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Page 59
Now socialism, thus defined, and forming a doctrinal body, what other
war would you make against it than a war of doctrine? You find this
doctrine false, absurd, abominable. Refute it. This will be all the more
easy, the more false, the more absurd and the more abominable it is.
Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out of your
legislation every particle of socialism which may have crept into
it,--and this will be no light work.
M. Montalembert has been reproached with wishing to turn brute force
against socialism. He ought to be exonerated from this reproach, for he
has plainly said:--"The war which we must make against socialism must be
one which is compatible with the law, honour, and justice."
But how is it that M. Montalembert does not see that he is placing
himself in a vicious circle? You would oppose law to socialism. But it
is the law which socialism invokes. It aspires to legal, not extra-legal
plunder. It is of the law itself, like monopolists of all kinds, that it
wants to make an instrument; and when once it has the law on its side,
how will you be able to turn the law against it? How will you place it
under the power of your tribunals, your gendarmes, and of your prisons?
What will you do then? You wish to prevent it from taking any part in
the making of laws. You would keep it outside the Legislative Palace. In
this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal
plunder is the basis of the legislation within.
It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be
determined, and there are only three solutions of it:--
1. When the few plunder the many.
2. When everybody plunders everybody else.
3. When nobody plunders anybody.
Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we
have to make our choice. The law can only produce one of these results.
_Partial_ plunder.--This is the system which prevailed so long as the
elective privilege was _partial_--a system which is resorted to to avoid
the invasion of socialism.
_Universal_ plunder.--We have been threatened by this system when the
elective privilege has become universal; the masses having conceived the
idea of making law, on the principle of legislators who had preceded
them.
_Absence_ of plunder.--This is the principle of justice, peace, order,
stability, conciliation, and of good sense, which I shall proclaim with
all the force of my lungs (which is very inadequate, alas!) till the day
of my death.
And, in all sincerity, can anything more be required at the hands of the
law? Can the law, whose necessary sanction is force, be reasonably
employed upon anything beyond securing to every one his right? I defy
any one to remove it from this circle without perverting it, and
consequently turning force against right. And as this is the most fatal,
the most illogical social perversion which can possibly be imagined, it
must be admitted that the true solution, so much sought after, of the
social problem, is contained in these simple words--LAW IS ORGANISED
JUSTICE.
Now it is important to remark, that to organise justice by law, that is
to say by force, excludes the idea of organising by law, or by force any
manifestation whatever of human activity--labour, charity, agriculture,
commerce, industry, instruction, the fine arts, or religion; for any one
of these organisations would inevitably destroy the essential
organisation. How, in fact, can we imagine force encroaching upon the
liberty of citizens without infringing upon justice, and so acting
against its proper aim?
Here I am encountering the most popular prejudice of our time. It is
not considered enough that law should be just, it must be philanthropic.
It is not sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free
and inoffensive exercise of his faculties, applied to his physical,
intellectual, and moral development; it is required to extend
well-being, instruction, and morality, directly over the nation. This is
the fascinating side of socialism.
But, I repeat it, these two missions of the law contradict each other.
We have to choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be
free and not free. M. de Lamartine wrote to me one day thus:--"Your
doctrine is only the half of my programme; you have stopped at liberty,
I go on to fraternity." I answered him:--"The second part of your
programme will destroy the first." And in fact it is impossible for me
to separate the word _fraternity_ from the word _voluntary_. I cannot
possibly conceive fraternity _legally_ enforced, without liberty being
_legally_ destroyed, and justice _legally_ trampled under foot. Legal
plunder has two roots: one of them, as we have already seen, is in human
egotism; the other is in false philanthropy.
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