The cost of justice can be justly paid only by the invader.
I insist that 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.
This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.
Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.
The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.
Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.
Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act.
Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction.
I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.
Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike.
To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.
In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails.
Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.
Aggression is simply another name for government.
Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves.
And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, - at least in theory.
And 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.
But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.
But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
