Having disposed of the arguments of Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Matter against property in children prior to their mental development into social beings, I now come to those of Mr. Badcock, whose letter appeared in the last issue of Liberty. The difference between Mr. Badcock and myself seems to hinge on the determination of the prime motive that prompts defensive association. He thinks that the motive is sympathy,—that we associate primarily to defend others, not to defend ourselves. He thinks that, when A and B combine for protective purposes, A is moved to this course chiefly because he wishes B to be secure in his liberty and property, and that B is moved by a similar prime interest in A, or, it may be, that both A and B are moved to make their combination because each is primarily interested in securing the liberty of an outsider, C. This is all that I can gather from the opening paragraph of Mr. Badcock’s letter, and especially from the sentence in which he declares that without the stimuli of the sympathetic feelings no plans would be pushed.
Such a declaration clearly involves the idea that the desire for one’s own liberty is insufficient to prompt one to associate with others to secure it by agreeing to secure theirs in return. It greatly puzzles me to find such doctrine propounded by an Egoist. If I were convinced of its truth, I should at once abandon my claim that children should be property. But in the same breath I should abandon many other things as well. Once show me that mere sympathy is sufficient to make interference justifiable and expedient, and I shall undertake to govern my fellow-men in many thousands of ways. The difficulty will be to find a sufficient number of persons whose sympathies are identical with mine to enable an exercise of controlling power. If sympathy is to determine our course in these matters, there is no reason why those who believe that total abstinence from liquor-drinking is conducive to the happiness of the abstainer should not force abstinence upon all, or why those who believe that unequal distribution of wealth is a cause of suffering should not resort to collective ownership of the means of production in order to level fortunes, or why those who believe that godless teaching is inimical to human welfare should not suppress all propagandism save that which emanates from the Vatican; and similarly, of course, there is no reason why those whose sympathies so move them should not combine to protect children from cruel parents. In fact, I do not dispute for a moment that any persons who choose to make the attempt may ignore well-founded political teaching, and act, either individually or in association, for the attainment of any purpose whatsoever. The only question for such people to consider is whether such action can result successfully and is expedient. To determine this they will find it necessary to take into account the facts and conditions confronting them and the motives that govern mankind in general.
And here, taking direct issue with Mr. Badcock, I assert that sympathy is not the prime motive of defensive association, and that the one motive common to all persons who enter into such association is the protection of self. It seems to me that this fact is very clearly recognized by Mr. Badcock in his Slaves to Duty. In defending others against aggressors,
he says in that pamphlet, we lessen the chances of being attacked ourselves. In pursuing such egoistic conduct our sympathetic natures are developed.
What does this mean, if not that we primarily defend others in order to make ourselves secure, and that sympathy is later and secondary,—in fact, largely a direct outgrowth of the associative action which the desire for self-protection originally inspires? Self-protection being, then, the motive of the association, it is of the highest importance to suit the association to the attainment of that end. Now, how will this matter be viewed by mankind in general? We can best answer this question by assuming the non-existence of all political institutions and the confrontation of human beings such as they are today with the problem of association for defence. In the absence of such association, each individual is an ego, at liberty to consider the entire universe, including even adult humanity, as his own so far as he has power to make it so. Now, inasmuch as the proposed defensive association, in order to the attainment of this end, must be as inclusive as possible, so that there will be no temptation for persons capable of joining it to remain outside and thereby constitute an obstacle to the association’s oject; and inasmuch as it is particularly desirable to include those who, from lack of sympathy in their natures, would be especially dangerous and disturbing as outsiders,—it becomes necessary to inquire what the least sympathetic individual will insist on as a condition of joining the association. Clearly this individual will reason as follows:
At present the entire universe is subject to my appropriation, so far as my might permits. There are, however, other beings on earth of whom the same is true. With these obviously I shall clash. It will be to my advantage to reduce the appropriable portion of the universe, if I can thereby hold securely and with less clashing such portion of the remainder as I may succeed in appropriating. I am willing, then, to enter into an agreement with others whereby each of us shall undertake: (1) to refrain from attempts to appropriate certain portions of the universe; (2) to join in preventing these portions of the universe from being appropriated by anybody; and (3) to join in protecting the property of those who may appropriate any other portion of the universe. What portions of the universe shall we exempt from appropriation? It is for my interest and for the interest of those contracting with me to surrender as little as possible of the appropriable sphere, and yet it is equally essential to surrender so much of it that the possibility of interference with appropriation of the remainder may be reduced to a minimum. The forces which can thus interfere and whose liability to interfere can be lessened by admission to participation in the agreement are those, and only those, which are capable of understanding and entering into the agreement. It is for my interest, then, that all such forces, and no others, should be excluded from the appropriable sphere. These forces comprise only human beings, and only such human beings as have reached a stage of mental development which enables them to promise not to invade as a condition of not being invaded. My agreement, therefore, shall be with these mentally-developed human beings, and the right to appropriate these in measure of my might I voluntarily relinquish, reserving my right to appropriate any other being or anything that exists and is not already appropriated.
In this line of reasoning we find the necessary conditions of
defensive association arrived at in obedience to the single motive that is
common to all the contracting parties; and it is clear that these conditions
placed undeveloped children in the property sphere. That out of this mutualism
in protection there grows an interest in the welfare of others, developing the
sympathetic nature in the human breast, I not only do not deny, but assert as
joyfully as Mr. Badcock. I look upon this development too, as a finer and
more delightful thing than the soil in which it has its root. But upon this soil
it is dependent none the less. And the logic of this growth is not that
the sympathies extend the liberties,
as Mr. Badcock claims,
but that the liberties extend the sympathies. If you make sympathy the soil,
tyranny will be the ugly growth. But, if you make the desire for self-liberty
the soil, the beautiful flower of sympathy will ultimately bloom. From the lower
to the higher,—that is the order of nature. There is a sense, indeed, and
a very important sense, in which the sympathies, after their development, do
extend the liberties. They extend the liberties voluntarily allowed by the
owners to the beings that they own, and thereby both animals and children
greatly profit; they do not extend, however, but rather are born of, those
liberties which it is the function of defensive association to enforce. It is
true also that the sympathies may and do become, in a steadily increasing number
of individuals, an additional and secondary motive for participation in the
contract, but they are never basic; and, while it is conceivable that they
should become so strong and universal that even the least sympathetic individual
would then be willing to exclude children from the property sphere, this
condition would in itself imply a cessation of cruelty to children and render
the prohibition thereof superfluous. In other words, this again would be a
voluntary granting, by owners, of a degree of liberty to the beings owned. This
same development of sympathies might lead in the same manner to the exclusion of
masterpieces of art from the property sphere. Knowing the inestimable happiness
that a chef-d’œuvre can give to the human race, and
knowing the virtual impossibility of its reproduction, and knowing its liability
to abuse or destruction by an unappreciative owner, we should, if we obeyed our
sympathetic instincts, take it from such an owner. But to reduce the property
sphere in this and similar ways would tend to cause the unsympathetic and
ill-disposed persons whom it is the prime purpose of the defensive contract to
bring to terms, to decline to come to terms,—that is, to decline to join
in the contract. Therefore, since a defensive association that will be
attractive to such persons is of the first necessity for all of us, it would be
in the degree inexpedient to exclude works of art from the property sphere
before the motive for such exclusion had disappeared through the decline of the
disposition to abuse works of art. All of which means that the work of sympathy
properly belongs in the voluntary realm. The force realm exists, not to meet the
sympathies, but to protect the primary interests of those who constitute it.
It seems to me unnecessary to deal with Mr. Badcock’s subsidiary considerations. In the first place, his letter was written before he had seen my later articles on this subject, in which I have already met points similar to those which he raises. In the second place, the argument employed above meets squarely his central contention. If it is sound, it is conclusive, and renders the discussion of other points needless. If it is unsound, it is for Mr. Badcock to point out the fallacy.
I wish to disclaim, however, any share in the belief which Mr. Badcock supposes me to hold in common with him that parents are the natural guardians of their offspring. I do not see why he supposes me to believe this, for not only is guardianship, as he says, not synonymous with ownership, but it is flatly contradictory of it so far as the guardian is concerned. Guardianship implies responsibility to another. In ownership there is no such responsibility. As I maintain that a mother is the owner of her child, of course I deny that she is the guardian of her child. And in this connection I may notice an argument which Mr. Badcock is alone in bringing forward. To distinguish children from property, he says that parents are not producers of their children in the same sense that they are the producers of their handiwork, because the evolution of the child’s complex tissues and endowments goes on independently of the parents’ will. If this proves anything, it proves too much and abolishes property altogether, for there is no production whatsoever which is not aided by and absolutely dependent upon the qualities inherent in matter, which the producer did not create. How much, pray, has a farmer’s will to do with the evolution of the tissues and endowments of a potato? If it is grotesquely impudent
for a mother to claim that she produced her child, it is equally so for the farmer to claim that he is the producer of his crop of hay. It is an old charge of the Communists that all believers in private property are grotesque in their impudence.
Does Mr. Badcock agree with them?
And similarly does Communism show its head in the doctrine of Mr. Phipson, stated in his letter in another column, that the rights of sentient beings are determined by their capacities. The capacity of a sentient being to eat may establish its right to get food if it can, but it does not establish its right to be provided with food by others, or the duty of others to feed it. To declare otherwise is to adopt the Communistic principle, To each according to his needs.
If Mr. Phipson is not an Egoist, his only means of converting me to his view of children’s rights is to show me that the Egoistic philosophy is a false one. If he is an Egoist, then he cannot claim that children or adults have any rights except such as they may acquire by contract or such as may be granted them by other contracting parties. It remains then to consider whether it is consistent with the primary purpose of the defensive contract to grant rights to undeveloped children. I have advanced arguments to show that it is not. Until these arguments have been refuted, I have no occasion to review Mr. Phipson’s letter. But I take this occasion to congratulate him on being, I believe, the first among my critics to recognize the fact that there are other dangers than that of cruelty to children which must be weighed in this discussion.
What is Property? in Liberty Vol. XI.—No. 11, Whole No. 323 (October 5, 1895). 3-4.