Law vs Liberty – Albert Parsons (1887)

From ‘The Alarm’, Dec. 3, 1887, Chicago, USA, republished in ‘Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis as Defined by Some of Its Apostles’, by Albert Parsons, published by Lucy E. Parsons in 1887

“Anarchy is license,” exclaim the law-abiding citizens.

“If this is true, then what in the name of liberty is law?” retort the anarchists.

What is law? It is a command, an order, and the State enforces compliance.

What is the State? The legislative, judicial and executive powers are what constitute the State. The law is manufactured, “made” to order by the legislators, and then expounded and applied by the judges, and then enforced or executed by the police, militia, army, and navy.

Law being a command or order to do or refrain from doing something, it is, therefore, not liberty, but license, and consequently despotic. Law — statute law — is designed to force or compel some person or persons to respect and support the privileges it confers upon some other person or persons. Law — statute law — is license, because it establishes the inequality of rights and duties, and maintains the inequality of conditions and opportunities. “Equal rights under the law,” is a misnomer, since the only function of statute law is the creation of privileges and inequalities. Law — statute law — is the instrumentality by means of which people are made to serve and obey, to work and suffer for other peoples’ benefit. Law — statute law — is the denial of a person’s natural, inalienable rights by other persons.

There are two kinds of law — natural and artificial. The artificial or manufactured law also manufactures police, militia and prisons. Law — statute law — is “the coward’s weapon, the tool of the thief.” Cowardly, because man would not or could not otherwise degrade, enslave, and murder his fellow man. Rascally, because without it man would not and could not dominate and exploit his fellow man. Therefore, “equal rights under the law” means no more nor less than the rascality necessary to take an advantage and the cowardly brutality necessary to keep it. This is law; its sole and only purpose.

Life and liberty insures happiness; privilege destroys both. Law is privilege, is license. Life is denied to all those who are denied the equal right to the free use of the means of existence — capital. Only by the use of the means of subsistence is life possibly maintained; and only by the equal right to its free use is liberty possible. Happiness is the child, and its parents are life and liberty. The slave has life. The freeman possesses both liberty and life. The dependence of one person upon another for permission to work and eat is the foundation upon which the wage-slave system of industry is built. Capital is a law-protected institution. It is privileged property. There is no such thing in nature’s law as privilege, chartered rights. This moloch devours nine tenths of the human race, who feed its ravenous jaws with their own flesh and blood. This beast, ”the property beast,” is what is otherwise known as law and government. Law — statute law — is license, because its sole and only function is to deny the producer the possession and enjoyment of his product.

Law does not and cannot, in fact, create anything but privileges. Rights exist inherently. Labor, and labor alone, does or can create wealth, and the wealth-creators are poor by virtue of and solely on account of law. Law takes wealth from the producer and bestows it upon the non-prodacer; it curses industry with poverty and blesses idleness with wealth. Law is the mainspring of everlasting contention among men. It creates classes, produces masters and slaves; it is the source of ignorance, disease, crime, war, of every moral, social and physical evil. Law creates and perpetuates poverty; first, by depriving the producers and keeping them poor, and, secondly, by preventing the unlimited application of wealth-creating forces in steam, electricity and machinery.

Law — statute law — is an insult to our natures, a repression upon human capacity, and the degradation of social effort. Do away with all compulsory statutes; abolish all legislative enactments based upon authority, as a conspiracy against man’s ability to co-operate. Liberty calls out individuality, co-operative activity, and offers scope for the highest development of our powers. Cease treating men and women as children. Remove the crutches and society will spontaneously respond to every new demand, and men and women will walk freely and co-operate to secure all that is needful.

Albert R. Parsons