Having considered in the last issue Mr. Lloyd’s departure from Anarchism and its motives and bearings, it remains to consider his arguments on the child question and the contrasting fundamental positions in accordance with one of which it must be settled. The reader should refresh his memory by reference to Mr. Lloyd’s letter and my comments in No. 322, and his later letter in No. 325.
The constant difficulty that besets Mr. Lloyd in his political discussions is his inability to distinguish between that which it is right to do—that is, that which it is necessary to do in order to attain the end in view—and that which one has a right to do—that is, that which one’s fellows agree to let him do in peace and undisturbed. Now, the whole matter of scientific politics is a question how far we had better give each other a right to do that which each may think it is right to do. Of course it may be said further, and correctly, that this again is but a question of what it is right—that is, best or necessary—to give each other a right to do. But, whatever the conclusion that may be reached upon this point, it is clear that it can be put into execution only through contract, agreement, between those undertaking thus to give to each other
the right determined upon. In the absence of such a contract the right to do does not exist at all. It has not been called into existence. Under these non-political conditions a certain course may be right in the sense that it is the straight course to a certain end, but rights in the political sense there then are none. If a man then pursue one course or another, it is solely be virtue of the fact that he has a natural and non-conventional power to pursue it. We may express this loosely, as I often do, by saying that under such conditions might is right; but the phrase is not accurate. It is more accurate, and it is sufficient, to say simply that might is might, and end it there. Rights begin only with convention. They are not the liberties that exist through natural power, but the liberties that are created by mutual guarantee.
Now, supposing ourselves assembled to establish this guarantee, to make our contract, to determine what is right, best, necessary, to give each other a right to do, Mr. Lloyd may very properly take the floor to maintain that it is not right, best, necessary, to give any human being property in another human being, and that it is right, best, necessary, to guarantee equal liberty to all human beings. But he must prove it. His proposition is not an axiom; it is open to dispute. Its mere assertion does not establish it; no more is it established by spelling Natural Right with a big N and a big R. Mr. Lloyd must marshal his evidence. If he does not do so, I claim the floor and maintain that it is not right—that is, best—to guarantee equal liberty to all human beings, for the reason that such a guarantee is inconsistent with the one purpose common to all the contracting parties—namely, the security of each of them in the control of their persons and the results of their efforts,—and that to the accomplishment of this purpose the necessary thing is a guarantee of equal liberty to all persons capable of entertaining the idea of contract. And in support of this contention I offer in detail the various considerations which I have urged in my articles upon this subject.
When Mr. Lloyd shall overthrow the two preceding paragraphs, he will be justified in claiming that he is not under the régime of contract; but, until then, he necessarily is under that régime, and bound by his own admissions to accept its logical consequence of property in babies. If he shall attempt to overthrow them, let him not accuse me of abandoning the ground which I took in No. 322. In discarding the phrases right of might,
right of invasion,
etc. (which I may return to, for convenience, in some future discussion in which it may be less necessary to speak with strict accuracy), I do not change my position at all, but simply so confine my use of terms as to reduce to a minimum the chance of misunderstanding.
So far Mr. Lloyd has backed his denial of the contract régime by only one argument,—that society cannot be founded upon contract because no individual is under any obligation to keep his contract, and therefore it is obligatory upon his fellows to refrain from enforcing the contract upon him. The final inference is unwarrantable. It is the contrary, rather, that follows. There is no moral obligation upon the individual either to make a contract, or to keep a contract after making it; and, similarly, there is no moral obligation upon his fellows, with whom he may have made a contract, to allow him to repudiate the contract. There is no moral obligation at all on either side. A contract is made voluntarily, for mutual advantage. For its violation penalties are fixed. If a contracting party chooses to violate, he suffers these penalties, provided the other parties have the desire and power to enforce them. And that is all there is to it. Such an arrangement is shown by experience to be practicable. Therefore a society can be founded upon it. Not a true society,
says Mr. Lloyd. As to that, I don’t know. At any rate, a society that accomplishes its purpose.
The makers of a general contract guaranteeing equal liberty to all those capable of contracting would not enforce the particular contract supposed by Mr. Lloyd, where a man should agree to be a slave for life, or any other contract inconsistent with the general contract.
Mr. Lloyd’s explanation of his cripple illustration does not
establish at all his right to dictate the cripple’s manner of living. If
there is no agreement between Mr. Lloyd and the cripple whereby the latter
agrees to conform to the former’s wishes in the matter of diet in return
for his food-supply, then, as Mr. Lloyd says, the food furnished the cripple by
Mr. Lloyd is a free gift. But such a gift is no justification of authority over
the crupple. Mr. Lloyd, producing apples and oranges, can give the cripple
apples if he chooses, but it is not by giving him apples that Mr. Lloyd acquires
the right to forbid him to touch the oranges. He, as a producer of the oranges,
has a right, under the general contract, to forbid him to touch the oranges,
even though he does not give him apples or anything else. Nor does the free
gift
of apples give Mr. Lloyd a right to tell the cripple to eat
apples.
The cripple has a perfect right to refuse to eat the apples that Mr.
Lloyd gives him. The matter of authority and dictation does not enter into the
case at all. The most that can be said is this, if the cripple finds it
impossible to obtain food in any other manner, it happens to be in Mr.
Lloyd’s power to place before the cripple the alternative of eating apples
or starving to death. But this is not enough to substantiate Mr. Lloyd’s
declaration that the cripple is his subject. Dependence and subjection are
different things. In the same sense, though not in the same degree, that the
cripple is dependent upon Mr. Lloyd are all the people in the world dependent
one upon another. But this does not make them the subjects one of another. There
is a sense in which no man is free, but in the political sense—and we are
now talking politics—Mr. Lloyd’s cripple is as free as any man on
earth. If the cripple is the subject of those who give him alms, then the
storekeeper is the subject of the customers who bestow on him their patronage,
and upon whom he is dependent for his livelihood. But to accept that conclusion is to misuse terms and misunderstand politics. As I said in my previous article, this illustration has little bearing on the matter in hand; I discuss it only because Mr. Lloyd brought it forward and because it throws light on his peculiar reasoning.
One reason why it has little bearing is that Mr. Lloyd’s relation to the cripple, based on his free gift of food, is not at all analogous to the relation of parent to child, if, as Mr. Lloyd declares, the parent owes the child support. Even were it to be admitted (though it cannot be) that the gift to the cripple establishes a degree of authority over him, it could not be allowed for a moment that the payment of a debt to the child establishes the smallest authority over it or claim upon it. The curious notions of debit and credit which Mr. Lloyd showed in recent criticisms on Mr. Badcock are revealed again here. To say that a parent owes support to a child, but may determine the form of that support, is equivalent to saying that the parent owes nothing at all. For there is no legal debt—that is to say—no debt of which third parties may take cognizance—where the determination of the debt belongs exclusively to the debtor. As to the child’s debt to the parent, if such indebtedness falls upon the child as a member of free society
(which, by the way, I deny, for the child of whom I am talking is not a member of any society), it differs in no wise from the debt of every other member of free society to this same parent, and is entirely independent of parental support of the child. So the flagrant contradiction
and mental suicide
which Mr. Lloyd asks me to locate lie precisely where they lay before,—in claiming in the same breath that the parent owes something to the child and yet is entitled to exact something from the child in return for payment of the debt.
Mr. Lloyd, in his first letter, said that the parent, having forced dependent life upon the child, is an invader, if refusing support to this dependent individual.
I answered that the stock-breeder who refuses support to a calf is equally an invader. Yes, rejoins Mr. Lloyd, but what we want is human equal liberty, which begins and ends with human beings. Once more, assertion without proof. This is the question at issue. I say that what we want is that equal liberty which begins and ends with beings capable of grasping the idea of contract, and I have given proof of this in an elaborate argument which has not been refuted.
From this point Mr. Lloyd proceeds with a succession of exclamatory remarks prompted by my contention that Anarchy does not exclude slavery or ownership of the mentally undeveloped, and indicative, despite the declaration of his perfect calmness at the opening of his article, of a high degree of excitement. And he himself suggests the words that are accurately descriptive of these remarks. They are essentially superstitious. They belong to the lingo of religion. They are based on the old idea that man is a special creature, for whose benefit the rest of the universe was intended. They are in the last degree absurd. Man is a special being only in the sense that he is, on the whole, the most developed and most powerful being. He is an incident in the universe, and in all probability will some day be summarily extinguished in universal processes. The universe was not intended for his benefit. If he, for some trifling period of a million years or so, happens to be able to in a degree submit it to his uses, by all means he should do so. That he should defend himself against the universe is only natural. But that he is sacred is sheer nonsense. There is no more reason in saying that man should not be property because he is human than there would be in saying that dogs should not be property because they are canine. To Mr. Lloyd’s arbitrary distinction how much I prefer the attitude of Mr. Badcock, who, in his sympathy with every creature that can feel, is as ready to abolish property in animals as to prohibit property in children! His method of minimizing pain seems to me a mistaken and ineffective one, but at least he bows before no spooks.
The slavery of babes and fools is the meanest and most cowardly of all,
Mr. Lloyd tells us. Why? That he does not tell us. It may be more cowardly to enslave a babe than to enslave a lion, but it is certainly not more so than to enslave a lamb. The sentence quoted is as silly sentimentalism as that which declares it more cowardly to hang a woman than a man. A woman’s physical inferiority disappears entirely in the equal helplessness of man and woman when confronted individually by collective power. And similarly babes and domestic animals are alike defenceless against grown men.
It is enough for me to know that you and I, Mr. Tucker, would never be safe in any society which did not hold the life and liberty of every human being sacred.
Yes, I know, Mr. Lloyd, that that is enough for you. Your mind is one that accepts with very little evidence that which it wishes to believe. Mine is more exacting. Your assertion that you know this or that is not enough for me. Tell me how you know it. I insist upon that. For my part, I should feel as easy regarding my own safety, and much easier regarding the safety of my children, in a society affording protection only to the mentally developed, as persons, and protecting the mentally undeveloped only as property.
Mr. Lloyd’s contention that the unimpregnated ovum does not contain the possibilities of the child is of no force. If such be the case, then there are no possibilities in anything, for all new powers are the result of new combinations. So judged, the impregnated ovum has not the possibilities of the child, for it will never become a child unless it derives the necessary sustaining forces from the mother’s organism. And by the same reasoning the child at birth has not the possibilities of the man, for it will never become a man unless it effects a combination with air and food. But, if we take the other course and, admitting that the child has the possibilities of the man, declare that therefore it cannot be property, then we must also for the same reason say that the ovum in a woman’s body is not her property,—an absurdity patent even to Mr. Lloyd. It is comforting to know that there are still some things incredible even to one who believes that a woman, when made to conceive by an act of rape, thereby loses her right of suicide, and that a man who has just developed from a monkey is bound to compensate his former owner for the loss of property caused by this development. But such conclusions are calculated to discourage one from addressing the reason that accepts them. Après cela, il faut tirer l’échelle.
A fortnight hence we will talk of Mr. Badcock.
T.