Page:Anarchism- Its Aims and Methods (Yarros, 1887).pdf/9

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

8

chism throws a flood of light upon this wild scene, and clearly outlines the issue as well as the methods of settling it. It sums up the whole complicated situation in the following trenchant declaration:

Government is the Father of All Social Evil;

while it reveals the true and perfect solution of the problem in the formula of Proudhon:

Liberty is the Mother, Not the Daughter, of Order.

The Anarchists' motto is: "No more government of man by man," and their chief battle with the State,—"the State, that debases man; the State, that prostitutes woman; the State, that corrupts children; the State, that trammels love; the State, that stifles thought; the State, that monopolizes land; the State, that limits credit; the State, that restricts exchange; the State, that gives idle capital the power of increase and allows it, through interest, rent, and profits, to rob industrious labor of its products."

They do not claim that the mere abolition of the State would instantly result in the world's regeneration; but they assert that nothing short of such abolition will be sufficient to enable those factors and forces upon which the world's regeneration does depend to fully and freely enter into play. Not all the crimes with which the State is charged in the above indictment, which is copied verbatim from the first number of the Anarchists' organ, Liberty, have been directly and deliberately committed by it; but indirectly it is the cause of their continued existence, if not of their origin.

We need not attempt here to trace the growth of the social disease back to its prime source. It is inessential to the purport of our argument to undertake a search for the "cause of