第35章 GOVERNMENT AND LAW(1)

GOVERNMENT and Law, in their very essence, consist of restrictions on freedom, and freedom is the greatest of political goods.[46] A hasty reasoner might conclude without further ado that Law and government are evils which must be abolished if freedom is our goal.But this consequence, true or false, cannot be proved so simply.In this chapter we shall examine the arguments of Anarchists against law and the State.We shall proceed on the assumption that freedom is the supreme aim of a good social system; but on this very basis we shall find the Anarchist contentions very questionable.

[46] I do not say freedom is the greatest of ALL goods: the best things come from within--they are such things as creative art, and love, and thought.Such things can be helped or hindered by political conditions, but not actually produced by them; and freedom is, both in itself and in its relation to these other goods the best thing that political and economic conditions can secure.

Respect for the liberty of others is not a natural impulse with most men: envy and love of power lead ordinary human nature to find pleasurein interferences with the lives of others.If all men's actions were wholly unchecked by external authority, we should not obtain a world in which all men would be free.The strong would oppress the weak, or the majority would oppress the minority, or the lovers of violence would oppress the more peaceable people.I fear it cannot be said that these bad impulses are WHOLLY due to a bad social system, though it must be conceded that the present competitive organization of society does a great deal to foster the worst elements in human nature.The love of power is an impulse which, though innate in very ambitious men, is chiefly promoted as a rule by the actual experience of power.In a world where none could acquire much power, the desire to tyrannize would be much less strong than it is at present.Nevertheless, I cannot think that it would be wholly absent, and those in whom it would exist would often be men of unusual energy and executive capacity.Such men, if they are not restrained by the organized will of the community, may either succeed in establishing a despotism, or, at any rate, make such a vigorous attempt as can only be defeated through a period of prolonged disturbance.And apart from the love or political power, there is the love of power over individuals.If threats and terrorism were not prevented by law, it can hardly be doubted that cruelty would be rife in the relations of men and women, and of parents and children.It is true that the habits of a community can make such cruelty rare, but these habits, I fear, are only to be produced through the prolonged reign of law.Experience of backwoods communities, mining camps and other such places seems to show that under new conditions men easily revert to a more barbarous attitude and practice.It would seem, therefore, that, while human nature remains as it is, there will be more liberty for all in a community where some acts of tyranny by individuals are forbidden, than in a community where the law leaves each individual free to follow his every impulse.But, although the necessity of some form of government and law must for the present be conceded, it is important to remember that all law and government is in itself in some degree an evil, only justifiable when it prevents other and greater evils.Every use of the power of the State needs, therefore, to be very closely scrutinized, and every possibility of diminishing its power is to be welcomed provided it does not lead to areign of private tyranny.

The power of the State is partly legal, partly economic: acts of a kind which the State dislikes can be punished by the criminal law, and individuals who incur the displeasure of the State may find it hard to earn a livelihood.

The views of Marx on the State are not very clear.On the one hand he seems willing,, like the modern State Socialists, to allow great power to the State, but on the other hand he suggests that when the Socialist revolution has been consummated, the State, as we know it, will disappear.Among the measures which are advocated in the Communist Manifesto as immediately desirable, there are several which would very greatly increase the power of the existing State.For example, ``Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly;'' and again, ``Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.'' But the Manifesto goes on to say:

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another.If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which; the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.[47]

[47] Communist Manifesto, p.22.