Individual Liberty - Evernote

This tendency is simply the progress of evolution towards Anarchy. The State invades
less and less, and protects more and more. It is exactly in the line of this process, and
at the end of it, that the Anarchists demand the abandonment of the last citadel of
invasion by the substitution of voluntary for compulsory taxation. When this step is
taken, the "State" will achieve its maximum strength as a protector against aggression,
and will maintain it as long as its services are needed in that capacity.
If Mr. Read, in saying that the power of the State cannot be restrained, simply meant
that it cannot be legally restrained, his remark had no fitness as an answer to
Anarchists and voluntary taxationists. They do not propose to legally restrain it. They
propose to create a public sentiment that will make it impossible for the State to
collect taxes by force or in any other way invade the individual. Regarding the State
as an instrument of aggression, they do not expect to convince it that aggression is
against its interests, but they do expect to convince individuals that it is against their
interests to be invaded. If by this means they succeed in stripping the State of its
invasive powers, they will be satisfied, and it is immaterial to them whether the means
is described by the word "restraint" or by some other word. In fact, I have striven in
this discussion to accommodate myself to Mr. Read's phraseology. For myself I do not
think it proper to call voluntary associations States, but, enclosing the word in
quotation marks, I have so used it because Mr. Read set the example.
Mr. Frederic A. C. Perrine, of Newark, N. J., asked Mr. Tucker for his reason for
refusing to pay poll tax, and incidentally criticized the latter's position on that matter,
which brought forth this reply:
Mr. Perrine's criticism is an entirely pertinent one, and of the sort that I like to answer,
though in this instance circumstances have delayed the appearance of his letter. The
gist of his position - in fact, the whole of his arguments based on the assumption that
the State is precisely the thing which the Anarchists say it is not; namely, a voluntary
association of contracting individuals. Were it really such, I should have no quarrel
with it, and I should adroit the truth of Mr. Perrine's remarks. For 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. But no individual today
finds himself under any such circumstances. The States in the midst of which he lives