November 1, 2022 • 15 mins
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Section one. The law perverted,the law, and in its wake all
the collective forces of the nation.The law, I say, not only
diverted from its proper direction, butmade to pursue one entirely contrary. The
law become the tool of every kindof avarice. Instead of being its check,
(00:24):
the law guilty of that very iniquitywhich it was its mission to punish.
Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one
to which I feel bound to callthe attention of my fellow citizens. We
hold from God the gift that,as far as we are concerned, contains
all others life, physical, intellectualand moral life. But life cannot support
(00:52):
itself. He who has bestowed ithas entrusted us with the care of supporting
it, of developing it, andof perfecting it. To that end,
he has provided us with a collectionof wonderful faculties. He has plunged des
into the midst of a variety ofelements. It is by the application of
our faculties to these elements that thephenomena of assimilation and of appropriation by which
(01:19):
life pursues the circle that has beenassigned to it are realized. Existence.
Faculties assimilation. In other words,personality, liberty, property, This is
man. It is of these threethings that it may be said, apart
from all demagogic subtlety, that theyare anterior and superior to all human legislation.
(01:48):
It is not because men have madelaws that personality, liberty, and
a property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty,
and property exists before and that menmake laws. What then is law?
As I have said elsewhere, itis the collective organization of the individual right
(02:09):
to lawful defense. Nature, orrather, God, has bestowed upon every
one of us, the right todefend his person, his liberty, and
his property. Since these are thethree constituent or preserving elements of life,
elements each of which is rendered completeby the others, and that cannot be
(02:30):
understood without them. For what areour faculties but the extension of our personality?
And what is property but an extensionof our faculties. If every man
has the right of defending, evenby force, his person, his liberty,
and his property, a number ofmen have the right to combine together
(02:53):
to extend, to organize a commonforce to provide regularly for this defense.
Collective right then has its principle,its reason for existing, its lawfulness in
individual right. And the common forcecannot rationally have any other end or any
other mission, than that of theisolated forces for which it is substituted.
(03:17):
Thus, as the force of anindividual cannot lawfully touch the person, the
liberty, or the property of anotherindividual, for the same reason, the
common force cannot lawfully be used todestroy the person, the liberty, or
the property of individuals or of classes. For this perversion of force would be,
(03:39):
in one case, as in theother, in contradiction to our premises.
For who will dare to say thatforce has been given to us not
to defend our rights, but toannihilate the equal rights of our brethren.
And if this be not true ofevery individual force acting independently, how can
it be true of the collective force, which is only the organized union of
(04:02):
isolated forces. Nothing therefore, canbe more evident than this. The law
is the organization of the natural rightof lawful defense. It is the substitution
of collective for individual forces for thepurpose of acting in the sphere in which
they have a right to act,of doing what they have a right to
(04:24):
do to secure persons liberties and propertiesand to maintain each in its right so
as to cause justice to reign overall. And if a people established on
this basis were to exist, itseems to me that order would prevail among
them in their acts as well asin their ideas. It seems to me
(04:46):
that such a people would have themost simple, the most economical, the
least oppressive, the least to befelt, the most restrained, the most
just, and consequently the most stablegovernment that could be imagined, whatever its
political form might be. For undersuch an administration, every one would feel
(05:09):
that he possessed all the fullness,as well as all the responsibility of his
existence. So long as personal safetywas insured, so long as labor was
free, and the fruits of laborsecured against all unjust attacks, no one
would have any difficulties to contend within the state. When prosperous, we
(05:30):
should not, it is true,have to thank the state for our success.
But when unfortunate, we should nomore think of taxing it with our
disasters than our peasants think of attributingto it the arrival of hail or of
frost. We should know it onlyby the inestimable blessing of safety, It
may further be affirmed that, thanksto the non intervention of the state and
(05:55):
private affairs, our wants and theirsatisfactions would develop themselves in their natural order.
We should not see poor families seekingfor literary instruction before they were supplied
with bread. We should not seetowns people at the expense of rural districts,
nor rural districts at the expense oftowns. We should not see those
(06:16):
great displacements of capital, of labor, and of population that legislative measures occasion,
displacements that render so uncertain and precariousthe various sources of existence, and
thus enlarged to such an extent theresponsibility of governments. Unhappily, law is
by no means confined to its ownsphere. Nor is it merely, in
(06:42):
some ambiguous and debatable views, thatit has left its proper sphere. It
has done more than this. Ithas acted in direct opposition to its proper
end. It has destroyed its ownobject. It has been employed in annihilating
that justice which it ought to haveestablished, in effacing amongst rights that limit
(07:02):
which it was its true mission torespect. It has placed the collective force
in the service of those who wishto traffic without risk and without scruple in
the persons, the liberty and theproperty of others. It has converted plunder
into a right that it may protectit, and lawful defense into a crime
(07:24):
that it may punish it. Howhas this perversion of law been accomplished,
and what has resulted from it?The law has been perverted through the influence
of two very different causes, nakedgreed and misconceived philanthropy. Let us speak
of the farmer self. Preservation anddevelopment is the common aspiration of all men,
(07:48):
in such a way that if everyoneenjoyed the free exercise of his faculties
and the free disposition of their fruits, social progress would be incessant, interrupted,
inevitable. But there is also anotherdisposition which is common to them.
This is to live and to developwhen they can, at the expense of
(08:11):
one another. This is no rashimputation emanating from a gloomy, uncharitable spirit.
History bears witness to the truth ofit by the incessant wars, the
migrations of races, sectarian oppressions,the universality of slavery, the frauds in
trade, and the monopolies with whichthe animals abound. This fatal disposition has
(08:35):
its origin in the very constitution ofman, in that primitive and universal and
invincible sentiment that urges it towards itswell being and makes it seek to escape
pain. Man can only derive lifeand enjoyment from a perpetual search and appropriation,
that is, from a perpetual applicationof his faculties to objects, or
(09:00):
from labor. This is the originof property. But also he may live
and enjoy by seizing and appropriating theproductions of the faculties of his fellow men.
This is the origin of plunder.Now, labor being in itself a
pain, and man being naturally inclinedto avoid pain. It follows, and
(09:22):
history proves it that wherever plunder isless burdensome than labor, it prevails,
and neither religion nor morality can inthis case prevent it from prevailing. When
does plunder cease, then when itbecomes more burdensome and more dangerous than labor.
It is very evident that the properaim of law is to oppose the
(09:46):
fatal tendency to plunder with the powerfulobstacle of collective force, that all its
measures should be in favor of propertyand against plunder. But the law is
made generally by one man or byone class of men, And as law
cannot exist without the sanction and thesupport of a preponderant force, it must
(10:09):
finally place this force in the handsof those who legislate. This inevitable phenomenon,
combined with the fatal tendency that wehave said exists in the heart of
man, explains the almost universal perversionof law. It is easy to conceive
that, instead of being a checkupon injustice, it becomes its most invincible
(10:31):
instrument. It is easy to conceivethat, according to the power of the
legislator, it destroys for its ownprofit, and in different degrees, amongst
the rest of the community, personalindependence by slavery, liberty by oppression,
and property by plunder. It isin the nature of man to rise against
(10:54):
the injustice of which they are thevictims. When therefore plunder is organized by
law for the profit of those whoperpetrate it. All the plundered classes tend,
either by peaceful or revolutionary means,to enter in some way into the
manufacturing of laws. These classes,according to the degree of enlightenment at which
(11:16):
they have arrived may propose to themselvesto very different ends when they thus attempt
the attainment of their political rights.Either they may wish to put an end
to lawful plunder, or they maydesire to take part in it. Woe
to the nation where this latter thoughtprevails among the masses at the moment when
(11:37):
they, in their turn, seizeupon the legislative power. Up to that
time, lawful plunder has been exercisedby the few upon the many, as
in the case in countries where theright of legislating is confined to a few
hands. But now it has becomeuniversal, and the equilibrium is sought in
universal plunder. The us that societycontains, instead of being rooted out of
(12:03):
it, is generalized. As soonas the injured classes have recovered their political
rights, their first thought is notto abolish plunder. This would suppose them
to possess enlightenment, which they cannothave, but to organize against the other
classes and to their own detriment,a system of reprisals, as if it
(12:24):
were necessary before the reign of justicearrives, that all should undergo a cruel
retribution, some for their iniquity andsome for their ignorance. It would be
impossible, therefore, to introduce intosociety a greater change and a greater evil
than this, the conversion of thelaw into an instrument of plunder. What
(12:46):
would be the consequences of such aperversion. It would require volumes to describe
them all. We must content ourselveswith pointing out the most striking. In
the first place, it would effacefrom everybody's conscience the distinction between justice and
injustice. No society can exist unlessthe laws are respected to a certain degree.
(13:09):
But the safest way to make themrespected is to make them respectable.
When law and morality are in contradictionto each other, the citizen fines himself
in the cruel alternative of either losinghis moral sense or of losing his respect
for the law, two evils ofequal magnitude between which it would be difficult
(13:31):
to choose. It is so muchin the nature of law to support justice
that in the minds of the massesthey are one and the same. There
is in all of us a strongdisposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate,
so much so that many falsely deriveall justice from law. It is
(13:52):
sufficient, then for the law toorder and sanction plunder, that it may
appear to many consciences just and sacredslavery protection and monopoly fine defenders, not
only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.
If you suggest a doubt as tothe morality of these institutions, it
is said directly you are a dangerousexperimenter, a utopian, a theorist,
(14:18):
a despiser of the laws. Youwould shake the basis upon which society rests
if you lecture upon morality or politicaleconomy. Official bodies will be found to
make this request to the government,that henceforth science be taught not only with
sole reference to free exchange, toliberty, property and justice, as has
(14:41):
been the case up to the presenttime, but also, and especially with
reference to the facts and legislation contraryto liberty, property and justice that regulate
French industry, that in public lecturnssalaried by the Treasury. The professor abstained
rigorously from endangering, in the slightestdegree the respect due to the laws now
(15:03):
in force, so that if alaw exists that sanctions slavery or monopoly,
oppression or plunder in any form whatever, it must not be mentioned for how
can it be mentioned without damaging therespect that it inspires. Still, further,
morality and political economy must be taughtin connection with this law, that
(15:26):
is, under the supposition that itmust be just only because it is law.
End of Section one
Section one. The law perverted,the law, and in its wake all
the collective forces of the nation.The law, I say, not only
diverted from its proper direction, butmade to pursue one entirely contrary. The
law become the tool of every kindof avarice. Instead of being its check,
(00:24):
the law guilty of that very iniquitywhich it was its mission to punish.
Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one
to which I feel bound to callthe attention of my fellow citizens. We
hold from God the gift that,as far as we are concerned, contains
all others life, physical, intellectualand moral life. But life cannot support
(00:52):
itself. He who has bestowed ithas entrusted us with the care of supporting
it, of developing it, andof perfecting it. To that end,
he has provided us with a collectionof wonderful faculties. He has plunged des
into the midst of a variety ofelements. It is by the application of
our faculties to these elements that thephenomena of assimilation and of appropriation by which
(01:19):
life pursues the circle that has beenassigned to it are realized. Existence.
Faculties assimilation. In other words,personality, liberty, property, This is
man. It is of these threethings that it may be said, apart
from all demagogic subtlety, that theyare anterior and superior to all human legislation.
(01:48):
It is not because men have madelaws that personality, liberty, and
a property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty,
and property exists before and that menmake laws. What then is law?
As I have said elsewhere, itis the collective organization of the individual right
(02:09):
to lawful defense. Nature, orrather, God, has bestowed upon every
one of us, the right todefend his person, his liberty, and
his property. Since these are thethree constituent or preserving elements of life,
elements each of which is rendered completeby the others, and that cannot be
(02:30):
understood without them. For what areour faculties but the extension of our personality?
And what is property but an extensionof our faculties. If every man
has the right of defending, evenby force, his person, his liberty,
and his property, a number ofmen have the right to combine together
(02:53):
to extend, to organize a commonforce to provide regularly for this defense.
Collective right then has its principle,its reason for existing, its lawfulness in
individual right. And the common forcecannot rationally have any other end or any
other mission, than that of theisolated forces for which it is substituted.
(03:17):
Thus, as the force of anindividual cannot lawfully touch the person, the
liberty, or the property of anotherindividual, for the same reason, the
common force cannot lawfully be used todestroy the person, the liberty, or
the property of individuals or of classes. For this perversion of force would be,
(03:39):
in one case, as in theother, in contradiction to our premises.
For who will dare to say thatforce has been given to us not
to defend our rights, but toannihilate the equal rights of our brethren.
And if this be not true ofevery individual force acting independently, how can
it be true of the collective force, which is only the organized union of
(04:02):
isolated forces. Nothing therefore, canbe more evident than this. The law
is the organization of the natural rightof lawful defense. It is the substitution
of collective for individual forces for thepurpose of acting in the sphere in which
they have a right to act,of doing what they have a right to
(04:24):
do to secure persons liberties and propertiesand to maintain each in its right so
as to cause justice to reign overall. And if a people established on
this basis were to exist, itseems to me that order would prevail among
them in their acts as well asin their ideas. It seems to me
(04:46):
that such a people would have themost simple, the most economical, the
least oppressive, the least to befelt, the most restrained, the most
just, and consequently the most stablegovernment that could be imagined, whatever its
political form might be. For undersuch an administration, every one would feel
(05:09):
that he possessed all the fullness,as well as all the responsibility of his
existence. So long as personal safetywas insured, so long as labor was
free, and the fruits of laborsecured against all unjust attacks, no one
would have any difficulties to contend within the state. When prosperous, we
(05:30):
should not, it is true,have to thank the state for our success.
But when unfortunate, we should nomore think of taxing it with our
disasters than our peasants think of attributingto it the arrival of hail or of
frost. We should know it onlyby the inestimable blessing of safety, It
may further be affirmed that, thanksto the non intervention of the state and
(05:55):
private affairs, our wants and theirsatisfactions would develop themselves in their natural order.
We should not see poor families seekingfor literary instruction before they were supplied
with bread. We should not seetowns people at the expense of rural districts,
nor rural districts at the expense oftowns. We should not see those
(06:16):
great displacements of capital, of labor, and of population that legislative measures occasion,
displacements that render so uncertain and precariousthe various sources of existence, and
thus enlarged to such an extent theresponsibility of governments. Unhappily, law is
by no means confined to its ownsphere. Nor is it merely, in
(06:42):
some ambiguous and debatable views, thatit has left its proper sphere. It
has done more than this. Ithas acted in direct opposition to its proper
end. It has destroyed its ownobject. It has been employed in annihilating
that justice which it ought to haveestablished, in effacing amongst rights that limit
(07:02):
which it was its true mission torespect. It has placed the collective force
in the service of those who wishto traffic without risk and without scruple in
the persons, the liberty and theproperty of others. It has converted plunder
into a right that it may protectit, and lawful defense into a crime
(07:24):
that it may punish it. Howhas this perversion of law been accomplished,
and what has resulted from it?The law has been perverted through the influence
of two very different causes, nakedgreed and misconceived philanthropy. Let us speak
of the farmer self. Preservation anddevelopment is the common aspiration of all men,
(07:48):
in such a way that if everyoneenjoyed the free exercise of his faculties
and the free disposition of their fruits, social progress would be incessant, interrupted,
inevitable. But there is also anotherdisposition which is common to them.
This is to live and to developwhen they can, at the expense of
(08:11):
one another. This is no rashimputation emanating from a gloomy, uncharitable spirit.
History bears witness to the truth ofit by the incessant wars, the
migrations of races, sectarian oppressions,the universality of slavery, the frauds in
trade, and the monopolies with whichthe animals abound. This fatal disposition has
(08:35):
its origin in the very constitution ofman, in that primitive and universal and
invincible sentiment that urges it towards itswell being and makes it seek to escape
pain. Man can only derive lifeand enjoyment from a perpetual search and appropriation,
that is, from a perpetual applicationof his faculties to objects, or
(09:00):
from labor. This is the originof property. But also he may live
and enjoy by seizing and appropriating theproductions of the faculties of his fellow men.
This is the origin of plunder.Now, labor being in itself a
pain, and man being naturally inclinedto avoid pain. It follows, and
(09:22):
history proves it that wherever plunder isless burdensome than labor, it prevails,
and neither religion nor morality can inthis case prevent it from prevailing. When
does plunder cease, then when itbecomes more burdensome and more dangerous than labor.
It is very evident that the properaim of law is to oppose the
(09:46):
fatal tendency to plunder with the powerfulobstacle of collective force, that all its
measures should be in favor of propertyand against plunder. But the law is
made generally by one man or byone class of men, And as law
cannot exist without the sanction and thesupport of a preponderant force, it must
(10:09):
finally place this force in the handsof those who legislate. This inevitable phenomenon,
combined with the fatal tendency that wehave said exists in the heart of
man, explains the almost universal perversionof law. It is easy to conceive
that, instead of being a checkupon injustice, it becomes its most invincible
(10:31):
instrument. It is easy to conceivethat, according to the power of the
legislator, it destroys for its ownprofit, and in different degrees, amongst
the rest of the community, personalindependence by slavery, liberty by oppression,
and property by plunder. It isin the nature of man to rise against
(10:54):
the injustice of which they are thevictims. When therefore plunder is organized by
law for the profit of those whoperpetrate it. All the plundered classes tend,
either by peaceful or revolutionary means,to enter in some way into the
manufacturing of laws. These classes,according to the degree of enlightenment at which
(11:16):
they have arrived may propose to themselvesto very different ends when they thus attempt
the attainment of their political rights.Either they may wish to put an end
to lawful plunder, or they maydesire to take part in it. Woe
to the nation where this latter thoughtprevails among the masses at the moment when
(11:37):
they, in their turn, seizeupon the legislative power. Up to that
time, lawful plunder has been exercisedby the few upon the many, as
in the case in countries where theright of legislating is confined to a few
hands. But now it has becomeuniversal, and the equilibrium is sought in
universal plunder. The us that societycontains, instead of being rooted out of
(12:03):
it, is generalized. As soonas the injured classes have recovered their political
rights, their first thought is notto abolish plunder. This would suppose them
to possess enlightenment, which they cannothave, but to organize against the other
classes and to their own detriment,a system of reprisals, as if it
(12:24):
were necessary before the reign of justicearrives, that all should undergo a cruel
retribution, some for their iniquity andsome for their ignorance. It would be
impossible, therefore, to introduce intosociety a greater change and a greater evil
than this, the conversion of thelaw into an instrument of plunder. What
(12:46):
would be the consequences of such aperversion. It would require volumes to describe
them all. We must content ourselveswith pointing out the most striking. In
the first place, it would effacefrom everybody's conscience the distinction between justice and
injustice. No society can exist unlessthe laws are respected to a certain degree.
(13:09):
But the safest way to make themrespected is to make them respectable.
When law and morality are in contradictionto each other, the citizen fines himself
in the cruel alternative of either losinghis moral sense or of losing his respect
for the law, two evils ofequal magnitude between which it would be difficult
(13:31):
to choose. It is so muchin the nature of law to support justice
that in the minds of the massesthey are one and the same. There
is in all of us a strongdisposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate,
so much so that many falsely deriveall justice from law. It is
(13:52):
sufficient, then for the law toorder and sanction plunder, that it may
appear to many consciences just and sacredslavery protection and monopoly fine defenders, not
only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.
If you suggest a doubt as tothe morality of these institutions, it
is said directly you are a dangerousexperimenter, a utopian, a theorist,
(14:18):
a despiser of the laws. Youwould shake the basis upon which society rests
if you lecture upon morality or politicaleconomy. Official bodies will be found to
make this request to the government,that henceforth science be taught not only with
sole reference to free exchange, toliberty, property and justice, as has
(14:41):
been the case up to the presenttime, but also, and especially with
reference to the facts and legislation contraryto liberty, property and justice that regulate
French industry, that in public lecturnssalaried by the Treasury. The professor abstained
rigorously from endangering, in the slightestdegree the respect due to the laws now
(15:03):
in force, so that if alaw exists that sanctions slavery or monopoly,
oppression or plunder in any form whatever, it must not be mentioned for how
can it be mentioned without damaging therespect that it inspires. Still, further,
morality and political economy must be taughtin connection with this law, that
(15:26):
is, under the supposition that itmust be just only because it is law.
End of Section one
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