Individual Liberty - Evernote

If a man were to declare that, when the benefits of labor cease to be won by one class
at the expense of another and when they are shared by all at the expense of nature's
forces, labor loses its raison d'etre and dies, his sanity would not long remain
unquestioned; but the folly of such an utterance is not lessened an iota by the
substitution of the word competition for the word labor. As long as the gastric juice
continues to insist upon its rights, I fancy that neither labor nor competition will lack a
raison d'etre, even though the laborer and competitor should find himself under the
necessity of wresting his "spoils" from the bosom of his mother earth instead of from
the pocket of his brother man.
In Mrs. Glass's recipe for cooking a hare, the first thing was to catch the hare. So in
Mr. Horn's recipe for the solution of economic forms in ethical concepts, the first
thing is to get the concepts. Now, the concepts of mutual confidence and goodfellowship
are not to be obtained by preaching, - otherwise the church militant would
long ago have become the church triumphant; or, by force, otherwise progress would
have gone hand in hand with authority instead of with liberty; but only by unrestricted
freedom, - that is, by competition, the necessary condition of confidence, fellowship,
and cooperation, which can never come as long as monopoly, "the economic
expression of hostility and mastership," continues to exist.
Liberty and the Boycott
London Jus does not see clearly in the matter of boycotting. "Every man," is says,
"has a perfect right to refuse to hold intercourse with any other man or class from
whom he chooses to keep aloof. But where does liberty come in when several persons
conspire together to put pressure upon another to induce or coerce him (by threats
expressed or implied) to refrain also from intercourse with the boycotted man? It is
not that the boycotted man has grounds of legal complaint against those who
voluntarily put him in coventry. His complaint is against those who compel (under
whatsoever sanction) third persons to do likewise. Surely the distinction is specific."
Specific, yes, but not rational. The line of real distinction does not run in the direction
which Jus tries to give it. Its course does not lie between the second person and a third
person, but between the threats of invasion and the threats of ostracism by which
either the second or a third person is coerced or induced. All boycotting, no matter of
what person, consists either in the utterance of a threat or in its execution. A man has a
right to threaten what he has a right to execute. The boundary-line of justifiable
boycotting is fixed by the nature of the threat used. B and C, laborers, are entitled to
quit buying shoes of A, a manufacturer, for any reason whatever or for no reason at
all. Therefore they are entitled to say to A: "If you do not discharge the non-union
men in your employ, we will quit buying shoes of you." Similarly they are entitled to
quit buying clothes of D, a tailor. Therefore they are entitled to. say to D.: "If you do
not cooperate with us in endeavoring to induce A to discharge his non-union
employees, - that is, if you do not quit buying shoes of him, - we will quit buying
clothes of you." But B and C are not entitled to burn A's shop or D's shop. Hence they
are not entitled to say to A that they will burn his shop unless he discharges his nonunion
employees, or to D that they will burn his shop unless he withdraws his
patronage from A. Is it not clear that the rightful attitude of B and C depends wholly