“The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which necessarily involve the split of society into classes, the state became necessary because of this split. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production. They will fall just as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong — into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.” — Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, p. 210
To listen to the critics of Natural Law, you would think that we go out into the wilderness, count the rings in tree stumps and maybe observe aborigines mating, and then return to civilization, like Moses, with a list of commandments — insisting that if they are not obeyed, Nature will punish us. That’s called Ecology.
Marx took Proudhon’s term, Natural Law, and changed it to Historical Necessity. Perhaps it would make great sense to speak of Necessary Law, or indispensable custom, and Necessary Rights. An idea of Historical Necessity in action is illustrated by Engels.
Social customs, like all inventions, become more and more efficient — all other things being equal — as knowledge accumulates.
Marx and Spencer, each in his own way, improved on Proudhon and others Proudhon benefited from and refined upon Thomas Paine and John Locke, et. al. Among the most valuable contrbutions to Natural Law theory was that of Benjamin Tucker whose book, Instead of a Book, is in the Atlanta Public Library.
A crusty New England Yankee with no respect for authority, an unsentimental skeptic — a Nihilist Egoist, in fact, with unstinting praise for Max Stirner and Michael Bakunin — Benjamin Tucker shows that Natural Law needs neither mystical faith nor metaphysical speculation to make its point. Invasion, he wrote, is all society need forbid. (Coercion, fraud, technological snooping and manipulation and organized persecution can all be defined as invasive.) How invasion is to be abolished is, strictly speaking, outside the realm of Natural Law and Rights; enforcement is a matter of political science; Natural Law seeks only to discover what laws or customs or social norms are indispensable, while Natural Rights seeks to determine which are intolerable, as in, “Congress shall make no law…”
Tucker rejected Natural Rights and Aleister Crowley rejected Natural Law, insisting, however, that “Man has the right…” to certain freedoms — and both men reached very similar conclusions. Indeed, taken together they are redundant, but by the same token one discipline exists without the other in words alone. Both also begin with the same premise: society exists for the individual, not the individual for society. (c) Kerry Thornley
