Kropotkin: Law And Authority

'In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad , people begin by demanding a law to alter it. If the road between two villages is impassable, the peasant says, "There should be a law about parish roads." If a park keeper takes advantage of the want of spirit in those who follow him with servile observance and insults one of them, the insulted man says, "There should be a law to enjoin more politeness upon park keepers." If there is stagnation in agriculture or commerce, the husbandman, cattle -breeder, or corn speculator argues, "it is protective legislation that we require." Down to the old clothesman there is not one who does not demand a law to protect his own little trade. If the employer lowers wages or increases the hours of labour, the politician in embryo exclaims, "We must have a law to put all that to rights." In short, a law everywhere and for everything! A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue, a law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result from human indolence and cowardice."

'We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop that of submission to authority.'

'Moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one'

'Servility before the law has become a virtue.'

'Finally they see the jailer..... lose all human feeling, the detective trained as blood-hound, the police spy despising himself, "informing", metamorphosed into a virtue: corruption erected into a system: all the vices, all the evil qualities of mankind countenanced and cultivated to ensure the triumph of law.'

'Law made its appearance under the sanction of the priest, and the warrior's club was placed at its service.'

'Like individual capital, which was born of fraud and violence, and developed under the auspices of authority, law has no title to the respect of men. Born of violence and superstition, ......it must be utterly destroyed on the day when the people desire to break their chains.'

'Finally, consider what corruption, what depravity of mind is kept up among men by the idea of obedience, the very essence of law; of chastisement; of authority having the right to punish, to judge irrespective of our conscience and the esteem of our friends; of the necessity for executioners, jailers and informers -- in a word, by all the attributes of law and authority. '