Benjamin R. Tucker was born in 1854 at South Dartmouth, near New Bedford, Massachusetts. From 1870 to 1872 he studied technology in Boston; there he made the acquaintance of Josiah Warren[655]in 1872. In 1874 he traveled in England, France, and Italy.
In 1877 Tucker took the temporary editorship of the "Word," published at Princeton, Massachusetts. In 1878 he published the quarterly "The Radical Review" in New Bedford; but only four numbers appeared. In 1881, in Boston, he founded the semi-monthly paper "Liberty," of which there also appeared for a short time a German edition under the title "Libertas"; in Boston, also, he was for ten years one of the editorial staff of the "Globe." Since 1892 he has lived in New York, and "Liberty" has appeared there as a weekly.[656]
2. Tucker's teaching about law, the State, and property is contained mainly in his articles in "Liberty." He has published a collection[657]of these articles under the title "Instead of a Book. By a Man Too Busy to Write One. A fragmentary exposition of philosophical Anarchism" (1893).
3. Tucker calls his teaching "Anarchism." "Circumstances have combined to make me somewhat conspicuous as an exponent of the theory of Modern Anarchism."[658]"Anarchy does not mean simply opposed to thearchos, or political leader. It means opposed toarch[=e]. Now,arch[=e], in the first instance, meansbeginning,origin. From this it comes to meana first principle,an element; thenfirst place,supreme power,sovereignty,dominion,command,authority; and finallya sovereignty,an empire,a realm,a magistracy,a governmental office. Etymologically, then, the word anarchy may have several meanings. But the word Anarchy as a philosophical term and the word Anarchist as the name of a philosophical sect were first appropriated in the sense of opposition to dominion, to authority, and are so held by right of occupancy, which fact makes any other philosophical use of them improper and confusing."[659]
Tucker considers that the law which has supreme validity for every one of us is self-interest; and from this he derives the law of equal liberty.
1. For every man self-interest is the supreme law. "The Anarchists are not only utilitarians, but egoists in the farthest and fullest sense."[660]
What does self-interest mean? My interest is everything that serves my purposes.[661]It takes in not only the lowest but also "the higher forms of selfishness."[662]Thus, in particular, the interest of society isat the same time that of every individual: "its life is inseparable from the lives of individuals; it is impossible to destroy one without destroying the other."[663]
Self-interest is the supreme law for man. "The Anarchists totally discard the idea of moral obligation, of inherent rights and duties."[664]"So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure. Any man, be his name Bill Sykes or Alexander Romanoff, and any set of men, whether the Chinese highbinders or the Congress of the United States, have the right, if they have the power, to kill or coerce other men and to make the entire world subservient to their ends."[665]"The Anarchism of to-day affirms the right of society to coerce the individual and of the individual to coerce society so far as either has the requisite power."[666]
2. From this supreme law Tucker derives "the law of equal liberty."[667]The law of equal liberty is based on every individual's self-interest. For "liberty is the chief essential to man's happiness, and therefore the most important thing in the world, and I want as much of it as I can get."[668]On the other hand, "human equality is a necessity of stable society,"[669]and the life of society "is inseparable from the lives ofindividuals."[670]Consequently every individual's self-interest demands the equal liberty of all.
"Equal liberty means the largest amount of liberty compatible with equality and mutuality of respect, on the part of individuals living in society, for their respective spheres of action."[671]"'Mind your own business' is the only moral law of the Anarchistic scheme."[672]"It is our duty to respect others' rights, assuming the word 'right' to be used in the sense of the limit which the principle of equal liberty logically places upon might."[673]—On the law of equal liberty is founded "the distinction between invasion and resistance, between government and defence. This distinction is vital: without it there can be no valid philosophy of politics."[674]
"By 'invasion' I mean the invasion of the individual sphere, which is bounded by the line inside of which liberty of action does not conflict with others' liberty of action."[675]This boundary-line is in part unmistakable; for instance, a threat is not an invasion if the threatened act is not an invasion, "a man has a right to threaten what he has a right to execute."[676]But the boundary-line may also be dubious; for instance, "we cannot clearly identify the maltreatment of child by parent as either invasive or non-invasive of the liberty of third parties."[677]"Additionalexperience is continually sharpening our sense of what constitutes invasion. Though we still draw the line by rule of thumb, we are drawing it more clearly every day."[678]"The nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy."[679]
"On the other hand, he who resists another's attempt to control is not an aggressor, an invader, a governor, but simply a defender, a protector."[680]"The individual has the right to repel invasion of his sphere of action."[681]"Anarchism justifies the application of force to invasive men,"[682]"violence is advisable when it will accomplish the desired end and inadvisable when it will not."[683]And "defensive associations acting on the Anarchistic principle would not only demand redress for, but would prohibit, all clearly invasive acts. They would not, however, prohibit non-invasive acts, even though these acts create additional opportunity for invasive persons to act invasively: for instance, the selling of liquor."[684]"And the nature of such resistance is not changed whether it be offered by one man to another man, as when one repels a criminal's onslaught, or by one man to all other men, as when one declines to obey an oppressive law, or byall other men to one man, as when a subject people rises against a despot, or as when the members of a community voluntarily unite to restrain a criminal."[685]
According to Tucker, from the standpoint of every one's self-interest and the equal liberty of all there is no objection to law.Legal norms are to obtain: that is, norms that are based on a general will[686]and to which obedience is enforced, if necessary, by every means,[687]even by prison, torture, and capital punishment.[688]But the law is to be "so flexible that it will shape itself to every emergency and need no alteration. And it will then be regarded asjustin proportion to its flexibility, instead of as now in proportion to its rigidity."[689]The means to this end is that "juries will judge not only the facts, but the law";[690]machineryfor altering the law is then unnecessary.[691]—In particular, there are to be recognized the following legal norms, whose correctness Tucker tries to deduce from the law of equal liberty:
First, a legal norm by which the person is secured against hurt. "We are the sternest enemies of invasion of the person, and, although chiefly busy in destroying the causes thereof, have no scruples against such heroic treatment of its immediate manifestations as circumstances and wisdom may dictate."[692]Capital punishment is quite compatible with the protection of the person against hurt, for its essence is not that of an act of hurting, but of an act of defence.[693]
Next, there is to be recognized a legal norm by virtue of which "ownership on a basis of labor"[694]exists. "This form of property secures each in the possession of his own products, or of such products of others as he may have obtained unconditionally without the use of fraud or force."[695]"It will be seen from this definition that Anarchistic property concerns only products. But anything is a product upon which human labor has been expended. It should be stated, however, that in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based on actual occupancy and use."[696]Againstinjury to property, as well as against injury to the person, Anarchism has no scruples against "such heroic treatment as circumstances and wisdom may dictate."[697]
Furthermore, there is to be recognized the legal norm that contracts must be lived up to. Obligation comes into existence when obligations are "consciously and voluntarily assumed";[698]and the other party thus acquires "a right."[699]To be sure, the obligatory force of contract is not without bounds. "Contract is a very serviceable and most important tool, but its usefulness has its limits; no man can employ it for the abdication of his manhood";[700]therefore "the constituting of an association in which each member waives the right of secession would be a mereform."[701]Furthermore, no one can employ it for the invasion of third parties; therefore a promise "whose fulfilment would invade third parties"[702]would be invalid.—"I deem the keeping of promises such an important matter that only in the extremest cases would I approve their violation. It is of such vital consequence that associates should be able to rely upon each other that it is better never to do anything to weaken this confidence except when it can be maintained only at the expense of some consideration of even greater importance."[703]"The man who has received a promise is defrauded by its non-fulfilment, invaded, deprived of a portion of his liberty against his will."[704]"I have no doubt of the right of any man to whom, for a consideration, a promise has been made, to insist, evenby force, upon the fulfilment of that promise, provided the promise be not one whose fulfilment would invade third parties. And, if the promisee has a right to use force himself for such a purpose, he has a right to secure such co-operative force from others as they are willing to extend. These others, in turn, have a right to decide what sort of promises, if any, they will help him to enforce. When it comes to the determination of this point, the question is one of policy solely; and very likely it will be found that the best way to secure the fulfilment of promises is to have it understood in advance that the fulfilment is not to be enforced."[705]
I.With regard to every man's self-interest, especially on the basis of the law of equal liberty, Tucker rejects the State; and that universally, not merely for special circumstances determined by place and time.For the State is "the embodiment of the principle of invasion."[706]
1. "Two elements are common to all the institutions to which the name 'State' has been applied: first, aggression."[707]"Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms."[708]"This is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will."[709]And "second, the assumption of authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of itssubjects and extension of its boundaries."[710]Therefore "this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area."[711]
"Rule is evil, and it is none the better for being majority rule."[712]"The theocratic despotism of kings or the democratic despotism of majorities"[713]are alike condemnable. "What is the ballot? It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the billy, and the bullet. It is a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable. The voice of the majority saves bloodshed, but it is no less the arbitrament of force than is the decree of the most absolute of despots backed by the most powerful of armies."[714]
2. "In the first place, all the acts of governments are indirectly invasive, because dependent upon the primary invasion called taxation."[715]"The very first act of the State, the compulsory assessment and collection of taxes, is itself an aggression, a violation of equal liberty, and, as such, vitiates every subsequent act, even those acts which would be purely defensive if paid for out of a treasury filled by voluntary contributions. How is it possible to sanction, under the law of equal liberty, the confiscation of a man's earnings to pay for protection which he has not sought and does not desire?"[716]
"And, if this is an outrage, what name shall we give to such confiscation when the victim is given, instead of bread, a stone, instead of protection, oppression? To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury. But that is exactly what the State is doing."[717]For "in the second place, by far the greater number of their acts are directly invasive, because directed, not to the restraint of invaders, but to the denial of freedom to the people in their industrial, commercial, social, domestic, and individual lives."[718]
"How thoughtless, then, to assert that the existing political order is of a purely defensive character!"[719]"Defence is a service, like any other service. It is labor both useful and desired, and therefore an economic commodity subject to the law of supply and demand. In a free market this commodity would be furnished at the cost of production. The production and sale of this commodity are now monopolized by the State. The State, like almost all monopolists, charges exorbitant prices. Like almost all monopolists, it supplies a worthless, or nearly worthless, article. Just as the monopolist of a food product often furnishes poison instead of nutriment, so the State takes advantage of its monopoly of defence to furnish invasion instead of protection. Just as the patrons of the one pay to be poisoned, so the patrons of the other pay to be enslaved. And the State exceeds all its fellow-monopolists in the extent of its villany because it enjoys the unique privilege of compelling all people to buy its product whether they want it or not."[720]
3. It cannot be alleged in favor of the State that it is necessary as a means for combating crime.[721]"The State is itself the most gigantic criminal extant. It manufactures criminals much faster than it punishes them."[722]"Our prisons are filled with criminals which our virtuous State has made what they are by its iniquitous laws, its grinding monopolies, and the horrible social conditions that result from them. We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them."[723]
No more can the State be defended on the ground that it is wanted for the relief of suffering. "The State is rendering assistance to the suffering and starving victims of the Mississippi inundation. Well, such work is better than forging new chains to keep the people in subjection, we allow; but is not worth the price that is paid for it. The people cannot afford to be enslaved for the sake of being insured. If there were no other alternative, they would do better, on the whole, to take Nature's risks and pay her penalties as best they might. But Liberty supplies another alternative, and furnishes better insurance at cheaper rates. Mutual insurance, by the organization of risk, will do the utmost that can be done to mitigate and equalize the suffering arising from the accidental destruction of wealth."[724]
II.Every man's self-interest, and equal liberty particularly, demands, in place of the State, a social human life on the basis of the legal norm that contracts must be lived up to.The "voluntaryassociation of contracting individuals"[725]is to take the place of the State.
1. "The Anarchists have no intention or desire to abolish society. They know that its life is inseparable from the lives of individuals; that it is impossible to destroy one without destroying the other."[726]"Society has come to be man's dearest possession. Pure air is good, but no one wants to breathe it long alone. Independence is good, but isolation is too heavy a price to pay for it."[727]
But men are not to be held together in society by a concrete supreme authority, but solely by the legally binding force of contract.[728]The form of society is to be "voluntary association,"[729]whose "constitution"[730]is nothing but a contract.
2. But what is to be the nature of the voluntary association in detail?
In the first place, it cannot bind its members for life. "The constituting of an association in which each member waives the right of secession would be a mereform, which every decent man who was a party to it would hasten to violate and tread under foot as soon as he appreciated the enormity of his folly. To indefinitely waive one's right of secession is to make one's self a slave. Now, no man can make himself so much a slave as to forfeit the right to issue his own emancipation proclamation."[731]
In the next place, the voluntary association, assuch, can have no dominion over a territory. "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."[732]
For the members of the voluntary association numerous obligations arise from their membership. The association may require, as a condition of membership, the agreement to perform certain services,—for instance, "jury service."[733]And "inasmuch as Anarchistic associations recognize the right of secession, they may utilize the ballot, if they see fit to do so. If the question decided by ballot is so vital that the minority thinks it more important to carry out its own views than to preserve common action, the minority can withdraw. In no case can a minority, however small, be governed without its consent."[734]The voluntary association is entitled to compel its members to live up to their obligations. "If a man makes an agreement with men, the latter may combine to hold him to his agreement";[735]therefore a voluntary association is "entitled to enforce whatever regulations the contracting parties may agree upon."[736]To be sure, one must bear in mind that "very likely the best way to secure the fulfilment of promises is to have it understood in advance that the fulfilment is not to be enforced."[737]
Of especial importance among the obligations of the members of a voluntary association is the duty of paying taxes; but the tax is voluntary by virtue of the fact that it is based on contract.[738]"Voluntarytaxation, far from impairing the association's credit, would strengthen it";[739]for, in the first place, because of the simplicity of its functions, the association seldom or never has to borrow; in the second place, it cannot, like the present State upon its basis of compulsory taxation, repudiate its debts and still continue business; and, in the third place, it will necessarily be more intent on maintaining its credit by paying its debts than is the State which enforces taxation.[740]And furthermore, the voluntariness of the tax has this advantage, that "the defensive institution will be steadily deterred from becoming an invasive institution through fear that the voluntary contributions will fall off; it will have this constant motive to keep itself trimmed down to the popular demand."[741]
"Ireland's true order: the wonderful Land League, the nearest approach, on a large scale, to perfect Anarchistic organization that the world has yet seen. An immense number of local groups, scattered over large sections of two continents separated by three thousand miles of ocean; each group autonomous, each free; each composed of varying numbers of individuals of all ages, sexes, races, equally autonomous and free; each inspired by a common, central purpose; each supported entirely by voluntary contributions; each obeying its own judgment; each guided in the formation of its judgment and the choice of its conduct by the advice of a central council of picked men, having no power to enforce its orders except that inherent in the convincing logic of the reasons on which the orders are based; allco-ordinated and federated, with a minimum of machinery and without sacrifice of spontaneity, into a vast working unit, whose unparalleled power makes tyrants tremble and armies of no avail."[742]
3. Among the prominent associations of the new society are mutual insurance societies and mutual banks,[743]and, especially, defensive associations.
"The abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association"[744]which will give protection against those "who violate the social law by invading their neighbors."[745]To be sure, this need will be only transitory. "We look forward to the ultimate disappearance of the necessity of force even for the purpose of repressing crime."[746]"The necessity for defence against individual invaders is largely and perhaps, in the end, wholly due to the oppressions of the invasive State. When the State falls, criminals will begin to disappear."[747]
A number of defensive associations may exist side by side. "There are many more than five or six insurance companies in England, and it is by no means uncommon for members of the same family to insure their lives and goods against accident or fire in different companies. Why should there not be a considerable number of defensive associations in England, in which people, even members of the same family, mightinsure their lives and goods against murderers or thieves? Defence is a service, like any other service."[748]"Under the influence of competition the best and cheapest protector, like the best and cheapest tailor, would doubtless get the greater part of the business. It is conceivable even that he might get the whole of it. But, if he should, it would be by his virtue as a protector, not by his power as a tyrant. He would be kept at his best by the possibility of competition and the fear of it; and the source of power would always remain, not with him, but with his patrons, who would exercise it, not by voting him down or by forcibly putting another in his place, but by withdrawing their patronage."[749]But, if invader and invaded belong to different defensive associations, will not a conflict of associations result? "Anticipations of such conflicts would probably result in treaties, and even in the establishment of federal tribunals, as courts of last resort, by the co-operation of the various associations, on the same voluntary principle in accordance with which the associations themselves were organized."[750]
"Voluntary defensive associations acting on the Anarchistic principle would not only demand redress for, but would prohibit, all clearly invasive acts."[751]To fulfil this function they may choose any appropriate means, without thereby exercising agovernment. "Government is the subjection of thenon-invasiveindividual to a will not his own. The subjection of theinvasiveindividual is not government, but resistance to and protection from government."[752]—"Anarchism recognizes the right to arrest, try, convict, and punish for wrong doing."[753]"Anarchism will take enough of the invader's property from him to repair the damage done by his invasion."[754]"If it can find no better instrument of resistance to invasion, Anarchism will use prisons."[755]It admits even capital punishment. "The society which inflicts capital punishment does not commit murder. Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act. There is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can."[756]"It is allowable to punish invaders by torture. But, if the 'good' people are not fiends, they are not likely to defend themselves by torture until the penalties of death and tolerable confinement have shown themselves destitute of efficacy."[757]—"All disputes will be submitted to juries."[758]"Speaking for myself, I think the jury should be selected by drawing twelve names by lot from a wheel containing the names of allthe citizens in the community."[759]"The juries will judge not only the facts, but the law, the justice of the law, its applicability to the given circumstances, and the penalty or damage to be inflicted because of its infraction."[760]
I.According to Tucker, from the standpoint of every one's self-interest and the equal liberty of all there is no objection to property.Tucker rejects only the distribution of property on the basis of monopoly, as it everywhere and always exists in the State. That the State is essentially invasion appears in the laws which "not only prescribe personal habits, but, worse still, create and sustain monopolies"[761]and thereby make usury possible.[762]
1. Usury is the taking of surplus value.[763]"A laborer's product is such portion of the value of that which he delivers to the consumer as his own labor has contributed."[764]The laborer does not get this product, "at least not as laborer; he gains a bare subsistence by his work."[765]But, "somebody gets the surplus wealth. Who is the somebody?"[766]"The usurer."[767]
"There are three forms of usury: interest on money, rent of land and houses, and profit in exchange. Whoever is in receipt of any of these is a usurer. And who is not? Scarcely any one. Thebanker is a usurer; the manufacturer is a usurer; the merchant is a usurer; the landlord is a usurer; and the workingman who puts his savings, if he has any, out at interest, or takes rent for his house or lot, if he owns one, or exchanges his labor for more than an equivalent,—he too is a usurer. The sin of usury is one under which all are concluded, and for which all are responsible. But all do not benefit by it. The vast majority suffer. Only the chief usurers accumulate: in agricultural and thickly settled countries, the landlords; in industrial and commercial countries, the bankers. Those are the Somebodies who swallow up the surplus wealth."[768]
2. "And where do they get their power? From monopoly maintained by the State. Usury rests on this."[769]And "of the various monopolies that now prevail, four are of principal importance."[770]
"First in the importance of its evil influence they [the founders of Anarchism] considered the money monopoly, which consists of the privilege given by the government to certain individuals, or to individuals holding certain kinds of property, of issuing the circulating medium, a privilege which is now enforced in this country by a national tax of ten per cent. upon all other persons who attempt to furnish a circulating medium, and by State laws making it a criminal offence to issue notes as currency. It is claimed that holders of this privilege control the rate of interest, the rate of rent of houses and buildings, and theprices of goods,—the first directly, and the second and third indirectly. For, if the business of banking were made free to all, more and more persons would enter into it until the competition should become sharp enough to reduce the price of lending money to the labor cost, which statistics show to be less than three-fourths of one per cent."[771]"Then down will go house-rent. For no one who can borrow capital at one per cent. with which to build a house of his own will consent to pay rent to a landlord at a higher rate than that."[772]Finally, "down will go profits also. For merchants, instead of buying at high prices on credit, will borrow money of the banks at less than one per cent., buy at low prices for cash, and correspondingly reduce the prices of their goods to their customers."[773]
"Second in importance comes the land monopoly, the evil effects of which are seen principally in exclusively agricultural countries, like Ireland. This monopoly consists in the enforcement by government of land-titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and cultivation."[774]"Ground-rent exists only because the State stands by to collect it and to protect land-titles rooted in force or fraud."[775]"As soon as individuals should no longer be protected in anything but personal occupancy and cultivation of land, ground-rent would disappear, and so usury have one less leg to stand on."[776]
The third and fourth places are occupied by the tariff and patent monopolies.[777]"The tariff monopoly consists in fostering production at high prices and under unfavorable conditions by visiting with the penalty of taxation those who patronize production at low prices and under favorable conditions. The evil to which this monopoly gives rise might more properly be calledmisusury than usury, because it compels labor to pay, not exactly for the use of capital, but rather for the misuse of capital."[778]"The patent monopoly protects inventors and authors against competition for a period long enough to enable them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labor measure of their services,—in other words, it gives certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of nature, and the power to exact tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all."[779]It is on the tariff and patent monopolies, next to the money monopoly, that profit in exchange is based. If they were done away along with the money monopoly, it would disappear.[780]
II.Every one's self-interest, and particularly the equal liberty of all, demands a distribution of property in which every one is guaranteed the product of his labor.[781]
1. "Equal liberty, in the property sphere, is such a balance between the liberty to take and the liberty to keep that the two liberties may coexist withoutconflict or invasion."[782]"Nearly all Anarchists consider labor to be the only basis of the right of ownership in harmony with that law";[783]"the laborers, instead of having only a small fraction of the wealth in the world, should have all the wealth."[784]This form of property "secures each in the possession of his own products, or of such products of others as he may have obtained unconditionally without the use of fraud or force, and in the realization of all titles to such products which he may hold by virtue of free contract with others."[785]
"It will be seen from this definition that Anarchistic property concerns only products. But anything is a product upon which human labor has been expended, whether it be a piece of iron or a piece of land. (It should be stated, however, that in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based on actual occupancy and use.)"[786]
2. A distribution of property in which every one is guaranteed the product of his labor presupposes merely that equal liberty be applied in those spheres which are as yet dominated by State monopoly.[787]
"Free money first."[788]"I mean by free money the utter absence of restriction upon the issue of all money not fraudulent";[789]"making the issue of money as free as the manufacture of shoes."[790]
Money is here understood in the broadest sense, it means both "commodity money and credit money,"[791]by no means coin alone; "if the idea of the royalty of gold and silver could once be knocked out of the people's heads, and they could once understand that no particular kind of merchandise is created by nature for monetary purposes, they would settle this question in a trice."[792]"If they only had the liberty to do so, there are enough large and small property-holders willing and anxious to issue money, to provide a far greater amount than is needed."[793]"Does the law of England allow citizens to form a bank for the issue of paper money against any property that they may see fit to accept as security; said bank perhaps owning no specie whatever; the paper money not redeemable in specie except at the option of the bank; the customers of the bank mutually pledging themselves to accept the bank's paper in lieu of gold or silver coin of the same face value; the paper being redeemable only at the maturity of the mortgage notes, and then simply by a return of said notes and a release of the mortgaged property,—is such an institution, I ask, allowed by the law of England? If it is, then I have only to say that the working people of England are very great fools not to take advantage of this inestimable liberty."[794]Then "competition would reduce the rate of interest on capital to the mere cost of banking, which is much less than one per cent.,"[795]for "capitalists will not be able to lend their capital at interest when people can get money at the bank withoutinterest with which to buy capital outright."[796]Likewise the charge of rent on buildings "would be almost entirely and directly abolished,"[797]and "profits fall to the level of the manufacturer's or merchant's proper wage,"[798]"except in business protected by tariff or patent laws."[799]"This facility of acquiring capital will give an unheard-of impetus to business";[800]"if free banking were only a picayunish attempt to distribute more equitably the small amount of wealth now produced, I would not waste a moment's energy on it."[801]
Free land is needed in the second place.[802]"'The land for the people,' according to 'Liberty', means the protection of all people who desire to cultivate land in the possession of whatever land they personally cultivate, without distinction between the existing classes of landlords, tenants, and laborers, and the positive refusal of the protecting power to lend its aid to the collection of any rent whatsoever."[803]This "system of occupying ownership, accompanied by no legal power to collect rent, but coupled with the abolition of the State-guaranteed monopoly of money, thus making capital readily available,"[804]would "abolish ground-rent"[805]and "distribute the increment naturally and quietly among its rightful owners."[806]
In the third and fourth place, free trade and freedom of intellectual products are necessary.[807]If they were added to freedom in money, "profit onmerchandise would become merely the wages of mercantile labor."[808]Free trade "would result in a great reduction in the prices of all articles taxed."[809]And "the abolition of the patent monopoly would fill its beneficiaries with a wholesome fear of competition which would cause them to be satisfied with pay for their services equal to that which other laborers get for theirs."[810]
If equal liberty is realized in these four spheres, its realization in the sphere of property follows of itself: that is, a distribution of property in which every one is guaranteed the product of his labor.[811]"Economic privilege must disappear as a result of the abolition of political tyranny."[812]In a society in which there is no more government of man by man, there can be no such things as interest, rent, and profits;[813]every one is guaranteed the ownership of the product of his labor. "Socialism does not say: 'Thou shalt not steal!' It says: 'When all men have Liberty, thou wilt not steal.'"[814]
3. "Liberty will abolish all means whereby any laborer can be deprived of any of his product; but it will not abolish the limited inequality between one laborer's product and another's."[815]"There will remain the slight disparity of products due to superiority of soil and skill. But even this disparity will soon develop a tendency to decrease. Under the new economic conditions and enlarged opportunities resultingfrom freedom of credit and land classes will tend to disappear; great capacities will not be developed in a few at the expense of stunting those of the many; freedom of locomotion will be vastly increased; the toilers will no longer be anchored in such large numbers in the present commercial centres, and thus made subservient to the city landlords; territories and resources never before utilized will become easy of access and development; and under all these influences the disparity above mentioned will decrease to a minimum."[816]
"Probably it will never disappear entirely."[817]"Now, because liberty has not the power to bring this about, there are people who say: We will have no liberty, for we must have absolute equality. I am not of them. If I can go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich. Authority may (and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living."[818]