on of liberty and
property,--legal plunder.

You say, "Here are men who are wanting in morality or religion," and
you apply to the law; but law is force, and need I say how far it is a
violent and absurd enterprise to introduce force in these matters?

As the result of its systems and of its efforts, it would seem that
socialism, notwithstanding all its self-complacency, can scarcely help
perceiving the monster of legal plunder. But what does it do? It
disguises it cleverly from others, and even from itself, under the
seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organisation, association.
And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we
only ask it for justice, it supposes that we reject fraternity,
solidarity, organisation, and association; and they brand us with the
name of _individualists_.

We can assure them that what we repudiate is, not natural organisation,
but forced organisation.

It is not free association, but the forms of association which they
would impose upon us.

It is not spontaneous fraternity, but legal fraternity.

It is not providential solidarity, but artificial solidarity, which is
only an unjust displacement of responsibility.

Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds
Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being
done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at
all. We disapprove of education by the State--then we are against
education altogether. We object to a State religion--then we would
have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about
by the State--then we are against equality, &c., &c. They might as well
accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the
cultivation of corn by the State.

How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does
not contain--prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth, science,
religion--should ever have gained ground in the political world? The
modern politicians, particularly those of the Socialist school, found
their different theories upon one common hypothesis; and surely a more
strange, a more presumptuous notion, could never have entered a human
brain.

They divide mankind into two parts. Men in general, except one, form the
first; the politician himself forms the second, which is by far the most
important.

In fact, they begin by supposing that men are devoid of any principle of
action, and of any means of