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Title: Property is Government
Author: Louisa Sarah Bevington
Date: May 1895
Language: en
Topics: property, Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, government
Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/property-is-government-louisa-sarah-bevington/
Notes: Published in Freedom.

Louisa Sarah Bevington

Property is Government

Can it be said too often: “Property is Government”? It is the modern

measure and means of domination, and it is nothing else at all. It

ceases to exist directly the human will decrees its annihilation; the

moment a private individual is sick of it in his wn case, he is rid of

it. The moment collective opinion shall be averse to it, it will vanish

from the planet. The word “property” slips glibly enough from many a

pen; yet I declare that it fits nothing real within the range of my

intelligence, and nothing desirable in the range of my emotions. Objects

may be partly made by me, or handed to me; they may, next, be welcome

(because useful) to me); or they may be in my way, because useless to

me. In the latter case, the wisest thing to do is to send them or carry

them across the street to the neighbour whose requirement they exactly

fit. The objects may, by the custom or the law prevailing around me, be

called my “property”, in which case the neighbour, unless he be a

“thief”, will take no direct steps towards removing them from my

custody, but will, if I choose, meekly permit me to fine him of time,

trouble, or goods (as represented by money), before considering himself

their fit custodian. Yet the things are still only the things; and have

no natural point of attachment with either my neighbour or me, until one

of us puts them to their appropriate use.

Popular concession, fixed with force-law, may never have been questioned

by citizens born under the law; but no amount of human concession, or

human force, can make real a relation which is naturally non-existent;

or will avail to keep up the solemn pretence of it when the general

discomfort and distress arising from such pretence, causes the force-law

to be chafed against, and thus annuls the ancient concession on which

law originally took its stand.

At the present hour, the bulk of humanity has not begun to recognise the

property idea as in itself debateable. All the talk is of a change of

title in property-owning; and this even among many who dream of

abolishing Government. And all the while Property and Government are as

inseperable as Substance and Shadow; and as long as you keep either one

of them, you will have to put up with the vagaries of the other.

Meanwhile of those whose minds are active concerning the Property

“question”, one set regards it as a necessary element of orderly

progress that may safely be left to evolve through future phases as a

dominant institution; while another set regards it as the chief, and

constant, and necessary foe of order and progress; the bulwark and the

raison-d’être of force-law; the promoter of militarism; the cause of

human antagonisms, great and small; the root of all evil, and of all the

frightful waste involved in the arming and defending of man against man.

The question then arises: Which of these two sets of thinkers is in

advance of the other? Which see the deepest into the springs of human

action? Which displays most intellectual perspicacity and moral (that

is, healthily social) momentum? Which most accurately interprets Nature

and History? And which, if at once able (by help of revolution) to put

theory into practice throughout a whole community, would do most to

dissipate existing evil tendencies in surrounding citizens, and to

invigorate and foster in them useful and beneficient tendencies?

The thing to bear firmly in mind is that property, however acquired,

must maintain itself by governmental force. And this is in itself a

tell-ale fact. We do not need to force upon one another that which

Nature has instituted as useful to all.