Laurance Labadie

Sniping

193-?

The social problem simmers down to the question: Who is to do what, when, where, and how? There are only two logical solutions--the delegating of function by authority, or the weeding out of incompetency and corruption by the natural effect of free choice reacting on competitive endeavor.

Common ownership with difference of opinion leads to dissatisfaction, coercion, or a fight—the inevitable outcome of all schemes embodying the organic conception of society—they all go to pieces against that perpetual factor—individuality. Utopians are ever checkmated in the face of difference of opinion which often impels them to become brutes.

When will men understand that social harmony comes through dissassociation, the right of secession—Liberty?

The possibility of changing the motives which move men to action is questionable; but it is certain that the relative intensities of these motives may be changed.

Any proposed economic which ignores or challenges the fact that, as a general rule, individuals in their productive capacity endeavor to get as much as they can with as little effort as possible can only be the utopian wish of incompetents.

Economics becomes a science only upon the emergence of competitive effort. Otherwise it is just the whim, arbitrary decision, and dictation of a ruling clique.

The injection of legal interferences into an economic order which promise a living without working for it is similar to the proverbial attempts to lift one’s self by one’s bootstraps. On such promises do demogogues and quacks rise to office.

In the land of Liberty, when men differ they will separate and compete, thereby maintaining freedom and independence in a co-operative order. Ah, competition! The impelling force of example! The enemy of the ignorance, sloth, inertia, and stubbornness of man! The natural factor of social control! Thine enemy, government, hamstrings you with monopoly and privilege through that anti-social, brutalizing and corrupting machine, that foe of progress—the State.

A competent organization of society necessitates competition, hence the communist, a hater of competition, proves by his emotional antipathy his admission of incompetency.

Notwithstanding the humanitarian claims and utopian aspirations of its exponents, Communism is compulsory cooperation, a fact which no amount of good intention can disguise, warning against this threatening social error which, together with the effects of capitalist monopolies is providing a fertile field for reaction and fascist demogogy.

The criticism which free speech, free press, and. free assembly implies, and the free association which liberty demands, would destroy communism in six months. For as soon as secession is allowed, and liberty and independence made factors of social control, communism as a system ceases, a fact and objective difficult to comprehend by those who consider the stomach the ruler of the brain.

All profit is made in exchange, and the predicament of both parties and the nature of the exchange are the only things that can influence the relative advantages involved.

The social problem is predominately one of money and credit and the battle now on is between two brands of despots, private monopolists and government monopolists whose quack schemes rain down on a bewildered public. The governmental mind is incapable of imagining the feasibility of resorting to liberty and competition to solve the problem, but rather believe that the social question is a matter of enacting laws and erecting monopolies.

A change in name is not a change in nature. In all places and at all times, government has meant the enslavement and exploitation of the many by the few, the ratio being determined by the power of the State. It makes but slight difference, all government is organized gangsterism.

Political supremacy involves economic supremacy, and economic supremacy involves either exploitation or paternalism or both.

The greatest single step in the direction of social liberation is the demolition of the theory of the natural depravity and subserviency of man—the fundamental doctrine of all religious faiths.

The battle cry of the social revolution will be, “Away with Communism! Down with the State!”

Laurance Labadie.


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