Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin

“ Whosoever admits the necessity of separate, chosen members of society for the special function of distributing punishments to those who have broken the law, needs a body which enacts these laws, codifies them, establishes standards of punishment—needs special schools for teaching the manufacture and interpretation of laws—needs gaol, gaolers, police, hangmen and army—needs the State.
The primitive tribe, always Communist, does not know of any judge: within the tribe theft, homicide, murder do not exist. ”

“ A careful study of the development of society forces upon us the conviction that State and Justice are two institutions which not only co-exist in society down the stream of history, but are connected together by the bond of cause and effect. ”

“ Thus we see the modern judge evolving out of chosen jurymen at the same rate as the feudal system evolves out of the village community. The idea of Punishment is born, and soon drives away every other conception, especially under the action of the Church, which taking example by its Hebrew predecessors wants to reign by terror. An injury to a priest is no longer an injury to a man, it is an injury to the divinity, and no punishment is severe enough to chastise such a crime. The cruelty of the judgment increases as time goes on, and the secular power imitates the clerical power. ”

“ First it must be said that the idea of laws directly made by the people has never been seriously entertained; their drafting must always be left to some more enlightened man (hero, Uebermensch) . Then, besides the judge and the lawmaker (legislator) , other men will be needed to explain such laws, to interpret older ones, to study their connections and leading ideas: law universities with staff of teachers and students, acting like a drag on society with all the weight of their inherited traditions and their hair-splitting about the letter of the law. ”

“ In the history of society, organisation of Vengeance under the name of Justice is coterminous with the State; they imply one another; they were born together, flourished together and are doomed to perish together.
Coming from an age of serfdom it helps to maintain serfdom in present society; through its police, prisons and the like, it is an open sore, throwing out a constant stream of purulence into society, a far greater evil than the one it is supposed to fight against. ”

“ The student cannot help being struck by the fact that for a couple of centuries there has been a parallel development going on: on one side legal punishment and vengeance have been less and less bloody, not to say milder, torture has been abolished, penalty of death has been limited to fewer cases and in some countries totally abolished; on the other hand anti-social acts have diminished. There is a far greater security in our everyday life than in that of our forefathers. ”

“ From the very beginning, Priest and Lord act together; the priest is often himself a Lord; the Pope is a King; therefore the one who has broken the law of civil society is by and by treated as the one who has trespassed against the Church. The clerical and the civil powers go hand in hand, the clerical only slightly ahead, their laws and refined tortures increasing steadily in ferocity. The Pope, himself supreme umpire, gathers round himself lawyers, experts in Roman and feudal laws. Common sense, knowledge of usage and customs, study of human nature, are left more and more in the background ”

“ The fundamental ideas of Justice, essential to every society, have thus totally changed between the 11th and the 16th centuries. In our article on The State and its historic rôle we have endeavoured to explain how the State took possession of the free cities; let it be sufficient for our present purpose to remark that, when the evolution took place which brought the cities under the sway of the State, the communities had already forsaken, even in ideal, the principles of arbitration and compensation which were the essence of popular justice in the 11th century. ”

“ As the alliance of civil and religious powers becomes closer, amicable settlements of disputes are forbidden; compensation to the wronged party becomes a thing of the past;—vengeance in the name of a Christian God or of the Roman State being the main point. ”

“ Think of the "well-intentioned lies" of magistrates meant to get the truth out of the criminals. Think of all that happens round us and you will understand why Anarchists have no hesitation in declaring that Punishment is worse than Crime. ”

“ Any society founded on better economics than ours will certainly come also to the conclusion that it is unwise to keep any punitive institution.
The way of doing without it will be found in voluntary arbitration, in greater effectual solidarity, in the powerful educative means which a society will have that does not leave to the policeman the care of its public morality. ”

“ His favorite argument—still the same in our day—is that eternal punishment will be inflicted for trespass against the law of the Church; applying the words of the Scripture concerning those possessed by evil spirits, the Church discerns a demon in every wrong-doer; she invents all sorts of tortures to drive the demon from the body, and then burns him that he may not relapse. ”

“ Active intervention of friends, neighbours, passers-by would prevent a large proportion of conflicts. Let it be everybody's duty to assist the weak, to interfere between fighting people, and police will not be required at all. ”

“ Customs are sufficient to prevent them. But in the very rare cases in which a member would disregard the sacred rules of the tribe, he would be stoned or burned to death by the tribe as a whole. Each member of it would throw his stone or bring his bundle of wood, in order that it should not be this or that man who has put the culprit to death, but the tribe in its entirety. ”

“ And every one studying those questions and going to the root will come to the same conclusion, and will try to find some other means of protecting society against the evil-doers.
Everyone will see that arbitration, arbiters being chosen by the contending parties will be sufficient in the very great majority of cases to quell arising disputes. Everyone will admit that the policy of non-interference now so greatly favored is a bad habit acquired since the State found it convenient to assume the duty of keeping order. ”

“ Sixty years ago, Liberals and Radicals concentrated their thoughts on politics, and were altogether unaware of the new industrial conditions which were in course of formation out of the ruins of the old regime. ”