Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Modern Science and Anarchism (1912).pdf/77

 military and governing minorities. For instance, Law introduces, or gives sanction to, Slavery, Caste, paternal, priestly, and military authority; or else it smuggles in serfdom, and, later on, subjection to the State. By this means, Law has always succeeded in imposing a yoke on man without his perceiving it, a yoke which he has never been able to throw off save by means of revolutions.

Things came to pass in this way from the earliest time till our own; and we see the same going on now, even in the advanced legislation of our own days—in the so-called Labour legislation; because, side by side with the "protection of the worker," which represents their acknowledged aim, these laws surreptitiously insert the idea of compulsory arbitration by the State in case of a strike (compulsory arbitration—what a contradiction!); or they interpolate the principle of a compulsory working day of so many hours. They open the door to the military working of railways in case of a strike; they give legal sanction to the oppression of peasants in Ireland, by imposing high prices fur the redemption of the land; and so on. And such a system will flourish as long as part of society will make laws for the whole of society; and by this means they further extend the power of the State, which constitutes the principal prop of Capitalism.

As long as laws are made and enforced, the result necessarily will be the same.

We understand therefore why Anarchism, since Godwin, has disowned all written laws, although the Anarchists, more than any legislators, aspire to Justice, which—let us repeat it—is equivalent to Equality, and impossible without it.

When the objection is raised against us that in repudiating Law we repudiate Morality, as we do not recognise the "categorical imperative" about which Kant spoke to us, we answer that the language of this objection is in itself strange and incomprehensible to our mind. It is just as strange and incomprehensible as it would be to a naturalist who studied Morality. Before entering into the discussion, we therefore ask our interlocutors this question: "What do you mean by this 'categorical imperative'? Cannot you translate your assertion into comprehensible language, as, for example, Laplace used to do, when he found the means of expressing the formulas of