I. In mankind's progress from a less happy existence to an existence as happy as possible, one of the next steps, according to Kropotkin, will be the disappearance—not indeed of law, but—of enacted law.
1. Enacted law has become a hindrance to mankind's progress toward an existence as happy as possible.
"For thousands of years those who govern have been repeating again and again, 'Respect the law!'";[471] "in the States of to-day a new law is regarded as the cure for all evils."[472] But "the law has no claim to men's respect."[473] "It is an adroit mixture of such customs as are beneficial to society, and would be observed even without a law, with others which are to the advantage only of a ruling minority, but are harmful to the masses and can be upheld only by terror."[474] "The law, which first made its appearance as a collection of customs which serve for the maintenance of society, is now merely an instrument to keep up the exploitation and domination of the industrious masses by wealthy idlers. It has now no longer any civilizing mission; its only mission is to protect exploitation."[475] "It puts rigid immobility in the place of progressive development,"[476] "it seeks to confirm permanently the customs that are advantageous to the ruling minority."[477]
"If one looks over the millions of laws which mankind obeys, one can distinguish three great classes: protection of property, protection of government, protection of persons. But in examining these three classes one comes in every case to the necessary conclusion that the law is valueless and harmful. What the protection of property is worth, the Socialists know only too well. The laws about property do not exist to secure to individuals or to society the product of their labor. On the contrary, they exist to rob the producer of a part of his product, and to protect a few in the enjoyment of what they have stolen from the producer or from the whole of society."[478] And as regards the laws for the protection of government, "we know well that all governments, without exception, have it for their mission to uphold by force the privileges of the propertied classes—the nobility, the clergy, and the bourgeoisie. A man has only to examine all these laws, only to observe their every-day working, and he will be convinced that not one is worth keeping."[479] Equally "superfluous and harmful, finally, are the laws for the protection of persons, for the punishment and prevention of 'crimes'. The fear of punishment never yet restrained a murderer. He who would kill his neighbor, for revenge or for necessity, does not beat his brains about the consequences; and every murderer hitherto has had the firm conviction that he would escape prosecution. If murder were declared not punishable, the number of murders would not increase even by one; rather it would decrease to the extent that murders are at present committed by habitual criminals who have been corrupted in prison."[480]
2. The stage of evolution to which enacted law belongs will soon be left behind by man.
"The law is a comparatively young formation. Mankind lived for ages without any written law. At that time the relations of men to each other were regulated by mere habits, by customs and usages, which age made venerable, and which every one learned from his childhood in the same way as he learned hunting, cattle-raising, or agriculture."[481] "But when society came to be more and more split into two hostile classes, of which the one wanted to rule and the other to escape from rule, the victor of the moment sought to give permanence to the accomplished fact and to hallow it by all that was venerable to the defeated. Consecrated by the priest and protected by the strong hand of the warrior, law appeared."[482]
But its days are already numbered. "Everywhere we find insurgents who will no longer obey the law till they know where it comes from, what it is good for, by what right it demands obedience, and for what reason it is held in honor. They bring under their criticism everything that has until now been respected as the foundation of society, but first and foremost the fetish, law."[483] The moment of its disappearance, for the hastening of which we must fight,[484] is close at hand,[485] perhaps even at the end of the nineteenth century.[486]
II. In the next stage of evolution, which, as has been shown, mankind must soon reach, there will indeed be no enacted law, but there will be law even there. "The laws will be totally abrogated;"[487] "unwritten customs,"[488] "'customary law,' as jurists say,"[489] will "suffice to maintain a good understanding."[490] These norms of the next stage of evolution will be based on a general will;[491] and conformity to them will be adequately assured "by the necessity, which every one feels, of finding co-operation, support, and sympathy"[492] and by the fear of expulsion from the fellowship,[493] but also, if necessary, by the intervention of the individual citizen[494] or of the masses;[495] they will therefore be legal norms.
Of legal norms of the next stage of evolution Kropotkin mentions in the first place this,—that contracts must be lived up to.[496]
Furthermore, according to Kropotkin there will obtain in the next stage of evolution a legal norm by virtue of which not only the means of production, but all things, are common property.[497]
An additional legal norm in the next stage of evolution will, according to Kropotkin, be that by virtue of which "every one who co-operates in production to a certain extent has, for one thing, the right to live; for another, the right to live comfortably."[498]
