THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES PREFACE / INTRODUCTION

it, which is now already beginning to show itself and to restrain the freedom of labor
by legislation concerning the hours of work, the age and state of health of the workers,
as well as by demanding obligatory attendance at schools, deductions for old-age
insurance or accidents, by all the measures of factory- inspection, the restrictions on
co-operative societies, etc.
All this is nothing but the transference of legalization- preparing a new and as yet
untried form of slavery.
So that it becomes evident that the essence of slavery lies not in those three roots of
legislation on which it now rests, and not even in such or such other legislative
enactments, but in the fact that legislation exists; that there are people who have
power to decree laws profitable for themselves, and that as long as people have that
power there will be slavery.
Formerly it was profitable for people to have chattel- slaves, and they made laws
about chattel-slavery. Afterwards it became profitable to own land, to take taxes, and
to keep things one had acquired, and they made laws correspondingly. Now it is
profitable for people to maintain the existing direction and division of labor; and they
are devising such laws as will compel people to work under the present apportionment
and division of labor. Thus the fundamental cause of slavery is legislation, the fact
that there are people who have the power to make laws.
What is legislation? and what gives people the power to make laws?
CHAPTER XII
THE ESSENCE OF LEGISLATION IS ORGANISED VIOLENCE
What is legislation? And what enables people to make laws?
There exists a whole science, more ancient and more mendacious and confused than
political economy, the servants of which in the course of centuries have written
millions of books (for the most part contradicting one another) to answer these
questions. But as the aim of this science, as of political economy, is not to explain what
now is and what ought to be, but rather to prove that what now exists, is what ought
to be, it happens that in this Science (of jurisprudence) we find very many
dissertations about rights, about object and subject, about the idea of a state and other
such matters which are unintelligible both to the students and to the teachers of this
science, but we get no clear reply to the question, What is legislation?
According to science, legislation is the expression of the will of the whole people; but as
those who break the laws, or who wish to break them, and only refrain from fear of
being punished, are always more numerous than those who wish to carry out the code,
it is evident that legislation can certainly not be considered as the expression of the
will of the whole people.
For instance, there are laws about not injuring telegraph posts, about showing respect
to certain people, about each man performing military service or serving as a juryman,