 The right of such control is already admitted by the State Socialists, though they maintain that, as a matter of fact, the individual would be allowed a much larger liberty than he now enjoys. |
| But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care. |
| The moment that justice must be paid for by the victim of injustice it becomes itself injustice. |
| Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be. |
| The cost of justice can be justly paid only by the invader. |
| This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished. |
| I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can. |
| Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike. |
| Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction. |
| For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism. |
| But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder. |
