The Law

LIFE IS A GIFT FROM GOD

- Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man.

- Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

WHAT IS LAW?

- What is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

- Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two.

- an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

A JUST AND ENDURING GOVERNMENT

- Thanks to the non-intervention of the state in private affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would develop themselves in a logical manner.

- The sources of our existence are made uncertain and precarious by these state-created displacements. And, furthermore, these acts burden the government with increased responsibilities.

THE COMPLETE PERVERSION OF THE LAW

- The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect.

A FATAL TENDENCY OF MANKIND

- Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people.

PROPERTY AND PLUNDER

- Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.

- Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.

- Does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

THE RESULTS OF LEGAL PLUNDER

- If there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned.

- Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.

THE FATAL IDEA OF LEGAL PLUNDER

- "As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it — then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder"

What is Liberty?

Union of all liberties: of conscience, of education, of press, of travel, of labor, of trade.
Freedom for everyone to make use of their faculties as long as he doesn't harm others.
Destruction of despotism.
Restricting the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right to individual self-defence and punishing injustice.

The Socialists Want Dictatorship
“Again, it is claimed that persons are nothing but raw material. It is not for them to will their own improvement; they are incapable of it.”
“the people should have no prejudices, no affections, and no desires except those authorised by the legislator.”
The legislator can govern over the people in order to improve society. But these people have to adjust to the likes and will of the legislator. And this “virtue” cannot be established without terror.

A Temporary Dictatorship
“There came a time when everyone wished to place himself above mankind in order to arrange, organise, and regulate it in his own way.”
An extraordinary measure of power for a short time, because society needs a blow.

Three Systems of Plunder
“Protectionism, socialism, and communism are basically the same plant in three different stages of its growth.”

The Political Approach
“Since all persons seek well-being and perfection, would not a condition of justice be sufficient to cause the greatest efforts toward progress, and the greatest possible equality that is compatible with individual responsibility?”