There are in society certain matters too important, requiring too much constant, regular attention, for them to be left to the voluntary management of individuals, without danger of everything getting into disorder.
If there were no government, who would organize the supply and distribution of provisions? Who regulate matters pertaining to public hygiene, the postal, telegraph, and railway services, etc.? Who would direct public instruction? Who undertake those great works of exploration, improvement on a large scale, scientific enterprise, etc., which transform the face of the earth and augment a hundredfold the power of man?
Who would care for the preservation and increase of capital, that it might be transmitted to posterity, enriched and improved?
Who would prevent the destruction of the forests, or the irrational exploitation, and therefore impoverishment of the soil?
Who would there be to prevent and repress crimes, that is, antisocial acts?
What of those who, disregarding the law of solidarity, would not work? Or of those who might spread infectious disease in a country, by refusing to submit to the regulation of hygiene by science? Or what again could be done with those who, whether insane or no, might set fire to the harvest, injure children, or abuse and take advantage of the weak?
To destroy private property and abolish existing government, without reconstituting a government that would organize collective life and secure social solidarity, would not be to abolish privilege, and bring peace and prosperity upon earth. It would be to destroy every social bond, to leave humanity to fall back into barbarism, to begin again the reign of “each for himself;” which would establish the triumph, firstly, of brute force, and, secondly, of economic privilege.
Such are the objections brought forward by authoritarians, even by those who are Socialists, that is, who wish to abolish private property, and class government founded upon the system of private property.
We reply:
In the first place, it is not true that with a change of social conditions, the nature of the government and its functions would also change. Organs and functions are inseparable terms. Take from an organ its function, and either the organ will die, or the function will reinstate itself. Place an army in a country where there is no reason for or fear of foreign war, and this army will provoke war, or, if it do not succeed in doing that, it will disband. A police force, where there are no crimes to discover, and delinquents to arrest, will provoke or invent crimes, or will cease to exist.
For centuries, there existed in France an institution, now included in the administration of the forests, for the extermination of the wolves and other noxious beasts. No one will be surprised to learn that, just on account of this institution, wolves still exist in France, and that, in rigorous seasons, they do great damage. The public take little heed of the wolves, because there are the appointed officials, whose duty it is to think about them. And the officials do hunt them, but in an intelligent manner, sparing their caves, and allowing time for reproduction, that they may not run the risk of entirely destroying such an interesting species. The French peasants have indeed little confidence in these official wolf-hunters, and regard them rather as the wolf-preservers. And, of course, what would these officials do if there were no longer any wolves to exterminate?
A government, that is, a number of persons deputed to make the laws, and entitled to use the collective forces of society to make every individual to respect these laws, already constitutes a class privileged and separated from the rest of the community. Such a class, like every elected body, will seek instinctively to enlarge its powers; to place itself above the control of the people; to impose its tendencies, and to make its own interests predominate. Placed in a privileged position, the government always finds itself in antagonism to the masses, of whose force it disposes.
Furthermore, a government, with the best intention, could never satisfy everybody, even if it succeeded in satisfying some. It must therefore always be defending itself against the discontented, and for that reason must ally itself with the satisfied section of the community for necessary support. And in this manner will arise again the old story of a privileged class, which cannot help but be developed in conjunction with the government. This class, if it could not again acquire possession of the soil, would certainly monopolize the most favored spots, and would not be in the end less oppressive, or less an instrument of exploitation than the capitalist class.
The governors, accustomed to command, would never wish to mix with the common crowd. If they could not retain the power in their own hands, they would at least secure to themselves privileged positions for the time when they would be out of office. They would use all the means they have in their power to get their own friends elected as their successors, who would in their turn be supported and protected by their predecessors. And thus the government would pass and repass into the same hands, and the democracy, that is, the government presumably of the whole people, would end, as it always has done, in becoming an oligarchy, or the government of a few, the government of a class.
And this all-powerful, oppressive, all-absorbing oligarchy would have always in its care, that is, at its disposition, every bit of social capital, all public services, from the production and distribution of provisions to the manufacture of matches, from the control of the university to that of the music hall.
But let us even suppose that the government did not necessarily constitute a privileged class, and could exist without forming around itself a new privileged class. Let us imagine that it could remain truly representative, the servant—if you will—of all society. What purpose would it then serve? In what particular and in
