3. It cannot be alleged in favor of the State that it is necessary as a means for combating crime.[721] "The State is itself the most gigantic criminal extant. It manufactures criminals much faster than it punishes them."[722] "Our prisons are filled with criminals which our virtuous State has made what they are by its iniquitous laws, its grinding monopolies, and the horrible social conditions that result from them. We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them."[723]
No more can the State be defended on the ground that it is wanted for the relief of suffering. "The State is rendering assistance to the suffering and starving victims of the Mississippi inundation. Well, such work is better than forging new chains to keep the people in subjection, we allow; but is not worth the price that is paid for it. The people cannot afford to be enslaved for the sake of being insured. If there were no other alternative, they would do better, on the whole, to take Nature's risks and pay her penalties as best they might. But Liberty supplies another alternative, and furnishes better insurance at cheaper rates. Mutual insurance, by the organization of risk, will do the utmost that can be done to mitigate and equalize the suffering arising from the accidental destruction of wealth."[724]
II. Every man's self-interest, and equal liberty particularly, demands, in place of the State, a social human life on the basis of the legal norm that contracts must be lived up to. The "voluntary association of contracting individuals"[725] is to take the place of the State.
1. "The Anarchists have no intention or desire to abolish society. They know that its life is inseparable from the lives of individuals; that it is impossible to destroy one without destroying the other."[726] "Society has come to be man's dearest possession. Pure air is good, but no one wants to breathe it long alone. Independence is good, but isolation is too heavy a price to pay for it."[727]
But men are not to be held together in society by a concrete supreme authority, but solely by the legally binding force of contract.[728] The form of society is to be "voluntary association,"[729] whose "constitution"[730] is nothing but a contract.
2. But what is to be the nature of the voluntary association in detail?
In the first place, it cannot bind its members for life. "The constituting of an association in which each member waives the right of secession would be a mere form, which every decent man who was a party to it would hasten to violate and tread under foot as soon as he appreciated the enormity of his folly. To indefinitely waive one's right of secession is to make one's self a slave. Now, no man can make himself so much a slave as to forfeit the right to issue his own emancipation proclamation."[731]
In the next place, the voluntary association, as such, can have no dominion over a territory. "Certainly such voluntary association would be entitled to enforce whatever regulations the contracting parties might agree upon within the limits of whatever territory, or divisions of territory, had been brought into the association by these parties as individual occupiers thereof, and no non-contracting party would have a right to enter or remain in this domain except upon such terms as the association might impose. But if, somewhere between these divisions of territory, had lived, prior to the formation of the association, some individual on his homestead, who for any reason, wise or foolish, had declined to join in forming the association, the contracting parties would have had no right to evict him, compel him to join, make him pay for any incidental benefits that he might derive from proximity to their association, or restrict him in the exercise of any previously-enjoyed right to prevent him from reaping these benefits. Now, voluntary association necessarily involving the right of secession, any seceding member would naturally fall back into the position and upon the rights of the individual above described, who refused to join at all. So much, then, for the attitude of the individual toward any voluntary association surrounding him, his support thereof evidently depending upon his approval or disapproval of its objects, his view of its efficiency in attaining them, and his estimate of the advantages and disadvantages involved in joining, seceding, or abstaining."[732]
For the members of the voluntary association numerous obligations arise from their membership. The association may require, as a condition of membership, the agreement to perform certain services,—for instance, "jury service."[733] And "inasmuch as Anarchistic associations recognize the right of secession, they may utilize the ballot, if they see fit to do so. If the question decided by ballot is so vital that the minority thinks it more important to carry out its own views than to preserve common action, the minority can withdraw. In no case can a minority, however small, be governed without its consent."[734] The voluntary association is entitled to compel its members to live up to their obligations. "If a man makes an agreement with men, the latter may combine to hold him to his agreement";[735] therefore a voluntary association is "entitled to enforce whatever regulations the contracting parties may agree upon."[736] To be sure, one must bear in mind that "very likely the best way to secure the fulfilment of promises is to have it understood in advance that the fulfilment is not to be enforced."[737]