Page:Voices of Revolt - Volume 1.djvu/58

54 2. The right to property, like all other rights, is limited by the obligation to regard the rights of others.

3. Property may not cause any detriment to our security or to our liberty or existence, or to the property of our neighbor.

4. Every act of possession, every transaction, violating these principles, is invalid and immoral.

Furthermore, in your discussion of taxes you entirely forget to lay a basis for progressive taxation. But there is, in the subject of taxation in general no principle so well-founded in justice as that which causes the citizen to participate, in the measure of his possessions, in the expenditures of the state, i.e., according to the advantages accruing to each from society. I propose that you adopt the following articles:

1. Those citizens whose incomes are not sufficient to assure their subsistence are freed from taxation. Other citizens shall bear these burdens in the progressive measure of the size of their fortunes.

Further, the Committee has entirely forgotten to call attention to the duties of the fraternal obligations which unite all men and all nations in their rights and in their duty of mutual aid. Your Committee seems to have forgotten the bases of the eternal alliance of nations against the tyrants. One might think that your declarations had been framed for a small herd of human cattle in a remote corner