We should like to think that science does this out of stupidity, but one only has to penetrate and examine the propositions of the science to convince oneself that it is not due to stupidity but to great ingenuity.
This science has a very definite aim, which it attains. That aim is to maintain superstition and deception among the people and thereby hinder the progress of humanity towards truth and welfare. There has long existed, and still exists, a terrible superstition which has done almost more harm than the most fearful religious superstitions.
And it is this superstition which so-called science maintains with all its might and main. This superstition is quite similar to the religious superstitions: it consists in the assertion that, besides man’s duty to man, there exist yet more Important obligations to an imaginary being. For theology this imaginary being is God, but for political science it is the State. The religious superstition consists in this, that sacrifices, sometimes of human lives, to this imaginary being are necessary, and men may and should be brought to them by all means, not excluding violence.
The political superstition consists in this, that besides the duties of man to man there exist more important duties to the imaginary being, and that sacrifices, very often of human life, offered up to this imaginary being, the State, are also necessary, and that men may and should be brought to them by all possible means not even excluding violence. This superstition, formerly supported by the priests of various religions, is now supported by so-called science. Men are thrust into a most terrible slavery, worse than ever before; but science tries to assure people that this is necessary and cannot be otherwise.
The State must exist for the good of the people and must carryon its business: govern the people and defend them from enemies. For this the State needs money and soldiers. The money must be supplied by all the citizens of the State, and therefore all the relations of men must be viewed under the necessary conditions of statehood.
‘I want to help my father in his farm work,’ says a simple ignorant man; ‘I want. to marry, but they take me, and send me for six years to Kazan as a soldier. I leave the army and want to plough the land and support my family, but for a hundred versts around me I am not allowed to plough unless I pay money, which I have not got to people who do not know how to plough and who demand so much money for it that I have to give them all my labour; but for all that I earn something and want to give what I have saved to my children; but an official comes to me and takes away my savings for taxes; again I earn something, and again it is all taken away from me. All my economic activity, all of it without exception, is dependent on the demands of the State, and it seems to me that an Improvement in my condition and in that of my brothers must come from our emancipation from the demands of the State.’
But Science says: Your conclusions are the result of your ignorance. Learn the laws of the production distribution, and exchange of wealth, and do not confuse economic with political questions. The facts you refer to are not infringements of your liberty but necessary sacrifices which you, like other people, must bear for your own freedom and welfare. ‘But, you see, they have taken. my son and promise to carry off all my sons as soon as’ they grow up,’ again replies the simple man. ‘They took him by force and have driven him under fire into some strange land of which we had never heard and for aims we cannot understand.
And, you see, the land we are not allowed to plough and for want of which we starve is owned by a man we have never seen and whose usefulness we cannot even comprehend. And the taxes for which the policeman took the cow from my children by force, will for all I know go to that same policeman who took the cow, and to various members of Commissions and Ministries whom I do not know and in whose utility I do not believe. How can all this violence secure my liberty, and all this evil promote my welfare?’
It is possible to compel a man to be a slave and to do. what he considers bad for himself, but it is impossible to make him think that while suffering violence he is free and that the evident evil he endures forms his welfare. That seems impossible, but is just what has been done in our time by the aid of science.
The government, that is armed men using force, decide what they must take from those whom they coerce: like the English in dealing with the Fijians, they decide how much labour require of their slaves, beside how many assistants they need to collect this labour, organize their assistants as soldiers, as landed proprietors, and as tax collectors and the slaves yield their labour and at the same time believe that they give it up not because their masters wish it, but because, for their own freedom and welfare, service and bloody sacrifice offered to a divinity called ‘the State’ are essential, and that while paying this service to this divinity they remain free. They believe this because formerly religion and the priests said so, and now science and the learned people talk that way.
But we need only cease to believe blindly what others, calling themselves priests and learned men, for the absurdity of such assertions to become evident. People who do violence to others assure them that this violence is necessary for the State and that the State is necessary for the freedom and welfare of the people: it turns out that the oppressors oppress the people to promote their freedom, and harm them for their good. But men are rational beings that they may understand wherein their welfare lies and may promote it freely.
And affairs the goodness of which is unintelligible to people and to which they are driven by force, cannot be good for them, for a rational being can regard as good only what presents itself to his reason as being so. If from passion or lack of sense men are drawn towards evil, all that others who do not commit the same errors can do is to persuade them to do what accords with their real welfare. People may be persuaded that their welfare will be greater if they all become soldiers, are all deprived of land, and give their whole labour for taxes; but until all men regard this as their welfare and therefore do it voluntarily, it cannot be called the general good of man. The sole sign of the goodness of an undertaking is that people do it of their own free will, and man’s life is full of such affairs.
Ten workmen provide themselves with cooper’s tools in order to work together, and doing this they do what is certainly for their common welfare; but it is not possible to suppose that these workmen if they compel by violence an eleventh man to participate in their association, could affirm that what was their common good would also be good for this eleventh man.
So also with gentlemen who give a dinner to a friend of theirs; it is impossible to assert that this dinner will be good for someone from whom they take ten rubles by force for it. So also with peasants who decide to dig a pond for their convenience.
For those who consider the existence of the pond a benefit worth more than the cost of labour expended upon it, the making of it will be a common good, but for him who considers the existence of this pond as less important than the harvesting of a field with which he is behind-hand, the digging of this pond cannot be considered a good. So also of roads people make, and of churches, and museums, and a great variety of social and political affairs. All these things can be a good only for those who regard them as such and engage on them freely and willingly, as in the case of the purchase of the cooper’s tools for the association, the dinner given by the gentlemen, or the pond dug by the peasants. But undertakings to which people have to be forcibly driven cease to be a common good just on account of that violence.
This is all so clear and simple that if people had not so long been deceived it would not be necessary to explain anything. We live, let us suppose, in a village, and we, all the villagers, have decided to build a bridge across a bog into which we sink. We have agreed or promised to give so much money, or timber, or so many days’ work from each household. We have agreed to do this because this bridge will be worth more to us than its building will cost. But among us there are some for whom it is better not to have
