George Fitzhugh Quotes

Property is not a natural and divine, but conventional right; it is the mere creature of society and law… if private property generally were so used to injure, instead of promote public good, then society might and ought to destroy the whole institution.

Men are not ‘born entitled to equal right! It would be far nearer the truth to say, ‘that some were born with saddles on their backs, and others booted and spurred to ride them’—and the riding does them good.

Free laborers have not a thousandth part of the rights and liberties of negro slaves. Indeed, they have not a single right or a single liberty, unless it be the right or liberty to die.

What is falsely called Free Society, is a very recent invention. It purposes to make the weak, ignorant and poor, free, by turning them loose in a world owned exclusively by the few.

The weak in mind or body require guidance, support and protection; they must obey and work for those who protect and guide them—they have a natural right to guardians, committees, teachers or masters. Nature has made them slaves, all that law and government can do, is to regulate, modify and mitigate their slavery.

[Man] is not free because he has no where that he may rightfully lay his head. Private property has monopolized the earth, and destroyed both his liberty and equality.

We conclude that about nineteen out of every twenty individuals have ‘a natural and inalienable right’ to be taken care of and protected; to have guardians, trustees, husbands, or masters; in other words, they have the natural and inalienable right to be slaves.

[T]he unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery.

Slavery is a form of communism… The manner to which the change shall be made from the present form of society to that system of communism which we propose is very simple.

Free trade or political economy is the science of free society, and socialism is the science of slavery.

None but lawyers and historians are aware how much of truth, justice and good sense, there is in the notions of the Communists, as to the community of property. Laying no stress on the too abstract proposition that Providence gave the world not to one man, or set of men, but to all mankind, it is a fact that all governments, in civilized countries, recognize the obligation to support the poor, and thus, in some degree, make all property a common possession.

Socialism proposes to do away with free competition; to afford protection and support at all times to the laboring class; to bring about, at least, a qualified community of property, and to associated labor. All these purposes, slavery fully and perfectly attains.

Liberty is an evil which government is intended to correct. This is the sole object of government.

No one will contend that negroes, for instance, should roam at large in puris naturalibus, with the apes and tigers of Africa, and ‘worry and devour each other.’ Nor are they fitted for an Athenian democracy. What form of government short of domestic slavery will suit their wants and capacities?

The greatest of all communists, if communist he be, Proudhon, has also seen and exposed this tendency of socialism to slavery. He is a thorough-going enemy of modern free society; call property a thief; and would, he says, establish anarchy in place of government.