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Title: Liberty and the State Author: Laurance Labadie Date: 1934 Language: en Topics: the State, violence, competition Source: Retrieved on 3/2/22 from https://c4ss.org/content/56118 Notes: Published in an edition of John G. Scott and Jo Ann Wheeler’s version of Mother Earth.
The anarchistic solution of the money problem is so simple as to cause
amazement. It is to permit anyone and everyone to go into the banking
system. Why not? No one objects to anyone going into the hat business or
building business or any other non-invasive enterprise. Naturally those
who furnish the soundest and cheapest money will crowd others out of
existence.[1] To facilitate recognizability there would probably be
cooperation or mergers between the banks. The public at large would be
the “rulers” of this type of institution because they would patronize it
or not, at will, and it must maintain its efficiency and reputability
because of the pressure of competition.
The difference between this type of institution and the State or State
protected institutions is that the latter, due mostly to the ignorance
of people but also by the threat of violence, are endowed with arbitrary
power. If the State would be on a voluntary taxation basis as any other
business it would have to give something else than abuse and the
misappropriation of funds else no one would support it. But this would
mean that it would cease to be a state in the anarchistic sense. Of
course this is only the economic objection to the State; there are many
other ways that it restricts and hampers the non-invasive life of a
nation. The State is the cancer in the social life of a people.
That is why those in political life are looked upon as criminals by
anarchists, not because they so much actually intend to do wrong, even
the political life does corrupt a man, but because the effects of their
actions are to provoke what is more obviously criminal. The president of
the United States is bringing ruin to its inhabitants, not because he is
intending to do so but because he is ignorant. It is dangerous to
entrust the destiny of people to ignorant men.[2] That is why only by
the abolition of arbitrary power can there be any security or harmony
among people. Only by the inauguration of voluntarily supported
institutions can the possibility of invasiveness be minimalized.[3] This
would be a real democracy. The State must be destroyed not by killing
those in power, but by destroying the political myth in the minds of
people.[4] Then the State would be laughed away as an absurdity.
Meanwhile we must not only discover the nature of liberty, its
possibilities and promise, but must also combat the thousand and one
spurious nostrums which now tempt the human race.
It is true however that liberty alone will do the trick. Human society,
must, in freedom, become one large experimental field wherein, according
to the law of the survival of the fittest, only those institutions and
customs which actually serve human needs can survive. Only by the free
and unhampered operation of this great law will folly be eliminated
because the absence of paternalism places fools in a position to reap
the full rewards of their folly and in doing so become wise, i.e.
capable, self-reliant, and responsible.
Of course, in the larger view, the law of the survival of the fittest,
which, by the way and contrary to the beliefs of many humanitarians, is
an amoral law and taxes no cognizance of “good” or “bad” men, is always
in operation, We the great mass of people suffer today because, in our
ignorance we do not understand how to live. But in the long run, if
there is to be any “survival” on this earth, it is within the realm of
certainty that it is to come only by the extension of individual
liberties through the ultimate abolition of the State, the elimination
of all government of man by man.
[1] “Existence” misspelled as “existance.”
[2] “Entrust” misspelled as “intrust.”
[3] “Inauguration” misspelled as “inaugeration.”
[4] Word identified as “destroyed” is illegible.