companies or authorities concerned each appoint a delegate, and that the delegates suggest a basis of agreement, which has to be subsequently ratified by each of the bodies ap- pointing them. The assembly of delegates has no coercive power whatever, and a majority can do nothing against a recalcitrant minority. Yet this has not prevented the conclusion of very elaborate systems of agreements. By such methods, so Anarchists contend, the USEFUL functions of government can be carried out without any coercion. They maintain that the usefulness of agreement is so patent as to make co-operation certain if once the predatory motives associated with the present system of private property were removed.
"It seems to me, however, that State and government represent two ideas of a different kind. The State idea implies quite another idea to that of government. It not only includes the existence of a power placed above society, but also a territorial concentration and a concentration of many functions of the life of society in the hands of a few or even of all. It implies new relations among the members of society.
"This characteristic distinction, which perhaps escapes notice at first sight, appears clearly when the origin of the State is studied." Kropotkin, "The State." p. 4.
Attractive as this view is, I cannot resist the conclusion that it results from impatience and represents the attempt to find a short-cut toward the ideal which all humane people desire.
Let us begin with the question of private crime.50 Anarchists maintain that the criminal is manufactured by bad social conditions and would disappear in such a world as they aim at creating.51 No doubt there is a great measure of truth in this view. There would be little motive to robbery, for example, in an Anarchist world, unless it were organized on a large scale by a body of men bent on upsetting the Anarchist regime. It