Moribund Society and Anarchy

contradiction between perceptions so broad and conclusions so narrow, since the latter demand the maintenance of what is shown by the premises to be absurd? This contradiction, alas, is not to be ascribed to their authors; it is essentially in the nature of human imperfection. Man cannot be universal. The savant who devotes himself passionately to a study attains prodigies of sagacity in that particular groove of science which he has hollowed out. By deduction after deduction he succeeds in solving the most arduous problems coming under that domain, which he has undertaken the task of cultivating; but as he has not been able to keep abreast in the study of all the sciences, of all social phenomena, the result is that he remains behind the progress of the other sciences; therefore, when he seeks to apply the admirable discoveries which he has made to other human conceptions, it follows that he most frequently applies them wrongly and draws an erroneous conclusion from a truth which he has demonstrated. In fact if the anthropologists who have studied man, analyzed him, and reached some comprehension of his true nature, had studied sociology with equal success, passed all the social institutions which govern us through the sieve of reason, no doubt their conclusions would have been different. Since they have admitted that man acts under the impulse of external influences, they should be led to seek what these influences are. In considering the reputed criminal and his acts, the study of the nature of these acts should necessarily force itself upon their minds and make them seek to find out why they are in antagonism to the laws of society. Here it is that the influence of environment, the prejudices of education, comparative ignorance of scientific questions which they have not studied, unknown to themselves combine to dictate to them conclusions so favorable to the existing order of things. These make it impossible for them, though they recognize that order as bad, though they demand some ameliorations in favor of the disinherited, to conceive anything better outside of authority. Accustomed to stir only with the chain around their necks and under the stings of the whip of power, it seems the more independent ones should certainly like to be rid of these themselves, or that a small minority should; but their conceptions cannot allow that humanity is able to go forward without leading-strings, dungeons, and chains.

If we study what crimes are the most antisocial, most common, and against which the code is chiefly directed, we shall soon discover that outside of crimes of passion, which are very rare, and concerning which judges and physicians agree that leniency should be used, attacks upon property furnish the largest contingent of crimes or misdemeanors. Hence arises the question to which only those who have studied society in its nature and effects can reply: “Is property just? Is an organization which creates such a number of crimes defensible?” If this regime involves so many crimes as an inevitable reaction it must be very illogical, it must crush out many interests; and the social compact, far from having been freely and unanimously agreed to, must be distorted by arbitrariness and oppression. This is what we have undertaken to prove in this work; and the fundamental vice of the social organization being recognized, we shall show by the evidence that in order to destroy criminals we must destroy the social conditions which beget them. Let society once be so arranged that every individual shall be assured of the satisfaction of all his needs; that nothing shall fetter his free evolution; that in the social organization there shall be no more institutions of which he may avail himself to enslave his fellows, and you will see crime disappear. If there remain a few isolated natures so corrupted or degenerated through our existing society as to commit crimes for which no other cause than folly can be assigned, such cases will be taken up by science and not by the executioner, the paid assassin of capitalistic and authoritarian society.

You say you make war upon thieves and assassins; but what is a thief, or an assassin? Persons who claim the right to live without being useful, at the expense of society, you will say. But cast a glance over your society and you will discover that it is swarming with thieves, and that, far from punishing them, your laws are made for the express purpose of protecting them. Far from punishing laziness, society holds it up as an ideal, and awards the pleasure of doing nothing to those who can, by no matter what means, succeed in living well without being useful. You punish as a thief the unfortunate who, having no work, risks imprisonment to get hold of a piece of bread to appease his hunger; but you take off your hat and bow to the millionaire monopolist who by the help of his capital has cornered at a bargain those things necessary for the consumption of all, that he may sell them back at an enormous profit! You are eager to present yourselves, very humbly and submissively, in the antechamber of the financier who, by a stroke on the bourse, has ruined hundreds of families to enrich himself from the spoil! You punish the criminal who, to gratify his taste for idleness and debauchery, victimizes somebody; but who inculcated in him this idleness and debauchery, if not your society? You punish him who operates on a small scale, but you support whole armies that you may send them oversea to operate on a large scale against peoples unable to defend themselves. And the exploiters who kill not only a few persons, but exhaust entire generations, crushing them with overwork, cutting down their wages day by day, driving them into a corner with the most sordid poverty⁠—Oh, for such exploiters you reserve your sympathies, and will, if need be, put all the forces of your society at their service. And