Anarchism and Crime

ANARCHISM AND CRIME Mr.B. W. Ball wrote an article in the Index criticizing Anarchism without having familiarized himself with the groundwork of that philosophy. Hence the following reply: MR. BALL'S central argument against us, stated briefly, is this: Where crime exists, force must exist to repress it. Who denies it? Certainly not Liberty; certainly not the Anarchists. Anarchism is not a revival of non-resistance, although there may be non-resistants in its ranks. The direction of Mr. Ball's attack implies that we would let robbery, rape, and murder make havoc in the community without lifting a finger to stay their brutal, bloody work. On the contrary, we are the stern est enemies of invasion of person-and property, and, although chiefly busy in destroying the causes thereof, have no scruples against such heroic treatment of its immediate manifestations as circumstances and wisdom may dictate. It is true that we look forward to the ultimate disappearance of the necessity of force even for the purpose of repressing crime, but this, though involved in it as a necessary result, is by no means a necessary condition of the abolition of the State.

In opposing the State, therefore, we do not deny Mr. Ball's proposition, but distinctly affirm and emphasize it. We make war upon the State as the chief invader of person and prop erty, as the cause of substantially all the crime and misery that exist, as itself the most gigantic criminal extant. It manINDIVIDUAL LIBERTYj S,2 ufactures criminals mucrh.,faster than it punishes them. It exists to create ,and sus~ain, the· privileges·which produce eco noxpic•and social chaos.·. It is the sole support. of the. monop olies which concentrate, wealth and learning in the hands of a .·few.•.and disperse poverty and ignorance. among the masses, to· the ,Increase.of which inequality the· increase of. crime .. is~ directly proportional. •It .protects a minority in .plundering the majority by methods too subtle, to be understood by the vietims~ ~nd then punis~~suchun.rulymembers of the major.. ity as· attempt to plunder others by methods too simple and straightforward' to be recognized by the State a~ legitimate, crowl1ing its outrages by deluding scholars and philosophers of Mr. Ball's stamp into. pleading, as an, excuse for its infa mous existence, the necessity of repressing the crime which it steadilycrea tes.

Mr. •Ball,-to ,his honor be itsaid,-during anti-slavery days, was a steadfast .,. abolitionist.· He earnestly· desired the abolition, of slavery. Doubtless he remembers how· often he was met with the argument that slavery was necessary to keep the unlettered blacks out of mischief, and that it would be unsafe ·to give. freedom to such. a mass of ignorance. ,. Mr. Ball in those days sawthrQughthe sophistry of such. reason ing, and knew that those, who urged it did so to give .some color of moral justification to ,their •conduct in living inJux ury on the enforced toU of slaves.. He probably was wont to answer .• them something after ,this .fashion: (CIt. is, the institu tion of slavery that •keeps the 'blacks in. ignorance, and to justify slavery. on the ground of their ignorance is to reason in ,a .circle·.and beg the very question at issue." To-day Mr. Ball-again to hishonqr be it said-is a relig ious abolitionist. He earnestly desires the abolition" or at le,astthe disappearance,of the Church. How frequently he must meet or hear of priests who, while willing to privately admit that the doctrines.of the Church are a bundle of de lusions, argue that the Church is necessary to keep the super stition-ridden masses in order, and that their release from the mental subjection in which it holds them would be equivalent to' theirptecipitation into unbridled dissipation, libertinis1ll' and ·ultima.te ruin. Mr. Ball sees clearly through the. fallacy of all such logic, and knows that those ,who use it do so to gain •• amo~al footing .onwhich, to stand while ,collecting their 6,0 INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY :fees from the poor fools who know no better than to pay ~hem. We can fancy him replying with pardonable indigna tion: (tCunning knaves, you know very well that it is your Church that saturates the people with superstition, and that to justify its existence on the ground of their superstition is to put the cart before the horse and assume the very point in dispute."

Now, we Anarchists are political abolitionists. We earnestly (Iesire the abolition of the State. Our position on this ques tion is parallel in most respects to those of the Church aboli tionists and the slavery abolitionists. But in this case Mr. Ball-to his disgrace be it said-takes the side of the tyrants against the abolitionists, and raises the cry so frequently raised against him: The State is necessary to keep thieves and mur... derers in subjection, and, were it not for the State, we should all be garroted in the streets and have our throats cut in our beds. As Mr. Ball saw through the sophistry of his opponents, so we see through his, precisely similar to theirs, though we know that n,ot he, but the capitalists use it to blind the people to the. real object of the institution by which they are able to extort from labor the bulk of its products. We answer him as he did them, and in no very.patient mood: Can you not see that it is the State that creates the conditions which give birth to thieves and murderers, and that to justify its existence on ~he ground of the prevalence of theft and murder is a logical process every whit as absurd as those used to defeat your efforts to abolish slavery and the Church?

Once for all, then, we are not opposed to the punishment of thieves and murderers; we are opposed to their manufacture. Right here Mr. Ball must attack us, or not at all. The makers of party platforms, the writers of newspaper editorials, the pounders of pulpit-cushions, and the orators of the stump, who are just now blertding their voices in frantic chorus to proclaim the foreign origin of evil and to advocate therefore the exclusion of the foreign element from American soil, should study the £gures compiled by the Rev. Frederick Howard Wines from the tenth census reports and presented by him to the congress of the National Prison Association lately held in Boston. Such of these shriekers as are pro vided with thinkers may £nd in these statistics food for INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY '61 thought •.From them it appears that, though the ratioo£ crime a.mong our. foreign':'bornpopulationisstill' very much higher than the ratio among our native population, the fQrmer ratio, which in 1850' was more than five times as high as. the latter, in 1880 was less. than .twic~as high. And it further appears that, if crimes' against person and. property are alone cQnsidered,the two ratios stand almost exactly on a level,a.ttd that the ratio of foreign-born criminals .tends to exceed that of n~tive 'criminals in proportion as the catalogueof <Ccrimes"

is extended to cover so-called offences against public morals~ public policy, and society. In other words, the percentage-of natives who steal, .damage, burn, assault, kidnap, rape, and kill is about as large as the. percentage. of •foreigners of. simi larly invasive tendencies, and the percentage of foreign-born law-breakers exceeds that of .native law-breakers only because the foreign-born. are less disposed than the natives to obey those •laws which say that people shall· not drink this or. eat that or ..smoke the other; that they shall not love except under prescribed forms and conditions; that they shall not dispose pr expose their persons except' as their rulers provide; ,that they shall not work or play on Sunday or blasphem~the name of the Lord; that theyshall·not gamble or swear; that they shall not sell certain articles at all, or buy certain others without paying a tax for the privilege; and that they shall not mail, own, or read any obscene literature. except the Bible.

That is. to say, again, people who happen to have been born. ilJ. Eurqpeare no more determined to invade their .fellowm.en than .·are people •• who happen to have been born in America~ but that the latter are much more willing to be invaded and trampled upon than any other people on earth. . .Which speaks very well, in Liberty's opinion, for the foreigners, and makes it.·importantfor our own libertyand welfareto do everything possible to encourage immigration. But, say the shriekers, these foreigners are' Anarchists and Socialists. Well, there's some truth in that; as a general rule, .the better people are, the. more Anarchists. and Socialists will .• he .found among. them. This, too, is a fact which the tenth census proves. . ~ Now-, in what cla'ssof foreigners in this country do the ~narchists. and Socialists figure most .largely? Certainly.not among: the Chinese or. the Irish or the Cubans or the Span6.z INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY iards or the Italians or the Australians or the Scotch or the French or the English or the Canadians. But these are the only foreigners except the Russians who make a poorer show ing in point of criminality than the native Americans. To find in .this country any considerable number of Anarchists and Socialists of foreign birth, we must go to the Russians, the Germans, the Poles, the Hungarians, and the Bohemians. The statistics show, however, that the Russians are almost as orderly as Americans, the Germans exactly as orderly, the Poles more orderly, and the Hungarians and Bohemians more than twice as orderly.