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With this undeniable fact as our guide, let us see if State Socialism is a step toward Anarchism.
The State Socialist program, if carried out, would really increase the number of privileged persons, and these privileged persons would undoubtedly try to maintain their privileges. Thus inequalities of power and opportunity would be perpetuated and increased. The amount taken from the product of labor to provide for the priveleged class from the president of the national executive committee, the central directing authority, down to "inspector of workshop, mine and home" would increase as the commissions and offices increased, and the proposition that "labor is entitled to all it creates" would be as empty as our present boast of "individual sovereignty."
Regimentation, dictation and constant espionage do not.tend to make people free, self-reliant or noble. The degradation that would grow upon a people who would submit to such an arrangement would unfit them for freedom, and the constant surveillance of the masses by the privileged office-holding class would necessitate a violent and remorseless revolution in order to make freedom possible.
No! the road to Anarchy is not through State Socialism. We may be free only by breaking our bonds, not by substituting new and more numerous ones. The State, as a suppressor of crime and a protector of life, has been a sad failure, and to entrust it with the providing of employment and the dispensing of bread is equivalent to putting your purse in the care of one who has criminally or carelessly squandered your property.
The more the powers of the State are curtailed the more nearly we approach a condition of Anarchy: the more the powers of the State are increased the further we drift from it. How then can State Socialism, the governmentalization of everything, lead to Anarchy? It cannot.
If you really want Anarchy, refuse to uphold the State. Decline to run for or hold office. Refuse to do jury duty, and in every way practicable weaken the powers of the State.
Herding or Growth?
The minds of many persons who are both bright and powerful have failed to grasp the great underlying principle of growth, or development, and confound it with herding, or worse yet, with regimentation. I will say nothing about regimentation, the plan of the State Socialists, as it belongs in the category of political action—of compulsion.
Let us look for a minute at the propositions of those who propose to herd together, calling it a colony, or association, thinking thereby to solve the questions that so vex and perplex all thinking persons at the present time. They propose to "round up" a lot of persons of varying opinions, habits, desires and occupations in a certain place, and by all these persons working together form a new society, "based on justice and equity" as they put it, and thus show the world a better way to live. Their intentions are as good as need be, and they lack not for energy. Their plans cannot fulfill their dreams, however, and no matter how much they may strive they cannot succeed as they expect. The reason is simple; it is this: They are attempting to work in an artificial manner. I am free to admit that most that we do is artificial, but growth is a natural process, and cannot be made, but must be allowed.
In order to make clear why the herding process, that of gathering people together promiscuously, is inadequate as a method of beginning the work of reconstruction, it is only necessary to point out the "law" of growth. The work and study of scientists for ages has shown that all growth is due to accretion. An atom exists. Another atom is attracted to it and they become a body. Other atoms are attracted to this body and it grows in size. Thus the work of accretion goes on as long as the vitality necessary to attract other atoms remains in the body. Little by little the growth proceeds from the simple to the complex; from
