s. 7. The substance of this chapter once more reminds us of the incongruity
between a perfect law and an imperfect State. The practicability of the
principle here laid down varies directly as social morality. In a
thoroughly vicious community its admission would be productive of
anarchy.[1] In a completely virtuous one its admission will be both
innocuous and inevitable. Progress toward a condition of social health--a
condition, that is, in which the remedial measures of legislation will no
longer be needed--is progress toward a condition in which those remedial
measures will be cast aside, and the authority prescribing them
disregarded. The two changes are of necessity co-ordinate. That moral sense
whose supremacy will make society harmonious and government unnecessary is
the same moral sense which will then make each man assert his freedom even
to the extent of ignoring the State--is the same moral sense which, by
deterring the majority from coercing the minority, will eventually render
government impossible. And, as what are merely different manifestations of
the same sentiment must bear a constant ratio to each other, the tendency
to repudiate governments will increase only at the same rate that
governments become needless.
Let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of the foregoing
doctrine. There are many changes yet to be passed through before it can
begin to exercise much influence. Probably a long time will elapse before
the right to ignore the State will be generally admitted, even in theory.
It will be still longer before it receives legislative recognition. And
even then there will be plenty of checks upon the premature exercise of it.
A sharp experience will sufficiently instruct those who may too soon
abandon legal protection. Whilst, in the majority of men, there is such a
love of tried arrangements, and so great a dread of experiments, that they
will probably not act upon this right until long after it is safe to do so.
* * * * *
Anarchist Communism.[2]
ITS AIMS AND PRINCIPLES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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