Anarchism: A Criticism and History of the Anarchist TheoryZenker, E. V. (Ernst Viktor)
History
Anarchism: A Criticism and History of the Anarchist Theory
Zenker, E. V. (Ernst Viktor)
Anarchism
order thus to return to organic, economic, and social truth, it is
necessary (1) To do away with the constitutional accumulation of
power, by taking away the nomination of bishops from the State, and
separating once for all spiritual from temporal affairs; (2) To
centralise the Church in itself by a system of elective grades; (3) To
give to the ecclesiastical power, as to all other powers of the State,
the right of voting as its foundation. By this system, that which
to-day is 'government' becomes nothing more than administration. And
it will be understood if it is possible to organise the whole country
in all its temporal affairs, according to the rules which we have just
laid down for its spiritual organisation, the most perfect order and
the most powerful centralisation would exist without there being
anything of what we now call the constituted authority of a
government.
"One other example: formerly there existed besides the legislative and
executive powers a third, the judicial power. This was an abolition of
the dividing dualism, a first step towards the complete separation of
political functions as of the departments of industry. The judicial
functions--with their different specialties, their hierarchy, their
irremovability, their union in a single ministry--testify undoubtedly
to their privileged position and their efforts towards centralisation.
But these functions do not arise from the people upon whom they are
exercised; their purpose is the administration of executive power;
they are not subordinated to the country by election, but to the
Government, president, or princes, by nomination. The consequence is
that the liberties of the people who are judged are given into the
hands of those who are supposed to be their natural judges, like
parishioners into the hands of their pastor, so that the people belong
to the magistrates as an inheritance, while the litigants exist for
the sake of the judge, and not the judge for the sake of the
litigants. Apply universal suffrage and the system of elective grades
to judicial functions in the same way as to ecclesiastic; take away
their irremovability which is the denial of the right of election;
take away from the State all action and influence upon the judges; let
this order, centralised in and for itself, arise solely from the
people, and you have taken away from the State its most powerful
implement of tyranny. You have made out of justice a principle of
freedom and order, and unless you suppose that the people from whom,
by means of universal suffrage, all power must proceed is in
contradiction with itself, and that it does not wish in the case of
justice what it wishes in the case of religion, or _vice versa_, you
may rest assured that the division of power can produce no conflict.
You can confidently establish the principle that division and
equilibrium will in future be synonymous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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