[1317] The idea of respecting man’s humanity is vigorously criticised by Stirner. Proudhon is expressly mentioned as the chief representative of that view. The principle was also regarded with some favour by Feuerbach, who wanted to substitute emphasis upon the human in man for the stress generally laid upon the divine in his nature.
[1318] Proudhon is the model here. “To be governed,” says he (Idée générale de la Révolution) “is to have every deed of ours, every action and movement, noted, registered, reviewed, docketed, measured, filed, assessed, guaranteed, licensed, authorised, recommended, prohibited, checked, reformed, redressed, corrected; under pretence of public policy, to be taxed, dragooned, imprisoned, exploited, cajoled, forced, cheated, robbed; at the least sign of resistance or complaint to be repressed, convicted, vilified, vexed, hunted, mauled, murdered, stripped, garrotted, imprisoned, shot, slaughtered, judged, condemned, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and finally mocked, flouted, outraged and dishonoured. That is government, such its justification and morality.”
[1319] Bakunin, Œuvres, vol. i, pp. 143, 227, 151.
[1320] Ibid., vol. i, p. 228.
[1321] Ibid., vol. i, p. 176; vol. iii, p. 53.
[1322] L’Évolution, la Révolution, et l’Idéal anarchiste, p. 164.
[1323] Bakunin, Œuvres, vol. i, p. 280.
[1324] Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, p. 207. Cf. supra, [p. 79, footnote]. Adam Smith, it is true, did write that “civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property,” etc.; but that does not imply that the great economist regarded this as the only object of government, although it certainly is one of its chief aims.
[1325] “The million and one laws that govern humanity naturally fall into one or other of three categories: laws for the protection of property, of government, or of individuals. If we take these three divisions and analyse them we are inevitably forced to realise how futile and even injurious all legislation is.” (Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 236.)
[1326] “Society itself is every day creating beings imbued with anti-social feelings and incapable of leading honest, industrious lives.” (Kropotkin, quoted by Eltzbacher, loc. cit., p. 221.) “Seeing that the organisation of society is always and everywhere the one cause of all the crimes committed by men, its conduct in punishing criminals is clearly absurd or obviously insincere. Every punishment implies guilt, but the criminals in this case are never guilty. We deny the so-called right of society to bestow punishment in this arbitrary fashion. A human being is simply the unwilling product of the natural or social environment in which he was born and reared and under whose influence he still remains. The three great causes of human immorality are inequality, whether political, economic, or social; ignorance, which is its natural result; and slavery, its inevitable consequence.” (Bakunin, Programme de l’Alliance internationale de la Démocratie socialiste, in Sozial-politischer Briefwechsel, pp. 332-333.)