Judging by the rumpus which I have all unsuspectingly kicked up by my assertion of the parental ownership of children, evidence of which rumpus is to be found on other pages of this issue, the child is likely to prove a very troublesome member of the Anarchistic family, especially in Queen Victoria’s realm, whence most of the criticism showered upon me has thus far come,—this latter fact being to me the more singular because such opportunities for observation (very limited, to be sure) as I have enjoyed have tended to convince me that in no other of the highly-civilized countries, or even in these semi-barbarous United States,a re children so contemptuously ignored, when not brutally bullied, as in England. But of course I am not concerned at present with national customs or characteristics; the matter in hand is the application of the Anarchistic principle to that perplexing social factor, the infant.
My critics seem to be under an impression that in this matter I arrive at my conclusion by a special test of expediency. Such is not the case. It is, to be sure, only on egoistic and utilitarian grounds—that is, grounds of expediency—that I believe in equal liberty. But, having concluded that equal liberty is expedient, my application of the principle in the matter of children is, like my application of it elsewhere, as rigid as my analytical faculties can make it. Mr. Byington does not state my view with perfect accuracy when he represents me as holding that it is better that children be owned by their parents than by the community.
True, I do think that parental ownership is better than community ownership; but Mr. Byington’s form of statement tends to leave an impression that in my view an Anarchist, weighing the respective merits of the two methods, could, consistently with his Anarchism, decide in favor of community ownership. My distinct declaration, on the contrary, was that, if we are Anarchists, we shall decide in favor of the parent.
I do not believe that it is better that children should be owned by their parents than by the community in any other sense than that in which I believe that it is better that potatoes should be owned by their producers than by the community. Such portions of my critics’ arguments, then, as proceed upon the idea that I apply a specifically utilitarian test to this particular matter are not pertinent to hte issue between us, for which reason I dismiss them.
Though I, as an Egoist, agree with Mr. Fisher that even ownership in general is but a means to an end,
and that I am in no wise bound to respect property (except as I bind myself by contract), and that we tolerate appropriation because no better basis for industrialism has been or seems likely to be invented,
it is none the less true that, having fixed upon appropriation as the best basis for industrialism that we know of, we combine to protect and maintain it; and the principle of equal liberty allows us to thus combine, if we do so voluntarily. We combine, moreover, to protect, not only property, but also life and liberty. But the life, liberty, and property of whom? So far as the child and its status are concerned, this is the crucial question. And I answer it that we combine to protect the life, liberty, and property only of those who have reached a stage of development which enables them to form at least some crude conception of such a combination and its purpose,—in other words, only of those in whose minds the idea of contract has taken shape. If we protect the life and liberty of organisms that are outside this limit, we do so only in the interest of their owners; we do not protect them against their owners. As for the property of such organisms, they have none; they are themselves the property of others. Were we to protect organisms outside this limit in their own interest and against everybody, we should by that very act cease in a measure to protect the property right of organisms inside the limit. All this is but another way of saying what I said in No. 313,—that sociological material consists of two categories, the owners and the owned, and that the possession or lack of the power to contract, of the power to consciously and deliberately undertake to serve another in return for another’s service and respect another in return for another’s respect, determines the category in which any given organism belongs. No animal has this power; therefore all animals fall into the category of the owned, and are not entitled to social protection. There is a time in the life of every child when it lacks this power, and there is also a time in the life of every normal child whom death does not cut off in infancy when it acquires this power. As long as the child lacks this power, it remains in the category of the owned, and should not have social protection, because that would be injustice to its owner; as soon as it acquires this power, it becomes an owner, emancipates itself, and may contract for social protection. But this emancipation does not consist, as Mr. Fisher and Mr. Byington seem to think, in the mere manifestation of a recognizable will. Animals have wills and can make their volitions known, but they do not thereby become owners, and members of society. The necessary qualification for social membership is the power to entertain the simple idea of the social contract.
Now a second question arises: if the unemancipated child falls within the category of the owned, who is its owner? I answer that I can see no clearer property title in the world than that of the mother to the fruit of her womb, unless she has otherwise disposed of it by contract. Certainly the mother’s title to the child while it remains in her womb will not be denied by any Anarchist. To deny this would be to deny the right of the mother to commit suicide during pregnancy, and I never knew an Anarchist to deny the right of suicide. If, then, the child is the mother's while in the womb, by what consideration does the title to it become vested in another than the mother on its emergence from the womb and pending the day of its emancipation? I think that no valid consideration can be shown; and if such is the case, then it is established that the unemancipated child is the property of its mother, of which, by an obvious corollary, she may dispose as freely as she may dispose of any other property belonging to her.
It seems to me that in the foregoing paragraphs I have formulated the principles that settle the status of mother and child, and the relations of third parties to both. I accept in advance any conclusions that can logically be drawn from them, no matter how startling they may seem. It rests upon my critics, not to point out these startling conclusions (for I can think of none that would constitute a reductio ad absurdum), but to overthrow my argument. And so I have no occasion to consider the special considerations and questions and instances brought forward by Mr. Byington, Mr. Fisher, and Mr. Gilmour. My argument cuts under all of them. I have no more occasion to refute Mr. Byington’s contention that parental treatment of children should be passed upon by a court of appeal than I should have to refute a proposition to empower the courts to prevent me from throwing my morning newspaper into the stove. The latter proposition could be sustained only by a fundamental revision of accepted theories of property, and I hold that this is equally true of the former proposition, unless my claim that the unemancipated child is property can be overthrown.
It remains, then, only to point out to Mr. Gilmour that the contradiction between my present position and that which I took in Instead of a Book is not of the nature that he supposes it to be. If I had previously held that parental cruelty is indubitable invasion and therefore to be prohibited, my present argument would indeed show a complete revolution in my opinion on this subject. But Mr. Gilmour will find, on re-reading the articles from which he quotes certain sentences, that I explicitly stated therein that I considered it a matter of doubt whether parental cruelty is invasive, and that I justified interference with it in extreme cases only on the ground of that necessity which arises in the face of disaster immediately impending. The change, then, which my opinion has undergone consists simply in the substitution of certainty for doubt as to the non-invasive character of parental cruelty,—a substitution which involves the conclusion that parental cruelty is not to be prohibited, since third parties have not to consider the danger of disaster to organisms that are outside the limits of social protection. Such a change of opinion as this is not the reversal of an Anarchistic principle, but, if well founded, an evidence of progress in the work of reducing the doubtful area lying between invasion and non-invasion. It strengthens the foundations of Anarchism, and therefore should be welcomed by every Anarchist.
In conclusion I may add, to reassure those who shrink from reason when it seems to do violence to their sympathies, that I have the welfare of children as sincerely at heart as any of my critics, and that I believe that an observance of the principles here formulated would secure to children, on the whole, greater happiness than they have ever enjoyed, or than they ever can enjoy in any society neglectful of these principles.