think that non-official people could not arrange their life themselves as well as government people arrange it, not for themselves, but for others?
We see, on the contrary, that in the most diverse matters people in our times arrange their own lives incomparably better than those who govern them arrange for them.Without the least hellp from government, and often in spite of the interference of government, people organise all sorts of social undertakings-workmen's unions, co-operative societies, rail-way companies, artels,* and syndicates.If collections for public works are needed, why should we suppose that free people could not without violence voluntarily collect the necessary means, and carry out all that is carried out by means of taxes, if only the undertakings in question are really useful for everybody?
Why suppose that there cannot be tribunals without violence? Trial by people trusted by the disputants has always existed and will exist, and needs no violence.We are so depraved by long-continued slavery that we can hardly imagine administration without violence.And yet, again, that is not true: Russian communes migrating to distant regions, where our government leaves them alone, arrange their own taxation, administration, tribunals, and police, and always prosper until government violence interferes with their administration.And in the same way, there is no reason to suppose that people could not, by common consent, decide how the land is to be apportioned for use.
I have known people-Cossacks of the Oural - who have lived without acknowledging private property in land.And there was such prosperity and order in their commune as does not exist in society, where landed property is defended by violence.And I now know communes that live without acknowledging the right of individuals to private property.
Within my recollection the whole Russian peasantry did not accept the idea of landed property.**The defence of landed property by governmental violence not merely does not abolish the struggle for landed property, but, on the contrary, strengthens that struggle, and in many cases causes it.
Were it not for the defence of landed property, and its consequent rise in price, people would not be crowded into such narrow spaces, but would scatter over the free land, of which there is still so much in the world.But as it is, a continual struggle goes on for landed property; a struggle with the weapons government furnishes by means of its laws of landed property.And in this struggle it is not those who work on the land, but always those who take part in governmental violence, that have the advantage.
It is the same with reference to things produced by labour.Things really produced by a man's own labour, and that he needs, are always defended by custom, by public opinion, by feelings of justice and reciprocity, and they do not need to be protected by violence.
