Anarchy expresses a very reasonable idea, the absence of authority and command, which is the true republican principle. We feign to make this word a synonym of disorder, confusion, chaos: it is in this sense that I myself, speaking in the language of everyone, have used it frequently.
It is sad that some republicans accept that synonymy…
1. — The fundamental principle of society is Justice.
2. — Justice is a faculty immanent in human nature, which unfolds by its own virtue, without any help from grace or supernatural excitation, nor from any impetus from the State.
3. — It is at once a sentiment and an idea. — As a sentiment, Justice is the principle of all legislation; — as an idea, the principle of all logic and all philosophy, the instrument of all certainty, and the guarantee of that truth.
4. — The goal of society is to establish Justice.
5. — To establish Justice is to render to each what naturally and legitimately belongs to them, without distinction of persons, conditions, talents, or aptitudes.
6. — One of the consequences of the establishment of Right is the progressive equivalence of conditions, of occupations, and of fortunes; consequently the final equality of well-being and happiness.
7. — Justice presupposes liberty; it is the agreement [pacte] of liberties. So its aim is not to limit liberties by the sacrifices that it imposes on them, with an eye to the augmentation of the State; — but to increase the power of each liberty, by the transaction — which establishes it itself, and which is Right.
8. — The transaction of liberties, from which the expression of their right arises, is not their necessary association. — Association is one of the means of human industry, of economic organization; it is not at all the general, universal, absolute, and necessary form; any more than competition, which is opposed to it, any more than property, which it is impossible to destroy.
9. — The satisfaction of the physical, intellectual and moral needs of each is the business of each; society only assists to the extent that it guarantees to each the respect of their rights, the tendency of which is equivalence, equilibrium.
10. — Justice is satisfied, and the social organization is complete, when the liberty of each leaves nothing to be desired; when the have the use of all their faculties and aptitudes, the free disposition of their person and their product.
11. — Liberty being the first of goods for the individual, save for the respect of Justice, which commands everyone and everything, association must only be employed, like everything that effects liberty, where it is indispensable; where the economic result sought cannot be obtained otherwise.
Industrial association is not the business of the State; it arises exclusively from the free initiative of the citizens; for an even greater reason, the State does not have a mission to create it everywhere, to make it the smock of the nation.
12. — The government, in a Society, the Power is neither democratic, nor monarchic, nor aristocratic; these words suppose a mass of questions that we can neither solve nor define. — The government is national, social.
It is the resultant of forces, both corporative and individual; — the expression of their equilibrium and of their synthetic will; consequently the most elevated, the most general application of right.
13. — Universal suffrage is one hypothetical manner of presuming the agreement of the masses, their resultant: in itself it is nothing, no more than the ballot box.
The sovereignty of the people is no more than the sovereignty of the prince, it is nothing. Justice is greater than both, independent of both.
14. — It follows that every popular plebiscite can be attacked in the name of right; that the homeland only exists for each on the condition of respecting right and that where right is collectively violated by the nation each citizen would have the right to oppose themselves to the nation, to repudiate its acts, and to declare themselves free towards it of every duty and commitment.
15. — In society, every citizen has right of government and right of justice. This right is never abdicated; the mandate is not a transfer of sovereignty; it is a commission.
Every election of representatives without a definition of its object is null.
There is no blank commission; that would imply a contradiction.
That is why the election of the representative, of the President, of the Emperor, is null. The mandate to command everything and do everything, in the name of the people, is absurd.
16. — Law results: 1) from public, prolonged, preliminary discussion, for the press, the meetings, etc: — 2) from the discussion of the large associations [corporations]: — 3) from their transaction. The law is not the will of anyone: the people are not infallible.
17. — The transaction is not the vote; the vote is only one means of arriving at a transaction. Every law voted for by 300 deputies, rejected by 150, is unjust.
The transaction is the compromise between the 300 and the 150.
18. — The transaction is the synthetic expression which results from all the opinions, for or against, expressed regarding the law.
19. — Every divergence of opinions leads to a synthesis, which is the general opinion, the actual law.
20. — The law is changing, depending on the state of the opinions, the divergence of which varies, and thus gives rise to a new transaction.
21. — Labor being assured, subsistence guaranteed to each, education partially paid for by the State and the communes, instruction will be obligatory, attendance at the school free.
22. — The aim of Society is the extinction of war: — the government does not presuppose any hostility with other governments, is animated with regard to them by no hostile intention, its greatest efforts will tend to universal disarmament.
23. — The precautions that could demand defense transitorily will be entrusted to a special committee, named by the corporations, revocable by them, with a limited mandate; to which the State will be bound to provide all the means of action that depend on it. — Under a despotic power, the army never represents the homeland (Waterloo).
In short, the ministry of war is outside the government.
24. — The action of the State, is in any case the least possible.
It tends to step aside more and more. Every industrial or commercial initiative is strictly forbidden to it.
24. — The State does not make the bank, nor the exchange; it does not bankroll anyone; it is neither the cashier nor the creditor of the nation.
25. — The State does not owe recognition to anyone, neither to the soldier, nor to the worker.
Every citizen is bound to work for themselves until their last breath. The infirm and maimed are the responsibility of the families, corporations and communes: public assistance does not extend beyond that.
26. — In that assistance, the family has the largest share; the corporation the 2nd, and the commune the 3rd and least.
The budgets, wages, etc., must be regulated in that pension.
This is an entirely different world. Between the program of L. Blanc and this one, there is no compatibility.
