“Yes, that's just the way he used to rebuke me,” responded Harry, “he was always saying I should not meddle with the business of other people, and prophecying that I would get into trouble over it. He turned out right in his prophecy, unfortunately, though his stupid idea of non-interference with wrong never improved him or anyone else who held it.”
“But surely, after your recent experiences, you agree with the principle of not interfering with another's liberty, don't you?”
“Certainly I do. But can't you see that interfering with another's liberty, and interfering with another's slavery, are two very different things? The laissez faire doctrine is a very good thing if rightly understood; it simply means that each individual should be let alone to follow out his own natural desires to satisfy his wants by his own efforts. And I like to see a man exercising that right. But when he won't stop there, but demands that he be let alone when oppressing or exploiting others, it's time we interfered. That man's victim requires to be let alone just as much as the other fellow, and it is to our mutual self-interest to see that he is left alone. Laissez faire isn't a one-sided virtue; but to become a living principle, it must be universal in its application. When the authorities imprisoned me they destroyed that principle, because I was not limiting the liberty of others and wrongly lost my own. Had I limited others' liberty, by legal or illegal means (it is immaterial which) I should then have been a destroyer of that principle of non-interference, and society to preserve itself would be justified in removing me out of harm's way.”
“But the capitalist and the legislator do not directly interfere with the liberty of the proletaire, who are free to work for an employer or not, as they choose.”
“No, Fred, they are not free to do anything of the kind; they are compelled by unjust conditions to do so—not by their own free choice. The old Socialist cry of ‘Freedom of Contract,’ which the plutocrats have tried to appropriate, expresses the true idea of economic freedom. Your own success in business is obscuring your sense of justice, as it does so many others, and in endeavouring to vindicate your well-deserved efforts at success under unjust conditions, you make the common mistake of endeavoring to vindicate those conditions; instead of stopping short after having vindicated your efforts to subsist, and then honestly condemning the conditions through which you successfully struggled. Every landlord, every usurer (or banker, if you prefer the word), and every other parasite on labor is justified in his success under our present exploiting system; just as every proletariat is equally justified with his poverty under that system. But landlordism, usury, and all other forms of exploitation and restriction, are unjustifiable. It is the system that is wrong, not the men who suffer or succeed beneath that system. Society has forbidden you to live in the full enjoyment of your own efforts and has enacted in all its Statute Books a new commandment, ‘THOU SHALT ROB OR BE ROBBED,’ and you have succeeded in leaving the robbed classes and in joining the robbers. You have done your best, and merit your success. Society has done its worst, and merits the undying hatred of both you and me—the parasite and the proletaire.”
