What is Property [143]
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.
4. That PROPORTIONALITY, being admitted only in the sphere of intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be observed without violating justice or social equality.
This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we will call LIBERTY.[1]
[1] _libertas, librare, libratio, libra_,--liberty, to liberate, libration, balance (pound),--words which have a common derivation. Liberty is the balance of rights and duties. To make a man free is to balance him with others,--that is, to put him or their level.
In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism. We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the natural form of human society,-- in one word, liberty.
Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the absence of equality there is no society.
Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the will, but only the authority of the law;