The Social Monster

By Johann Most

<-Previous  Up  Next-->

until the present slavery has been abolished. Or is there some other kind of slavery to be established? If not, then any kind of government is useless, for a government which governs nobody is only a knife without a blade, and such a thing is not worth much. But if communism, in order to establish true liberty and equality, must free itself from any kind of government, then we have anarchism.

When state and government have gone, laws must go. People who speak of "laws" in a communistic society, think perhaps only of those general rules of sensible and noble conduct which every good man finds it easy to observe. But in that case they use a wrong word. A law is a rule connected with an apparatus to compel obedience. Behind the law stand the court, the sheriff, the police, the hangman, etc., and who wants them? None, we guess.

Morally, the state, the government and the laws are the principal causes of vice and crime. But with the cause the effect will disappear.

Industrially, they are the principal hindrances to success and plenty, for, experience, with respect to what is necessary and useful, teaches better what to do and how to do it, than any bureaucracy hovering above in the blind.

If, indeed, anyone should think that, in the communistic society, man must still remain under some form of compulsion in order to, do what is right, and leave off what is wrong, he had better give up communism at once and abandon all hope for the human race.

But fortunately the idea is a mistake. Mankind of to-day is not what mankind of tomorrow will be. Then is no necessity to seek refuge in dreams and speak to later generations.

Sober experience has something to say in this case. Whenever some grand and magnificent event takes place, all who are connected with it, closely or distantly, undergo some change, from a slight modification to a complete transformation. With irresistible power it loosens something in them all and binds other things.

Now, take the yoke of slavery from off the shoulders of man and place him in a sphere of full liberty and you shall see how naturally it comes to him to act towards his fellow-men as a brother towards brethren. For man is not bad by nature. Only as member of a society in which each looks to himself only and no one cares for the rest, has he become what to-day he is.

From the institution of private property arose envy, avarice, graspiness, insolent haughtiness, courage tot defraud, lust in crushing, in short, the whole gang of the most common and the most dastardly vices, and