The meaning ordinarily attached to the word "anarchy" is absence of principle, absence of rule; consequently, it has been regarded as synonymous with "disorder."All questions of legislation and politics are matters of science, not of opinion.The legislative power belongs only to the reason, methodically recognized and demonstrated.To attribute to any power whatever the right of veto or of sanction, is the last degree of tyranny.Justice and legality are two things as independent of our approval as is mathematical truth.To compel, they need only to be known; to be known, they need only to be considered and studied.What, then, is the nation, if it is not the sovereign,--if it is not the source of the legislative power?
The nation is the guardian of the law--the nation is the EXECUTIVE POWER.Every citizen may assert: "This is true;that is just; "but his opinion controls no one but himself.That the truth which he proclaims may become a law, it must be recognized.Now, what is it to recognize a law? It is to verify a mathematical or a metaphysical calculation; it is to repeat an experiment, to observe a phenomenon, to establish a fact.Only the nation has the right to say, "Be it known and decreed."I confess that this is an overturning of received ideas, and that I seem to be attempting to revolutionize our political system; but I beg the reader to consider that, having begun with a paradox, I must, if I reason correctly, meet with paradoxes at every step, and must end with paradoxes.For the rest, I do not see how the liberty of citizens would be endangered by entrusting to their hands, instead of the pen of the legislator, the sword of the law.The executive power, belonging properly to the will, cannot be confided to too many proxies.That is the true sovereignty of the nation.
If such ideas are ever forced into the minds of the people, it will be by representative government and the tyranny of talkers.Once science, thought, and speech were characterized by the same expression.To designate a thoughtful and a learned man, they said, "a man quick to speak and powerful in discourse.
"For a long time, speech has been abstractly distinguished from science and reason.Gradually, this abstraction is becoming realized, as the logicians say, in society; so that we have to-day savants of many kinds who talk but little, and TALKERSwho are not even savants in the science of speech.Thus a philosopher is no longer a savant: he is a talker.Legislators and poets were once profound and sublime characters: now they are talkers.A talker is a sonorous bell, whom the least shock suffices to set in perpetual motion.With the talker, the flow of speech is always directly proportional to the poverty of thought.Talkers govern the world; they stun us, they bore us, they worry us, they suck our blood, and laugh at us.As for the savants, they keep silence: if they wish to say a word, they are cut short.Let them write.
The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign--for all these titles are synonymous--imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once.Accordingly, the substitution of the scientific and true law for the royal will is accomplished only by a terrible struggle; and this constant substitution is, after property, the most potent element in history, the most prolific source of political disturbances.
Examples are too numerous and too striking to require enumeration.
Now, property necessarily engenders despotism,--the government of caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure.That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him.Property is the right to USE and ABUSE.If, then, government is economy,--if its object is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and products,--how is government possible while property exists? And if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings--kings in proportion to their _facultes bonitaires_? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?
% 3.--Determination of the third form of Society.Conclusion.
Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible, which is based upon property.
Communism seeks EQUALITY and LAW.Property, born of the sovereignty of the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things INDEPENDENCE and PROPORTIONALITY.
But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust.Property, by its despotism and encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social.
The objects of communism and property are good--their results are bad.And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements of society.Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property does not satisfy equality and law.
Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four principles,--equality, law, independence, and proportionality,--we find:--1.That EQUALITY, consisting only in EQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, that is, OF MEANS, and not in EQUALITY OF COMFORT,--which it is the business of the laborers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means,--in no way violates justice and equite.
2.That LAW, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence.
3.That individual INDEPENDENCE, or the autonomy of the private reason, originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist without danger within the limits of the law.
