“According to the etymology of the word, anarchy would mean absence of all government, of all political authority. *** Anarchy is nothing but self-government carried to its extremist limits, and the last step in the progress of human reason. *** Politics, as hitherto understood, would have no further raison d’être, and An-archy, that is to say, the disappearance of all political authority, would be the result of this transformation of human society in which all questions to be solved would have a purely economic character. Long ago J. B. Say advanced the opinion that the functions of the state should be reduced to the performance of police duties.{1} If so reduced there would be but one step needed to reach the An-archy of... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I. Introduction
All sociologists claim that progress has consisted in departure from compulsory to voluntary cooperation; from the reign of militant measures to what is termed the industrial type, wherein self-reliance and free cooperation directs; from the inequalities of privileged and restricted classes to the equality of equal freedom to natural opportunities; in short, to use the concise statement of Herbert Spencer, “from a regime of status to a regime of contract.” In the social order militancy and industrialism, therefore, represent past and future types; the first wherein war is the normal direction of human activity; the other where peace must prevail for healthful development. Following this guiding principle let u... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
II. Fundamental Principles
Carlyle aptly termed political economy the “Dismal Science,” {13} but a great change has since been coming over its spirit. For reasons already partly outlined Economists themselves have come to recognize that the issue is purely economic and has no more right to be qualified by the adjective “political” than by the adjective “religious.” Consequently, the trend of evolutionary progress, the logic of events, has eliminated the qualifying prefix and the science of society must henceforth be considered in the light of abstract justice rather than in the interests of temporary State requirements. With the obliteration of the misleading qualification our task is much easier and E... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
III. Free Land
Volumes have been written upon the land question and the end is not yet, for that there is a land question is now indubitable. The complacent assumptions of earlier Economists, who were simply satisfied with debating how much of the burden of taxation should fall upon land, as the physiocrates in France; or later writers whom Malthus’ deductions called out, who hardly felt the need for justifying ownership in land as distinguished from chattels; as well as the labored defense of modern writers who have diligently sought for reasons; – have all been called into question. Throughout the whole century, from Godwin {16} down to the correspondent of the village weekly, from the man of intellect struggling with logic... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
IV. Free Labor
If land were free it by no means follows that labor must needs be so likewise. The restrictions upon the exercise of our activities does not solely depend upon the monopolization of the soil; however onerous may be the toll rent, its abolition would not emancipate labor. That labor should be free is “a glittering generality” everywhere acknowledged, though why it is not is the cause of much discussion. That free access to all vacant land would open multifarious channels for labor is a self evident proposition, but such cannot be said of its ability to use such opportunity. It is estimated that one half of the area of New York City s held unused, kept vacant for a speculative increase in price, and as an inevita... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
V. Free Capital
Imaginative sketches of men suddenly thrown upon an island where production has to be started anew, where cooperation is forced upon them by the self evident fact that no one possesses greater right than his fellow, can not be applied to existing society where differences have arisen and become established as “rights” to be acknowledged. Such illustrations, however, show that in the absence of all artificial privilege voluntary cooperation becomes a social necessity and is fully adequate for all demands; and which in the abolition of privilege here and now would be equally as operative and as imperative a necessity as in the island illustration. The specious argument that on such an island if one man said: &ld... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
VI. Free Exchange
We all accept the definition of capital as being that portion resulting from the application of labor used for reproduction. But it becomes necessary to define more clearly “the relations between capital and labor” under the absence of privilege. It needs no further argument to show that all differences in their relations have arisen from unjust prerogatives assumed or usurped by capital over its creator, labor, and that with the removal of these restrictions upon labor, in other words the denial of privilege to capital, capital and labor would cease to be antagonistic forces in production, leading to poverty from inequitable distribution. That, in fact, capital being the result of past labor, under the free... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
VII. Mutual Credit
After this review of the inequalities and striking injustice of the money monopoly, and that free banking in social evolution logically follows from the lines of least resistance under wider freedom, we will proceed to inquire in what manner the organization of personal credit would serve a social function and further the realization of the industrial type. For only as liberty fails to meet the requirements of progress will this or that authoritarian regulating scheme of credit and exchange receive justification. Can free competition be introduced into domestic exchanges and the conditions of production? or must the application of free trade be confined to the manufactured product and distribution? In other words, can ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
VIII. Emancipation of Credit
Having shown that the voluntary organization of mutual credit is fully practicable; that the medium of exchange would thus be shorn of the difficulties which prevent labor from freely capitalizing products; that the various “banks” thus organized, private or associative, to exercise social functions, by a system of mutual clearance would indefinitely extend credit; that all the difficulties now so easy to conjecture would be solved as they were respectively recognized : – we may now proceed to claim for it the following beneficent results:
1. LABOR THE STANDARD OF VALUE. In demonetizing gold and silver, thus depriving them of the royalty they now exercise among commodities, it would destroy... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
IX. Industrial Economics
Before entering upon the application of our fundamental principles to our fifth division, insurance, or security, I desire to group certain deductions, both critical and constructive, that we may better see the paramount importance of freedom in industrial economics.
1. DIVISION OF LABOR is an outgrowth of social progress, essential to the augmentation of wealth, the evils incidental to it being the result of extraneous causes; and Economists, in speaking of limitations and disadvantages of this social law, have shown their incompetence to clearly analyze the essential factors of the industrial problem. It is not in division, but in the subordination of division to privilege that the Economists make the error of... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
X. Insurance (Security)
Wherein lies security in the absence of statute law? What assurance is there that with full opportunity for labor to exploit nature in order to receive full reward, it can enjoy it in peace and unmolested? That such questions have arisen in every previous twilight period of progressive evolution is no answer where new needs and fresh requirements are involved. Let us, then, follow out our application to this renewed doubt of freedom in industrial relations. And in this connection, the scope of this work not permitting replies to all objections which may be urged by militant defenders, we will consider the problem of social assurance under the following heads: 1. Incentive; 2. transportation; 3. unskilled labor; 4.... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
XI. Digression on Methods
If equal rights be granted, and that under free conditions social supply must follow demand, why potter over methods? But because we are in a transition state, the question does arise: Shall our resistance to aggression be passive or active? Upon this point no answer is involved in our premises. Logically, however, the assertion of the law of equal freedom carries with it the sovereignty of the individual as a pre-requisite to voluntary cooperation; and this implies an equal right, singly or conjointly, to resist such invasion, and invasion under the forms of law does not invalidate the ethical proposition. Each must be guided as their own judgment determines, and whatever may be our judgment of the policy of su... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
[1] I here gladly acknowledge my obligations to Victor Drury, {15} whose classification I adopt and follow.
{1} Actually Say may have gone farther.
{2} From Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609) by El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (c. 1539-1616; not to be confused with the earlier Spanish writer of the same name); Lum quotes from the 1871 translation by Clements Markham.
{3} Principles of Sociology I.ii.10
{4} Probably American historian John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877).
{5} Swiss historian and economist Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (1773-1842).
{6} Jack Cade, leader of 1450 peasant rebellion; John Wycliffe, 14th-century Catholic dissident; Jacob van Artevelde and Philip van Artevelde, father and son, 14th-century Flemish natio... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
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