A.B.C. OF ANARCHISM privation, in disease, desperation, and suicide. It spells poverty and crime. To alleviate that poverty we build homes of charity, poorhouses, free hospitals, all of which you support with your taxes. To prevent crime and to punish ·criminals it is again you who have to support police, detectives, State forces, judges, lawyers, prisons, keepers. Can you imagine anything more senselessand impractical? The legislatures pass laws, the judges interpret them, the various officials execute them, the police track and arrest the criminal, and finally the prison warden gets him into custody. Numerous persons and institutions are busy keeping the jobless man from stealing and punish him if he tries to. Then he is provided with the means of existence, the lack of which had made him break the law in the first place. After a shorter or longer term he is turned loose. If he fails to get work he begins the same round of theft, arrest, trial, · and imprisonment all over again. This is a rough but typical illustration of the stupid character of our system ; stupid and inefficient. Law and government support that system. · Is it not peculiar that most people imagine we could not do without government, when in fact our real life has no connection with it whatever, no need of it, and is only interfered with where law and government step in ? "But security and public order," you object, "could we have that without law and government ? Who will protect us against the criminal?" The truth is that what is called " law and order" is really the worst disorder,·as we have seen in previous chapters.* What little order and peace we do have is due to the good common sense of the joint efforts of the people, mostly in spite of the government. Do you need government to tell you not to step in front of a moving automobile ? Do you need it to order you not to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge or from the Eiffel Tower ? Man is a social being : he cannot exist alone ; he lives in communities or societies. Mutual need and common interests result in certain arrangements to afford us security and comfort. Such co-working is free, voluntary; it needs no compulsion by any government. You join, a sporting club or a singing society because your inclinations lie, that way, and you co-operate with the other , members without any one coercing you. The man of science, the writer, the artist, and the inventor seek tlfeir own kind for inspiration and mutual work. Their impulses and needs are their best urge : the interference of any government or authority can onlv hinder their efforts. * i.e. in Part I of the original book. 22 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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