Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we
have to make our choice. The law can only produce one of these results.
_Partial_ plunder.--This is the system which prevailed so long as the
elective privilege was _partial_--a system which is resorted to to avoid
the invasion of socialism.
_Universal_ plunder.--We have been threatened by this system when the
elective privilege has become universal; the masses having conceived the
idea of making law, on the principle of legislators who had preceded
them.
_Absence_ of plunder.--This is the principle of justice, peace, order,
stability, conciliation, and of good sense, which I shall proclaim with
all the force of my lungs (which is very inadequate, alas!) till the day
of my death.
And, in all sincerity, can anything more be required at the hands of the
law? Can the law, whose necessary sanction is force, be reasonably
employed upon anything beyond securing to every one his right? I defy
any one to remove it from this circle without perverting it, and
consequently turning force against right. And as this is the most fatal,
the most illogical social perversion which can possibly be imagined, it
must be admitted that the true solution, so much sought after, of the
social problem, is contained in these simple words--LAW IS ORGANISED
JUSTICE.
Now it is important to remark, that to organise justice by law, that is
to say by force, excludes the idea of organising by law, or by force any
manifestation whatever of human activity--labour, charity, agriculture,
commerce, industry, instruction, the fine arts, or religion; for any one
of these organisations would inevitably destroy the essential
organisation. How, in fact, can we imagine force encroaching upon the
liberty of citizens without infringing upon justice, and so acting
against its proper aim?
Here I am encountering the most popular prejudice of our time. It is
not considered enough that law should be just, it must be philanthropic.
It is not sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free
and inoffensive exercise of his faculties, applied to his physical,
intellectual, and moral development; it is required to extend
well-being, instruction, and morality, directly over the nation. This is
the fascinating side of socialism.
But, I repeat it, these two missions of the law contradict each other.
We have to choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be
free and not free. M. de Lamartine wrote to me one day thus:--"Your
doctrine is only the half of my programme; you have stopped at liberty,
I go on to fraternity." I answered him:--"The second part of your
programme will destroy the first." And in fact it is impossible for me
to separate the word _fraternity_ from the word _voluntary_. I cannot
possibly conceive fraternity _legally_ enforced, without liberty being
_legally_ destroyed, and justice _legally_ trampled under foot. Legal
plunder has two roots: one of them, as we have already seen, is in human
egotism; the other is in false philanthropy.
Before I proceed, I think I ought to explain myself upon the word
plunder.[8]
I do not take it, as it often is taken, in a vague, undefined, relative,
or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptation, and as
expressing the opposite idea to property. When a portion of wealth
passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent,
and without compensation, to him who has not created it, whether by
force or by artifice, I say that property is violated, that plunder is
perpetrated. I say that this is exactly what the law ought to repress
always and everywhere. If the law itself performs the action it ought to
repress, I say that plunder is still perpetrated, and even, in a social
point of view, under aggravated circumstances. In this case, however, he
who profits from the plunder is not responsible for it; it is the law,
the lawgiver, society itself, and this is where the political danger
lies.
It is to be regretted that there is something offensive in the word. I
have sought in vain for another, for I would not wish at any time, and
especially just now, to add an irritating word to our dissensions;
therefore, whether I am believed or not, I declare that I do not mean to
accuse the intentions nor the morality of anybody. I am attacking an
idea which I believe to be false--a system which appears to me to be
unjust; and this is so independent of intentions, that each of us
profits by it without wishing it, and suffers from it without being
aware of the cause. Any person must write under the influence of party
spirit or of fear, who would call in question the sincerity of
protectionism, of socialism, and even of communism, which are one and
the same plant, in three different periods of its growth. All that can
be said is, that plunder is more visible by its partiality in
protectionism,[9] and by its universality in communism; whence it
follows that, of the three systems, socialism is still the most vague,
the most undefined, and consequently the most sincere.
Be it as it may, to conclude that legal plunder has one of its roots in
false philanthropy, is evidently to put intentions out of the question.
With this understanding, let us examine the value, the origin, and the
tendency of this popular aspiration, which pretends to realise the
general good by general plunder.
The Socialists say, since the law organises justice, why should it not
organise labour, instruction, and religion?
Why? Because it could not organise labour, instruction, and religion,
without disorganising justice.
For, remember, that law is force, and that consequently the domain of
the law cannot lawfully extend beyond the domain of force.
When law and force keep a man within the bounds of justice, they impose
nothing upon him but a mere negation. They only oblige him to abstain
from doing harm. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor
his property. They only guard the personality, the liberty, the
property of others. They hold themselves on the defensive; they defend
the equal right of all. They fulfil a mission whose harmlessness is
evident, whose utility is palpable, and whose legitimacy is not to be
disputed. This is so true that, as a friend of mine once remarked to me,
to say that _the aim of the law is to cause justice to reign_, is to use
an expression which is not rigorously exact. It ought to be said, _the
aim of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning_. In fact, it is
not justice which has an existence of its own, it is injustice. The one
results from the absence of the other.
But when the law, through the medium of its necessary agent--force,
imposes a form of labour, a method or a subject of instruction, a creed,
or a worship, it is no longer negative; it acts positively upon men. It
substitutes the will of the legislator for their own will, the
initiative of the legislator for their own initiative. They have no need
to consult, to compare, or to foresee; the law does all that for them.
The intellect is for them a useless lumber; they cease to be men; they
lose their personality, their liberty, their property.
Endeavour to imagine a form of labour imposed by force, which is not a
violation of liberty; a transmission of wealth imposed by force, which
is not a violation of property. If you cannot succeed in reconciling
this, you are bound to conclude that the law cannot organise labour and
industry without organising injustice.
When, from the seclusion of his cabinet, a politician takes a view of
society, he is struck with the spectacle of inequality which presents
itself. He mourns over the sufferings which are the lot of so many of
our brethren, sufferings whose aspect is rendered yet more sorrowful by
the contrast of luxury and wealth.
He ought, perhaps, to ask himself, whether such a social state has not
been caused by the plunder of ancient times, exercised in the way of
conquests; and by plunder of later times, effected through the medium of
the laws? He ought to ask himself whether, granting the aspiration of
all men after well-being and perfection, the reign of justice would not
suffice to realise the greatest activity of progress, and the greatest
amount of equality compatible with that individual responsibility which
God has awarded as a just retribution of virtue and vice?
He never gives this a thought. His mind turns towards combinations,
arrangements, legal or factitious organisations. He seeks the remedy in
perpetuating and exaggerating what has produced the evil.
For, justice apart, which we have seen is only a negation, is there any
one of these legal arrangements which does not contain the principle of
plunder?
You say, "There are men who have no money," and you apply to the law.
But the law is not a self-supplied fountain, whence every stream may
obtain supplies independently of society. Nothing can enter the public
treasury, in favour of one citizen or one class, but what other citizens
and other classes have been _forced_ to send to it. If every one draws
from it only the equivalent of what he has contributed to it, your law,
it is true, is no plunderer, but it does nothing for men who want
money--it does not promote equality. It can only be an instrument of
equalisation as far as it takes from one party to give to another, and
then it is an instrument of plunder. Examine, in this light, the
protection of tariffs, prizes for encouragement, right to profit, right
to labour, right to assistance, right to instruction, progressive
taxation, gratuitousness of credit, social workshops, and you will
always find at the bottom legal plunder, organised injustice.
You say, "There are men who want knowledge," and you apply to the law.
But the law is not a torch which sheds light abroad which is peculiar to
itself. It extends over a society where there are men who have
knowledge, and others who have not; citizens who want to learn, and
others who are disposed to teach. It can only do one of two things:
either allow a free operation to this kind of transaction, _i.e._, let
this kind of want satisfy itself freely; or else force the will of the
people in the matter, and take from some of them sufficient to pay
professors commissioned to instruct others gratuitously. But, in this
second case, there cannot fail to be a violation of liberty and
property,--legal plunder.
You say, "Here are men who are wanting in morality or religion," and
you apply to the law; but law is force, and need I say how far it is a
violent and absurd enterprise to introduce force in these matters?
As the result of its systems and of its efforts, it would seem that
socialism, notwithstanding all its self-complacency, can scarcely help
perceiving the monster of legal plunder. But what does it do? It
disguises it cleverly from others, and even from itself, under the
seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organisation, association.
And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we
only ask it for justice, it supposes that we reject fraternity,
solidarity, organisation, and association; and they brand us with the
name of _individualists_.
We can assure them that what we repudiate is, not natural organisation,
but forced organisation.
It is not free association, but the forms of association which they
would impose upon us.
It is not spontaneous fraternity, but legal fraternity.
It is not providential solidarity, but artificial solidarity, which is
only an unjust displacement of responsibility.
Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds
Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being
done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at
all. We disapprove of education by the State--then we are against
education altogether. We object to a State religion--then we would
have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about
by the State--then we are against equality, &c., &c. They might as well
accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the
cultivation of corn by the State.
How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does
not contain--prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth, science,
religion--should ever have gained ground in the political world? The
modern politicians, particularly those of the Socialist school, found
their different theories upon one common hypothesis; and surely a more
strange, a more presumptuous notion, could never have entered a human
brain.
They divide mankind into two parts. Men in general, except one, form the
first; the politician himself forms the second, which is by far the most
important.
In fact, they begin by supposing that men are devoid of any principle of
action, and of any means of discernment in themselves; that they have no
moving spring in them; that they are inert matter, passive particles,
atoms without impulse; at best a vegetation indifferent to its own mode
of existence, susceptible of receiving, from an exterior will and hand,
an infinite number of forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic, and
perfected.
Moreover, every one of these politicians does not scruple to imagine
that he himself is, under the names of organiser, discoverer,
legislator, institutor or founder, this will and hand, this universal
spring, this creative power, whose sublime mission it is to gather
together these scattered materials, that is, men, into society.
Starting from these data, as a gardener, according to his caprice,
shapes his trees into pyramids, parasols, cubes, cones, vases,
espaliers, distaffs, or fans; so the Socialist, following his chimera,
shapes poor humanity into groups, series, circles, sub-circles,
honeycombs, or social workshops, with all kinds of variations. And as
the gardener, to bring his trees into shape, wants hatchets,
pruning-hooks, saws, and shears, so the politician, to bring society
into shape, wants the forces which he can only find in the laws; the law
of customs, the law of taxation, the law of assistance, and the law of
instruction.
It is so true, that the Socialists look upon mankind as a subject for
social combinations, that if, by chance, they are not quite certain of
the success of these combinations, they will request a portion of
mankind, as a subject to experiment upon. It is well known how popular
the idea of _trying all systems_ is, and one of their chiefs has been
known seriously to demand of the Constituent Assembly a parish, with all
its inhabitants, upon which to make his experiments.
It is thus that an inventor will make a small machine before he makes
one of the regular size. Thus the chemist sacrifices some substances,
the agriculturist some seed and a corner of his field, to make trial of
an idea.
But, then, think of the immeasurable distance between the gardener and
his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and
his substances, between the agriculturist and his seed! The Socialist
thinks, in all sincerity, that there is the same distance between
himself and mankind.
It is not to be wondered at that the politicians of the nineteenth
century look upon society as an artificial production of the
legislator's genius. This idea, the result of a classical education, has
taken possession of all the thinkers and great writers of our country.
To all these persons, the relations between mankind and the legislator
appear to be the same as those which exist between the clay and the
potter.
Moreover, if they have consented to recognise in the heart of man a
principle of action, and in his intellect a principle of discernment,
they have looked upon this gift of God as a fatal one, and thought that
mankind, under these two impulses, tended fatally towards ruin. They
have taken it for granted, that if abandoned to their own inclinations,
men would only occupy themselves with religion to arrive at atheism,
with instruction to come to ignorance, and with labour and exchange to
be extinguished in misery.
Happily, according to these writers, there are some men, termed
governors and legislators, upon whom Heaven has bestowed opposite
tendencies, not for their own sake only, but for the sake of the rest of
the world.
Whilst mankind tends to evil, they incline to good; whilst mankind is
advancing towards darkness, they are aspiring to enlightenment; whilst
mankind is drawn towards vice, they are attracted by virtue. And, this
granted, they demand the assistance of force, by means of which they are
to substitute their own tendencies for those of the human race.
It is only needful to open, almost at random, a book on philosophy,
polities, or history, to see how strongly this idea--the child of
classical studies and the mother of socialism--is rooted in our country;
that mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life, organisation,
morality, and wealth from power; or, rather, and still worse--that
mankind itself tends towards degradation, and is only arrested in its
tendency by the mysterious hand of the legislator. Classical
conventionalism shows us everywhere, behind passive society, a hidden
power, under the names of Law, or Legislator (or, by a mode of
expression which refers to some person or persons of undisputed weight
and authority, but not named), which moves, animates, enriches, and
regenerates mankind.