs, to declare all the territory and persons within certain boundaries a nation which every one of these persons must support, and to whose will, expressed through its sovereign legislators and administrators no matter how chosen, every one of them must submit. Such an institution is sheer tyranny, and has no rights which any individual is bound to respect; on the contrary, every individual who understands his rights and values his liberties will do his best to overthrow it. I think it must now be plain to Mr. Perrine why I do not feel bound either to pay taxes or to emigrate. Whether I will pay them or not is another question,— one of expediency. My object in refusing has been, as Mr. Perrine suggests, propagandism, and in the receipt of Mr. Perrine’s letter I find evidence of the adaptation of this policy to that end. Propagandism is the only motive that I can urge for isolated individual resistance to taxation. But out of propagandism by this and many other methods I expect there ultimately will develop the organization of a determined body of men and women who will effectively, though passively, resist taxation, not simply for propagandism, but to directly cripple their oppressors. This is the extent of the only “violent substitution of end for beginning” of which I can plead guilty of advocating, and, if the end can be “better and more easily obtained” in any other way, I should like to have it pointed out. The “grand race experience” which Mr. Perrine thinks I neglect is a very imposing phrase, on hearing which one is moved to be down in prostrate submission; but whoever first chances to take a closer look will see that it is but one of those spooks of which Tak Kak tells us. Nearly all the evils with which mankind was ever afflicted were products of this “grand race experience,” and I am not aware that any were ever abolished by showing it any unnecessary reverence. We will bow to it when we must; we will “compromise, with existing circumstances” when we have to; but at all other times we will follow our reason and the plumb-line. — Editor Liberty.]
*** The Science of Society. By Stephen Pearl Andrews.
**** Part Second.
7 Atlantic St., Newark, N. J., November 11, 1886.
Cost the Limit of Price: A Scientific Measure of Honesty in Trade As One of the Fundamental Principles in the Solution of the Social Problem.
Continued from No. 95.
Science — the rigid, exact, thorough, and inclusive Science of Society — is the only reliable guide to harmonic relations among men. Neither the ardor of piety, nor the sentiment of brotherhood, nor the desperate devotion of generous enthusiasm, nor the repressive force of a rigid morality, offers any adequate remedy for the existing evils of humanity. All these may be necessary, indispensable, nay, infinitely higher in rank or sanctity, if you will, than the other. But love must have its complement in Wisdom. To divorce them is to be guilty of “partialism,” just where it is of the utmost importance that the movement shall be integral and complete.
12. Possibly this statement may enlighten some minds in relation to the existing misunderstanding between the religionists and the Socialists. The former insist upon the spiritual element, the whole of what is requisite to a true development of society. Abstractly, the religionist may be said to be the nearest right, inasmuch as substance is prior to form; but practically, and with reference to the present wants of society, the Socialist is nearer the truth. The spiritual element exists already, at least in embryo. The aspiration after better and truer relations is swelling daily, bursting the bands of existing institutions, and demanding knowledge of the true way,— an organized body of the Christian idea of human brotherhood which the living soul may enter, and wherein it may dwell. But neither without the other is complete.
13. So powerful is becoming the sentiment of right that, unless the demand so created be followed by a complete discovery of the methods of its gratification, there is abundant danger that justice as a blind instinct may prove more destructive than organized oppression. As in the case of the misdirected or ill-directed patriotism in the illustration above, so every right sentiment and affection, without its complement of wisdom, is liable to become pernicious instead of beneficent in its action. If the love the mother bears her child leads her to feed it to excess on candies and comfits, to confine it in close, warm rooms, and guard it from contact with whatever may test and develop its powers of endurance, far better that she loved it less. She needs, in addition to love, a knowledge of Physiology. The Science of Society is to the Community what Physiology is to the Individual; or, rather, it is to the relations of the Individual with others what Physiology is to the relations of the Individual,so to speak, with himself.
14. In the same manner the knowledge on the part of the laboring classes or their friends that they are under an oppressive and exhausting system of the relations of capital and labor does not amount to a knowledge of the true system, into which, when known, it should be their object to bring themselves as rapidly as possible. To discover that true system, by any other means than by long years, perhaps long generations, of fallacious and exhausting experiments, must be the work of genius, of true science, profound fundamental investigations, or any other name you choose to bestow upon that faculty and that process by which elementary truths are evolved by contemplating the nature of a subject.
15. The Socialist agitations of the present day are, therefore, eminently dangerous, as much so as the most violent reactionist ever imagined them, unless Science intervenes to point the way to the solution. Religion, nor the dictates of a stringent morality, will ever reconcile men who have once appreciated their inherent, God-given rights, to the permanency of an unjust system by which they are deprived of them. Mere make-shifts and patched-up contrivances will not answer. False methods, such as Strikes, Trades’ Unions, Combinations of Interests, and arbitrary regulations of all sorts, are but temporary palliations ending uniformly in disappointment, and often in aggravation of the evils sought to be alleviated. A distinguished writer upon these subjects says truly: “Establish tomorrow an ample and fair Scale of Prices in every employment under the sun, and two years of quiet and the ordinary mutations of Business would suffice to undermine and efface nearly the whole. No reform under the present system, but a decided step out of and above that system, is the fit and enduring remedy for the wrongs and oppressions of Labor by Capital. And this must inevitably be a work of time, of patience, of genius, of self-sacrifice, and true heroism.” In other words, it is the province of Science to discover the true principles of trade as much as it is to discover the laws of every other department of human concerns, and that discovery is an important part of the still more comprehensive Science of Society.
16. If, then, some profound philosopher, whose high authority could command universal belief, were to step forward and announce the discovery of a simple principle, which — adopted in trade or business — would determine with arithmetical certainty the equitable price to be charged for every hour of time bestowed upon its production and distribution, so that labor in every department should get precisely its due reward, and the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, and the consequent poverty and wretchedness of the masses, be speedily alleviated and finally removed; and if, in addition, the principle were such that its adoption and practical consequences did not depend upon convincing the intellects or appealing to the benevolence of the wealthy classes, but lay within the compass of the powers of the laboring men themselves; if, still further than this, the principle did not demand, as a preliminary, the extensive cooperation, the mutual and implicit confidence, the complicated arrangements, the extensive knowledge of administration, and the violent change in domestic habits, some one or other of which is involved in nearly every proposition of Socialism, and for which the laboring classes are specially disqualified; if, in one word, this simple principle furnished demonstrably, unequivocally, immediately, and practically, the means whereby the laboring classes might step out from under the present system, and place themselves in a condition of independence above that system,— would not this announcement come in good time; would it not be a supply eminently adapted to the present demand of the laboring masses in this country and elsewhere?
With some misgivings as to the prudence of asserting such a faith, in limine, I state my conviction that such a principle has been discovered and is now in the possession of a small number of persons who have been engaged in practically testing it, until its regulating and wealth-producing effects have been sufficiently, though not abundantly, demonstrated.
17. Josiah Warren, formerly of Cincinnati, more recently a resident of Indiana, is, I believe, justly entitled to be considered the discoverer of the principle to which I refer, along with several others which he deems essential to the rectification of the social evils of the existing state of society.
The principle itself is one which will not probably strike the reader, when first stated, as either very profound, very practicable in its application, very important in its consequences, and perhaps not even as equitable in itself. It requires thought to be bestowed on each of these points. You will find, however, as you subject it to analysis, as you trace it into its ten thousand different application, to ownership, to rent, to wages, etc., that it places all human transactions, relating to property upon a new basis of exact justice,— that is, it has the perfect, simple, but all-prevailing character of a Universal Principle.
The question as to the method of commencing to put the principle in operation is a distinct one, and only needs to be considered after the principle itself is understood. I have already observed that it has been and is now being practically tested with entire success.
18. This principle, put into a formula, is thus stated: “Cost Is the Limit of Price.”
The counter principle upon which all ownership is now maintained and all commerce transacted in the world is that “Value is the limit of price,” or, as the principle is generally stated in the cant language of trade, “A thing is worth what it will bring.” Between these two principles, so similar that the difference in the statement would hardly attract a moment’s attention unless it were specially insisted upon, lies the essential difference between the whole system of civilized cannibalism by which the masses of human beings are mercilessly ground to powder for the accumulation of the wealth of the few, on the one hand, and on the other, the reign of equity, the just remuneration of labor, and the independence and elevation of all mankind.
19. There is nothing apparently more innocent, harmless, and equitable in the world than the statement that a “thing should bring what it is worth,” and yet even that statement covers the most subtle fallacy which it has ever been given to human genius to detect and expose,— a fallacy more fruitful of evil than any other which the human intellect has ever been beclouded by. (130.)
20. Value has nothing whatever to do, upon scientific principles, as demonstrated by Mr. Warren, with settling the price at which any article should be sold. Cost is the only equitable limit, and by cost is meant the amount of labor bestowed on its production, that measure being again measured by the painfulness or repugnance of the labor itself. (61, 65.)
Value is a consideration for the purchaser alone, and determines him whether he will give the amount of the cost or not. (132.)
21. This statement is calculated to raise a host of objections and inquiries. If one purchaser values an article more highly than another, by what principle will he be prevented from offering a higher price? How is it possible to measure the relative painfulness or repugnance of labor? What allowance is to be made for superior skill or natural capacity? How is that to be settled? How does this principle settle the questions of interest, rent, machinery, etc.? What is the nature of the practical experiments which have already been made? Etc., etc.
22. These several questions will be specifically answered in this treatise upon “The Cost Principle,” except the last, which will be more satisfactorily replied by a work embodying the “Practical Details” of twenty-four years of continuous experiment upon the workings of this and the other principles related to it, and announced by Mr. Warren, which work Mr. Warren is now engaged himself in preparing for the press. These “Practical Details” will relate to the operations of two mercantile establishments conducted at different points, upon the Cost Principle, to the education of children, to social intercourse, and, finally, to the complex affairs of a village or town which has grown up during the last four years, under the system of “Equitable Commerce,” of which the Cost Principle is the basis. This work upon “Practical Details” will contain, I may venture to affirm, from a personal knowledge of its characters, a body of facts profoundly interesting to the philanthropic and philosophic student of human affairs. It must suffice for the present allusion to assert that there is no one of the circle of principles embraced by Mr. Warren under the general name of “Equitable Commerce,” or by myself under the name of “The Science of Society,” which has not been patiently, repeatedly, and successfully applied in practice, in a variety of modes, long before it was announced in theory,— a point in which it is thought that these principles differ materially from all the numerous speculations upon social subjects to which the attention of the public has been heretofore solicited.
23. The village to which I have referred is situated in the State of Ohio. It contains as yet only about twenty families, or one hundred inhabitants, having a present prospect of a pretty rapid increase of numbers. I will call it, for the sake of a name by which to refer to it, Trialville, stating at the same time that this is not the real name of the village, which I do not venture to give, as it might be disagreeable to some of the inhabitants to have the glare of public notoriety at so early a day upon their modest experiment. It might also subject them to visits of mere curiosity, or to letters of inquiry, which, without their consent, I have not the right to impose upon them. Another village upon the same principles is being organized in the vicinity of New York.
Under the sobriquet of Trialville I shall have occasion, however, to refer to the operations at the former of these villages, which have so far proved successful in a practical point of view that it is deemed, on the part of those most interested in this movement, to be a fitting time, now, to call the public attention more generally to the results. The publication of these treatises is in fact the beginning of that effort, which, if the intentions of those of us who are engaged in the enterprise do not fail of realization, will be more and more continuously and urgently put forth from this time forward. We believe that we have a great mission to fulfill,— a gospel of glad tidings to proclaim,— a practical and immediate solution of the whole problem of human rights and their full fruition to expound. While, therefore, we cannot and would not entirely conceal the enthusiastic feelings by which we are prompted in this effort, still, lest it may be thought that such sentiments may have usurped the province of reason, we invite the most cautious investigation and the most rigid scrutiny, not only of the principles we propound, but also of the facts of their practical working. While, therefore, I do not give the real name or exact location of our trial villages to the public at large, for the reasons I have stated, still we are anxious that all the facts relating to them shall be known, and the fullest opportunity for thorough investigation be given to all who may become in any especial degree interested in the subject. The author of this work will be gratified to communicate with all such, and to reply to such inquiries as they may desire to have answered, upon a simple statement of their interest in the subject and their wish to know more of it. The real name and location of our trial towns will be communicated to such, and every facility given for investigation.
Arrangements are contemplated for organizing other villages upon the same principles, and establishing an equitable exchange of products between them. It is not the object of the present work, however, to enter into the history or general plan of the movement, but simply to elucidate a single principle of a new science embracing the field of Ethics and Political Economy.
24. It will be appropriate, in this preliminary statement of the subject, to guard against one or two misapprehensions which may naturally enough arise from the nature of the terms employed, or from the apparently disproportionate importance attached to a simple principle of trade.
The term “Equitable Commerce” does not signify merely a new adjustment of the method of buying and selling. The term is employed, by Mr. Warren, to signify the whole of what I have preferred to denominate the Science of Society, including Ethics, Political Economy, and all else that concerns the outer relations of mankind. At the same time the mutual interchange of products is, as it were, the continent or basis upon which all other intercourse rests. Society reclines upon Industry. Without it man cannot exist. Other things may be of higher import, but it is of primary necessity. Solitary industry does not supply the wants of the individual. Hence trade or the exchange of products. With trade intercourse begins. It is the first in order of the long train of benefits which mankind mutually minister to each other. The term “commerce” is sometimes synonymous with trade or traffic, and at other times it is used in a more comprehensive sense. For that reason it has a double appropriateness to the subjects under consideration. It is employed therefore in the phrase “Equitable Commerce,” to signify, first, Commerce in the minor sense, as synonymous with “trade,” and secondly, Commerce in the major sense, as synonymous with the old English signification of the word, “conversation,”— i.e., human intercourse of all sorts,— the concrete, or tout ensemble, of human relations.
25. I will here show that these investigations take in the whole scope of Commerce in the major sense, after which I will return to the particular consideration and elucidation of the single principle, “Cost Is the Limit of Price,” which does, indeed, chiefly or primarily relate to Commerce in the minor sense, although the modes in which it affects Commerce in the major sense are almost infinite.
26. According to Mr. Warren, the following is The Problem to Be Solved in all its several branches:
1. “The proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor.”
2. “Security of person and property.”
3. “The greatest practicable amount of freedom to each individual.”
4. “Economy in the production and uses of wealth.”
5. “To open the way to each individual for the possession of land and all other natural wealth.”
6. “To make the interests of all to cooperate with and assist each other, instead of clashing with and counteracting each other.”
7. “To withdraw the elements of discord, of war, of distrust and repulsion, and to establish a prevailing spirit of peace, order, and social sympathy.”
27. And according to him, also the following Principles are the means of the solution:
I. “Individuality.”
II. “The Sovereignty of Each Individual.”
III. “Cost the Limit of Price.”
IV. “A Circulating Medium, Founded on the Cost of Labor.”
V. “Adaptation of the Supply to the Demand.”
To be continued.
*** The Political Theology of Mazzini And The International.
By Michael Bakouine, Member of the International Association of Working-People.
***** Translated from the French by Sarah E. Holmes.
Continued from No. 95.
Our opinions, our convictions are equally opposed to Mazzini’s. First, we do not believe in the existence of any Divinity whatever, other than that which has been created by the historic fantasy of men. Consequently for us there can be no divine revelation from on high, all religions having been only revelations of the collective mind of men, in proportion as it has developed in history, to itself, through this false divine prism. Not believing in God, we can no more believe in the intellectual and moral existence of human individuals outside of society. Man becomes man only in the bosom of society and only because of the collective cooperation of all men, whether present or past. This is a truth which forms the basis of all our socialistic beliefs and which I shall, therefore, try to develop and prove fully in its time and place. Today I can only state the principle. And the first consequence of this truth is this,— that neither religion, nor morality, nor even thought can be peculiarly and exclusively individual. The greatest men of history, the most sublime geniuses, the greatest philosophers or prophets, have always received all the contents, all the foundation of their religion, of their morality, and of their thought, from this same society of which they form a part and to which they seemed to bring it spontaneously or from on high. It is this accumulated treasure, the product of the collective labor, material, intellectual, and moral, of all past generations, elaborated anew and transformed slowly, in a manner more or less invisible and latent, by the new instincts, the aspirations, and the real and manifold new wants of the present generations, which always forms the contents of the revelations or discoveries of these men of genius, who add only the formal work of their own brains, more capable than others of seizing and classifying the details in a larger whole or in a new synthesis. So that we may say with as much reason as justice that the men of genius are precisely those to whom society always gives more than to others, and, above all, more than it receives in return. Even the misfortunes and persecutions which it has lavished upon them with great generosity hitherto have been transformed for them into benefits, because it is more than probable that, if it had accorded them gratitude, respect, riches, power, and authority during their lives, it would have made tyrants of them and transformed them into wicked and stupid privileged persons.
From the truth which I have just laid down as a principle flows another consequence as important as the first,— that all religions and all systems of morality which prevail in a society are always the ideal expression of its real, material situation, that is to say, of its economic organization first of all, but also of its political organization, the latter being, moreover, nothing but the legal and violent consecration of the former. Christ, who was quite a different sort of socialist from Mazzini, since he has declared that it was easier for a great rope — others say for a camel — to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into his Paradise,— Christ himself has said: For where your treasure is, there is your heart also! and he has tried to transfer human treasures into heaven, but he has not succeeded. He has succeeded so little that the Church itself, this divine institution which has no other aim, if we may believe the Christian theologians and Mazzini himself, than to assure the road to heaven to all believers, was hardly officially established before it found nothing more pressing to do than to monopolize all the treasures of the earth, which it has justly considered as instruments of power and enjoyment. During the fifteen centuries which have passed since the miraculous conversion of the very depraved and very great Emperor Constantine down to our time, have not all the Christian churches — Roman Catholic. Byzantine-Greek, Byzantine-Russian, Protestant — displayed by turns the most fanatical fury in the preservation and increase of the holy property and riches of the Church?
Fifteen centuries of experience! Should not such a solemn and memorable failure made by the most ideal religion in the world suffice, therefore, to prove to us the inconsistency of all abstract idealism on this earth, its absolute incompatibility with the fundamental conditions of human society? What will Mazzini do, then, with his new idealism, with his eclectic medley of traditions fallen into disuse and of Platonic absurdities revived, a sort of abortion which has neither the merit of the logical rationality of the metaphysicians, nor that of the material brutality of the positive religions, and which, at the same time that it revolts thought, does not even give to the superstition of the masses and to this need of believing in miracles which yet lives in feminine souls the nourishment afforded them by spiritualism or even Mormonism,— religions as new as Mazzini’s and much more positive?
“In abolishing rent and interest, the last vestiges of old-time slavery, the Revolution abolishes at one stroke the sword of the executioner, the seal of the magistrate, the club of the policeman, the gunge of the exciseman, the erasing-knife of the department clerk, all those insignia of Politics, which young Liberty grinds beneath her heel.” — Proudhon.---- ☞ The appearance in the editorial column of articles over other signatures than the editor’s initial indicates that the editor approves their central purpose and general tenor, though he does not hold himself responsible for every phrase or word. But the appearance in other parts of the paper of articles by the same or other writers by no means indicates that he disapproves them in any respect, such disposition of them being governed largely by motives of convenience. ---- *** Monopoly, Communism, and Liberty. Pinney of the Winsted “Press” grows worse and worse. It will be remembered that, in attacking the free money theory, he said we had a taste of it in the day of State wildcat banking, when every little community had its State bank issues; to which I made this answer: “How could State bank issues be free money? Monopoly is monopoly, whether granted by the United States or by a single State, and the old State banking system was a thoroughly monopolistic system.” This language clearly showed that the free money objection to the old State banks as well as to the present national banks is not founded on any mistaken idea that in either case the government actually issues the money, but that in both cases alike the money is issued by a monopoly granted by the government. But Pinney, not daring to meet this, affects to ignore the real meaning of my words by assuming to interpret them as follows (thus giving new proof of my assertion that he wastes his strength in attacking windmills):
It is apparently Mr. Tucker’s notion that State banks were an institution of the State. They were no more a government institution than is a railroad company that receives its charter from the State and conducts its business as a private corporation under State laws. . . . For purposes of illustration they answer well, and Mr. Tucker’s effort to lessen the force of the illustration by answering that they were institutions of the State, because they are called for convenience State banks, is very near a resort to wilful falsehood.What refreshing audacity! Pinney knows perfectly well that the advocates of free money are opposed to the national banks as a monopoly enjoying a privilege granted by the government; yet these, like the old State banks, are no more a government institution than such a railroad company as he describes. Both national and State banks are law-created and law-protected monopolies, and therefore not free. Anybody, it is true, could establish a State bank, and can establish a national bank, who can observe the prescribed conditions. But the monopoly inheres in these compulsory conditions. The fact that national bank notes can be issued only by those who have government bonds and that State bank notes could be issued only by those who had specie makes both vitally and equally objectionable from the standpoint of free and mutual banking, the chief aim of which is to secure the right of all wealth to monetization without prior conversion into some particular form of wealth limited in amount and without being subjected to ruinous discounts. If Mr. Pinney does not know this, he is not competent to discuss finance; if he does know it, it was a quibble and “very near a resort to wilful falsehood” for him to identify the old State banking system with free banking. But he has another objection to free money,— that it would enable the man who has capital to monetize it, and so double his advantages over the laborer who has none. Therefore he would have the general government, which he calls the whole people, “monetize their combined wealth and use it in the form of currency, while at the same time the wealth remains in its owners’ hands for business purposes.” This is Mr. Pinney’s polite and covert way of saying that he would have those without property confiscate the goods of those who have property. For no governmental mask, no fiction of the “whole people,” can disguise the plain fact that to compel one man to put his property under pawn to secure money issued by or to another man who has no property is robbery and nothing else. Though you leave the property in the owner’s hands, there is a “grab” mortgage upon it in the hands of the government, which can foreclose when it sees fit. Mr. Pinney is on the rankest Communistic ground, and ought to declare himself a State Socialist at once. Certainly no one wishes more heartily than I that every industrious man was the owner of capital, and it is precisely to secure this result that I desire free money. I thought Mr. Pinney was a good enough Greenbacker to know (for the Greenbackers know some valuable truths despite their fiat money delusion) that the economic benefits of an abundance of good money in circulation are shared by all, and not reaped exclusively by the issuers. He has often clearly shown that the effect of such abundance is to raise the laborer’s wages to an equivalence to his product, after which every laborer who wishes to possess capital will be able to accumulate it by his work. All that is wanted is a means of issuing such an abundance of money free of usury. Now, if they only had the liberty to do so, there are already enough large and small property-holders willing and anxious to issue money, to provide a far greater amount than is needed, and there would be sufficient competition among them to bring the price of issue down to cost,— that is, to abolish interest. Liberty avoids both forms of robbery,— monopoly on the one side and Communism on the other,— and secures all the beneficent results that are (falsely) claimed for either.
It is a most extraordinary thing that people who are in favor of the nationalisation of the raw material should be against the nationalisation of the means of production. Men who are Socialist in their aspect to the one remain Individualistic in their aspect to the other. They illogically refuse to apply to capital the arguments which they hold valid as against private property in land; and I notice a curious tendency among Radicals who are strongly in favor of the nationalisation of land to lose their tempers when they are pressed with their own arguments applied to capital, and to take refuge in denunciation and the free use of uncomplimentary epithets, instead of relying on reason and sound logic.Mrs. Besant is perfectly right as to the state of inconsistency in which the minds of most people are. They see no reason why we should not have liberty to settle this question, and authority to settle that, according as it may suit the whim of the moment. They have no idea of a deep underlying principle to which they are bound to conform all their acts. There are unfortunately very few of those “slaves to an idea” whom Tak Kak so much despises (though I notice that he himself is a slave to the idea that he must not be slave to an idea). But Mrs. Besant herself is not quite consistent. Why should we draw the line at the nationalisation of the means of production any more than at that of the land? Why exempt the manufactured articles? This line Kropotkine, lining still more logical than Mrs. Besant, refuses to draw. In the series of articles on “Expropriation” now running through “Le Révolté,” he argues logically and fairly that it is nonsense to confine the idea of capital to raw material and the means of production, but that expropriation must begin with the manufactured articles; that houses, and clothing, and food, are as much a necessary part of the laborer’s capital as the raw material upon which to work; and that his need of them implies his right to use them. Are you prepared to go that length, Mrs. Besant? If you are not, you are only a very little more logical than your Radical friends. Kropotkine must get the prize for consistency so far, but even he will not stand a very severe test. He has a wholesome fear of the State, as he well ought, from his experience in France and Russia, but he has no conception of justice without some State arrangement to carry it out. He will have the citizens go down into the streets and divide up the expropriated goods after the revolution. What these indefinite citizens are (I suppose some ghostly affair, like Communistic Anarchy), how they will differ from a State, and who is to decide what are the “needs” of the different people, I have not yet been able to make out. It is very curious that a man of Kropotkine’s ability fails to see that there is no necessity for this expropriation which he contemplates; that all that is necessary is to cease to support the present system, which will then die for lack of nourishment; that what is called capital, even the most solid portions of it, could not exist a year, unless it were constantly renewed and revivified by labor; that expropriation, however just it may be, would “not pay.” One of the most frequent charges brought against Anarchists is that they have no conception of the unity and solidarity of the human race; that each one wishes to act, as if he alone existed in the world; that they entirely deny that we are our brothers’ keepers. Rather a strange charge to be brought by those who are constantly making and dreaming of artificial devices for keeping men and women from devouring each other, while we are so convinced that the interests of all human beings are so bound together that no artificial bond is needed, that all artificial restraints tend to push them apart (by dividing their interests) instead of keeping them together. We, and we alone, are true believers in the unity of the human race, and it is for this reason, as Proudhon says, that we look not to an organization of society, but to an organization of the economic forces for the establishment of peace upon earth.
To the Editor of Liberty A few weeks since Victor Yarros spoke of Herbert Spencer as a loyal servant of the bourgeoisie. This is, I think, a great mistake. Though Spencer has not done all we could wish, yet what he has done he has done well. In fact I know of no English-writing person who has done so much to advance our cause as he. The expression “loyal servants of the bourgeoisie” has, besides, the savor of cant, and cant is our deadliest enemy. The bourgeoisie not being a well-defined class like the feudal aristocracy with class traditions and class instincts, but a mob ever varying in composition, and the fractions of which exploit each other as they do the proletariat, it has as a class no paid agents, and it can develop no loyalty in anyone. Consequently the phrase “loyal servant” can mean only, if it mean anything, that the person to whom it is applied profits by the maintenance of the conditions under which the bourgeoisie thrives,— that he is himself bourgeois,— and therefore seeks to maintain those conditions. Now it is not true of Spencer that he either profits to any great extent by existing conditions, or that he seeks to maintain them. No one has pointed out in sharper language than he the existing commercial corruption, no one has traced it more clearly than he to its causes, and few have more definitely pointed out the remedies. On one point, the management of corporations, he has distanced all others, for he has clearly demonstrated that the evils complained of, and which are usually made the pretext for the demand for the absorption of the corporations by the State, are, when not produced directly by State interference, the result of the adoption of State methods — majority rule and unlimited contracts — inside the corporations. The difference between the professed Anarchist and Spencer is simply that Spencer has not taken the last step of demanding the abolition of the State; and that he has not done so is no doubt largely caused by the circumstances in which he is placed. The demand, however, follows so logically from his reasoning that we may count him with us. Let us examine his position a little. He wishes to retain the State: 1, for protection from foreign enemies; 2, to administer justice in civil disputes; 3, to prevent or redress criminal aggression. Now, his first reason for the retention of the State begs the question, for it is at most but a reason for retaining a State, or, as he himself puts it, as long as nations retain the habit of burglary, it will be necessary for each nation to maintain a defensive force to resist such burglary. But as the plea of the Anarchist is for the abolition of the State, and hence of international burglary, the argument is no good against him: in fact, it simply amounts to telling him that he will not have Anarchy before it comes, or that the State and Anarchy are incompatible. It is exactly the same reason that is used in favor of the maintenance of the vast standing armies of continental Europe. As to the second reason, Spencer will scarcely say that the State has any right to interfere, except it be called in by at least one of the parties to the dispute. In fact, he limits the State’s interference to the enforcing of contracts, and the right to make contracts necessarily implies the right to abrogate them, both parties consenting. Where both parties to the dispute are not desirous of State intervention, it must be obvious that the State has no greater right to interfere than has any individual, except in so far as, being stronger, its interference may be more effectual. Where both parties are willing it becomes a case of ordinary arbitration, and any third party in whom the disputants have trust can do equally as well as the State. In fact, Spencer himself has shown that the latter method is the better, and that it tends to replace the action of the State. He has demonstrated that the State’s action in such cases is costly and imperfect, while that of private individuals or voluntary organizations is rapid and cheap. And in the case that one of the parties to a dispute refuses to submit the case to arbitration, there is sufficient power in voluntary protective organizations to bring him to terms. Take the ease of a merchant accused of not living up to his contracts. If a jury of his fellows of good reputation report that he has refused to defend himself, and that, so far as the evidence they can procure shows, he is guilty, the punishment following through loss of trade is more severe than any the State is likely to inflict. There remains the case of direct aggression on life and property, and the prevention of this is certainly by far the best reason alleged for maintaining the State. But, after all, payment for protection from crime is a species of insurance, and I fail to see any good reason why one should be compelled to join one insurance company rather than another. If it be not the business of city government to tax the citizens in order to procure a water supply so as to be able to protect them from fire,— and Spencer says it is not,— how can it be the business of the same government to tax the citizens for the maintenance of a police force to enable it to repress fire-raisers? And here we come to the root of the matter. Spencer’s general position is that the Stale has not the right of positive regulation, while it has that of negative regulation, meaning by the latter term the prevention of aggression. Now, is or is not taxation positive regulation? When we bear in mind that the individual citizen has practically no voice in determining how much he shall pay, nor how his money shall be expended, the reply cannol be doubtful. The State takes from the individual — I speak of the State performing its “legitimate” functions only — what it thinks necessary and expends it as it thinks advisable for his protection. Evidently here is no contract, here is no exchange of services, a giving of so much for so much; here is only positive regulation. The State insists on rendering its services and sets its own pay. And if it do not do this; if the individual citizen has the liberty of choice; if he is to pay for protection only as he pays for other things,— then Anarchy is here and the State is dead. And that Spencer really wishes to kill the State by making taxation impossible there is some reason to believe. Take his proposal to make all taxation direct, direct taxation having, as he says, the advantage that it is difficult to collect when small in amount and practically impossible when large. Or take his recent utterance in regard to majority rule, that the majority has the right to decide what the joint action shall be in those cases in which the minority admits the necessity of joint action,— that is to say, the majority may rule the minority when majority and minority are at one. The foregoing paragraphs were written before No. 95 of Liberty came to hand. In that I was surprised to find it stated that Spencer has not denounced the land and money monopolies. Surely this must have been written in temporary forgetfulness of the facts. It is true that Spencer has said nothing in favor of mutual banking, that he does not oven know anything about it; but nevertheless he has denounced the monopoly of the issuance of money most vigorously, and it is not his fault if mutual banking does not exist. Spencer may not be an Anarchist, but when our posterity undertakes to make up the roll of those to whose labors it will owe Anarchy, Spencer’s name will stand with those of Condorcet, Humboldt, Buckle, and Proudhon, and it will be neither the last nor the least.[Mr. Kelly states me a little too emphatically. I did not quite say that Spencer has not denounced the land and money monopolies; I said that he has little or nothing to say about them. As Mr. Kelly puts it, my criticism of Spencer covers his past; but it was my intention to refer only to his present attitude, and my words, though perhaps lacking precision, do not necessarily reflect upon any but Spencer’s more recent utterances. I could not have meant otherwise, for, when writing the passage in question, I had distinctly in mind Spencer’s admirable essay against the money monopoly to which Mr. Kelly refers. But this, good as it is, only partially excuses Spencer; in one view, indeed, its very excellence aggravates his subsequent offence. Knowing the importance of the matter, he should have dwelt upon it longer and returned to it oftener. But he has simply contented himself with stating on one or two occasions — with much force and lucidity, it is true — a portion of the truth about money and the liberty of its issue. This is contained in one of the least known of his books, and most of those who may be said to be tolerably and intelligently familiar with his philosophy are entirely unaware that he has written anything on the question of banking. If he had cared to give it a prominence proportional to its importance, he could and would have done so by that method of varied iteration of which he is so superb a master, and which he values so highly as a means of inducing the acceptance of newly-discovered truths by reluctant minds. When any truth is particularly dear to Mr. Spencer’s heart, you will find him turning it over in a thousand ways, exhibiting it in every possible light, and marshalling all the resources of his vast research in its support. But not so with free banking. That subject he has long neglected, and doubtless many think that he looks upon his once-expressed opinion as part of a crop of intellectual wild oats. To a degree, then, it is Mr. Spencer’s fault that free banking does not exist, and that degree is proportional to the influence upon which Mr. Kelly very properly insists in his behalf. So, in spite of my admiration, and my desire to think absolutely well of him, suspicion of his motive, of his honesty, of his bravery, forces its way into my mind, and I am tempted to echo the opinion expressed by Gertrude B. Kelly, in a masterful criticism of Spencer which once appeared in these columns, that, “when Mr. Spencer was younger,” he was “probably more honest,” and that “in the near future men will wonder how Mr. Spencer, ‘the philosopher’ of the nineteenth century, could have allowed his devotion to the bourgeoisie to cloud his morality,” though I cannot, go as far as she does in asserting that “Mr. Spencer comes to the assistance of the landowners and capitalists in general with all the arguments in his power, even if the views now expressed are totally opposed to those expressed before he was captured by the bourgeoisie.” With these comments on that portion of Mr. Kelly’s letter which particularly calls for answer from me, I leave the rest to Mr. Yarros to answer when and as he pleases, congratulating him on having called forth such an accurate, analytical presentation of Mr. Spencer’s attitude towards the State as Mr. Kelly has given, and one which, in view of what Mr. Spencer may be supposed to know, better warrants criticism than defence of him. — Editor Liberty.] *** Proudhon’s Preeminence. My dear Mr. Tucker: Manifestly a sort, of reversed Midas, all the gold I have hitherto touched has speedily dissolved, and what I have most earnestly striven after in almost every instance vanished beyond my reach. Indeed, I have so long camped with defeat that I doubt whether I could ever feel comfortable in the company of victory. I fear I am so made that I shall forever train with the defeated. And so may it be. I will not bewail it. But while I am beginning to resign myself to my fate,— that of a lone wanderer with nothing but his ideal and some friends and fellow-thinkers scattered over the earth to cheer and sustain him in an unfriendly world well-nigh bereft of all ideals and fatally immersed in a “mere property career,” — I hope there is something better in store for you and your great enterprises, Liberty and now also “The Proudhon Library,” and that in your ease the high spiritual rewards that always accompany the serviee of a noble cause will not want their material counterpart. In the prosecution of your journalistic and literary enterprises I sincerely wish you the most abundant success. Your essential work has my unqualified approval. In exalting, like Jesus, the Quakers, Emerson, and some other characters in whom the race flowered, the spontaneous element in man above fixed institutions, religious, political, or of whatever nature, and proclaiming the supreme excellence of liberty as a solvent of social ills and as the condition precedent to the perennial regeneration of human society, you, together with other Anarchists, are working, “not for an age, but for all time.” Among the eminent thinkers and writers who proceeded on similar lines, who clearly recognized the utter futility and crime of politics and all arbitrary interference in the work of social reform, and who with great eloquence and power placed before the world the new hope there is for it in the spontaneous and natural agencies of liberty, the Frenchman Proudhon, so far as I am able to judge, is unexcelled. I cannot but congratulate you upon your undertaking the translation and publication of his complete works. It is true we have Herbert Spencer and Emerson, but Proudhon did his work in his own characteristic way, different from and often surpassing theirs, and for one I hold there is room for him in English. Let me assure you of my hearty cooperation in this your new enterprise. I have already urged the “Proudhon Library” upon a number of friends, and shall continue to bespeak for it the favor of others. Of course you are to place me on your list as a subscriber. It grieves me not to be able to support your enterprise more largely. Yours truly,John F. Kelly.
Dear Tucker: You asked me if I had said to Appleton that you were waging war merely against the existing State, and I replied “no.” I am surprised to find in the taxi of his letter no statement of that color. He seems not alone to fail in so reporting me, but to bring no such charge against you himself. It is his own opinion of the meaning of Anarchism that limits it to political barriers, not yours. He admits that you say it “means more and includes a protest against every invasion of individual right.” But, for himself, he is convinced that “it will not do to stretch the seope of Anarchism beyond political goverment.” When he writes, “Now, if Anarchism is merely a protest against the existing State,” he is reaffirming his own opinion as to what the word, etymologically regarded, and by what he thinks was Proudhon’s restricted use of it, ought to mean. He is not saying what you mean, but what you should mean, to be, in his opinion, a true Anarchist. He then attempts a quotation from me to support the same view of the case. I volunteer this explanation. But I might have contented myself by saying that I have never had anything to say about Anarchism being merely a protest against the existing State, or otherwise. Appleton has got his own ideas and mine mixed. I simply remarked to him on one occasion that I did not see why Most, Parsons and Co. had not as much right to define the word Anarchism as you have. Instead of insisting upon any particular definition myself, it was immaterial to me what definition was etymologically or Proudhonically correct. The meanings of words change and often come to convey quite other than their original thought. They come to mean what people make them mean. For myself I do not care to make this disputed term stand for one thing or another. I do not for my own purpose have occasion in any way to appropriate it, and should not be unwilling to see it pass out of your vocabulary. In all of which I am a heretic, yet. Very truly yours,[If Mr. Appleton’s last article were to be considered alone, the paragraph in it containing a reference to Mr. Morse could be interpreted as Mr. Morse interprets it. But considered in its relation to Mr. Appleton’s preceding article, which Mr. Morse perhaps has forgotten, my own interpretation is much the more rational. In his first article Mr. Appleton’s complaint was, not that I used a narrow name to cover a broad idea, but that I was fighting for a narrow idea. I answered him that I was fighting for Anarchism, and that Anarchism, as defined in Liberty, was equal in breadth to what Mr. Appleton prefers to call Individualism. In view of this, Mr. Appleton’s paragraph in his last article is properly summed up as follows: “You say Anarchism is broad in its meaning. But this is a ‘convenient assumption’ [convenient for what, except to avoid the charge that I am fighting for a narrow idea?], not warranted by etymology or by Proudhon. Etymology and Proudhon both make it narrow. Now, if it is narrow and does not necessarily include a protest against authority per se, you, as friend Morse says, have no more right to say that Most, Parsons & Co. are not Anarchists than they have to say that you are not one.” Now, to me this amounts to a charge that I am really fighting for a narrow idea, but that, when called to account for it, I “conveniently assume” that my flag covers a broad idea; and that, inasmuch as Most, Parsons & Co. and I are really fighting for the same narrow idea, I have no right to question their Anarchism. If this interpretation is correct, Mr. Appleton does charge me with “waging war merely against the existing State,” and cites Mr. Morse as of the same opinion. Hence the form of my question to Mr. Morse, which, however, he has not stated quite correctly or fully. I first asked him if he had ever said that I was waging war merely against the existing State, he replied that he had not, and inquired why I asked. I answered that I asked because Appleton had written an article in which he quoted him as saying that, if Anarchism meant war against the existing State, I had no more right, etc. Thus Mr. Morse was given the statement made by Mr. Appleton, and, if he had remembered the conversation correctly, he would have had no occasion for surprise on reading Mr. Appleton’s article. When I had explained why I asked, Mr. Morse still said, as he says now, that he had never said such a thing, and that Mr. Appleton had mixed things up. As to the right of Most, Parsons & Co. to use the word Anarchism in accordance with any definition they may choose to give it, I willingly concede it. But it is equally my right to dispute the accuracy of their definition, and say that they are not Anarchists. To illustrate: I have often heard Mr. Morse use the term “transcendentalism” and defend the doctrine for which that word stands. Now, any positivist has a right to put forth positivistic ideas under the label of transcendentalism, but, if any one were to do so, that Mr. Morse would complain, and assert that such person was not a transcendentalist. Mr. Morse does not like the term Anarchism, I know, but his opposition to it is of a general nature, arising out of his opposition to labelling doctrines at all,— an idea which logically involves the entire disuse of language. As I do not agree with him in this, I cannot accomodate him by dropping the word Anarchism from my vocabulary for such a reason. But, on the other hand, he is not at all a heretic, for, while it is a part of the Anarchistic creed that persons not of Anarchistic ideas should not call themselves Anarchists, it is no part of it that persons holding Anarchistic ideas must call themselves Anarchists under penalty of being disfellowshipped. — Editor Liberty.]Morse.