No, far from it. While it is obvious that, as Kropotkin put it, "[n]o society is possible without certain principles of morality generally recognised. If everyone grew accustomed to deceiving his fellow-men; if we never could rely on each other's promise and words; if everyone treated his fellow as an enemy, against whom every means of warfare is justified — no society could exist." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 73] this does not mean that a legal system (with its resultant bureaucracy, vested interests and inhumanity) is the best way to protect individual rights within a society.

What anarchists propose instead of the current legal system (or an alternative law system based on religious or "natural" laws) is custom - namely the development of living "rules of thumb" which express what a society considers as right at any given moment.

However, the question arises, if a fixed set of principles are used to determine the just outcome, in what way would this differ from laws?

The difference is that the "order of custom" would prevail rather than the "rule of law". Custom is a body of living institutions that enjoys the support of the body politic, whereas law is a codified (read dead) body of institutions that separates social control from moral force. This, as anyone observing modern Western society can testify, alienates everyone. A just outcome is the predictable, but not necessarily the inevitable outcome of interpersonal conflict because in a traditional anarchistic society people are trusted to do it themselves. Anarchists think people have to grow up in a social environment free from the confusions generated by a fundamental discrepancy between morality, and social control, to fully appreciate the implications. However, the essential ingredient is the investment of trust, by the community, in people to come up with functional solutions to interpersonal conflict. This stands in sharp contrast with the present situation of people being infantilised by the state through a constant bombardment of fixed social structures removing all possibility of people developing their own unique solutions.

Therefore, anarchist recognise that social custom changes with society. What was once considered "normal" or "natural" may become to be seen as oppressive and hateful. This is because the "conception of good or evil varies according to the degree of intelligence or of knowledge acquired. There is nothing unchangeable about it." [Kropotkin, Op. Cit., p. 92] Only by removing the dead hand of the past can society's ethical base develop and grow with the individuals that make it up (see section A.2.19 for a discussion of anarchist ethics).

We should also like to point out here that laws (or "The Law") also restrict the development of an individual's sense of ethics or morality. This is because it relieves them of the responsibility of determining if something is right or wrong. All they need to know is whether it is legal. The morality of the action is irrelevant. This "nationalisation" of ethics is very handy for the would be capitalist, governor or other exploiter. In addition, capitalism also restricts the development of an individual's ethics because it creates the environment where these ethics can be bought. To quote Shakespeare's Richard III:

"Second Murderer: Some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me.

First Murderer : Remember our reward, when the deed's done.

Second Murderer : Zounds! He dies. I had forgot the reward.

First Murderer : Where's thy conscience now?

Second Murderer : O, in the Duke of Gloucester's purse."

Therefore, as far as "The Law" defending individual rights, it creates the necessary conditions (such as the de-personalisation of ethics, the existence of concentrations wealth, and so on) for undermining individual ethical behaviour, and so respect for other individual's rights. As English libertarian socialist Edward Carpenter put it, "I think we may fairly make the following general statement, viz., that legal ownership is essentially a negative and anti-social thing, and that unless qualified or antidoted by human relationship, it is pretty certain to be positively harmful. In fact, when a man's chief plea is 'The law allows it,' you may be pretty sure he is up to some mischief!" [quoted by William R. McKercher, Freedom and Authority, p. 48]

The state forces an individual a relationship with a governing body. This means "taking away from the individual his [or her] direct interest in life and in his surroundings . . . blunting his [or her] moral sense . . . teaching that he [or she] must never reply on himself [or herself] . . . [but] upon a small part of men who are elected to do everything . . . [which] destroys to a large extent his [or her] perception of right and wrong." [J. B. Smith, quoted by McKercher, Op. Cit., p. 67f]

Individual rights, for anarchists, are best protected in a social environment based on the self-respect and sympathy. Custom, because it is based on the outcome of numerous individual actions and thought does not have this problem and reflects (and encourages the development of) individual ethical standards and so a generalised respect for others. Thus, "under anarchism all rules and laws will be little more than suggestions for the guidance of juries which will judge not only the facts but the law, the justice of the law, its applicability to the given circumstances, and the penalty or damage to be inflicted because if its infraction . . . under Anarchism the law will be so flexible that it will shape itself to every emergency and need no alteration. And it will be regarded as just in proportion to its flexibility, instead of as now in proportion to its rigidity." [Benjamin Tucker, The Individualist Anarchists, pp. 160-1] Tucker, like other individualist Anarchists, believed that the role of juries had been very substantial in the English common-law tradition and that they had been gradually emasculated by the state. This system of juries, based on common-law/custom could be the means of ensuring justice in a free society.

Tolerance of other individuals depends far more on the attitudes of the society in question that on its system of laws. In other words, even if the law does respect individual rights, if others in society disapprove of an action then they can and will act to stop it (or restrict individual rights). All that the law can do is try to prevent this occurring. Needless to say, governments can (and have) been at the forefront of ignoring individual rights when its suits them.

In addition, the state perverts social customs for its own, and the interests of the economically and socially powerful. As Kropotkin argued, "as society became more and more divided into two hostile classes, one seeking to establish its domination, the other struggling to escape, the strife began. Now the conqueror was in a hurry to secure the results of his actions in a permanent form, he tried to place them beyond question, to make them holy and venerable by every means in his power. Law made its appearance under the sanction of the priest, and the warriors club was placed at its service. Its office was to render immutable such customs as were to the advantage of the dominant minority . . . If law, however, presented nothing but a collection of prescriptions serviceable to rulers, it would find some difficulty in insuring acceptance and obedience. Well, the legislators confounded in one code the two currents of custom . . . , the maxims which represent principles of morality and social union wrought out as a result of life in common, and the mandates which are meant to ensure external existence to inequality. Customs, absolutely essential to the very being of society, are, in the code, cleverly intermingled with usages imposed by the ruling caste, and both claim equal respect from the crowd. . . . Such was the law; and it has maintained its two-fold character to this day." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 205] In other words, "[t]he law has used Man's social feelings to get passed not only moral precepts which were acceptable to Man, but also orders which were useful only to the minority of exploiters against whom he would have rebelled." [Krotpotkin quoted by Malatesta in Anarchy, pp. 21-22]

Therefore anarchists argue that state institutions are not only unneeded to create a ethical society (i.e. one based on respecting individuality) but activity undermines such a society. That the economically and politically powerful state that a state is a necessary condition for a free society and individual space is hardly surprising. Malatesta put it as follows:

"A government cannot maintain itself for long without hiding its true nature behind a pretence of general usefulness . . . it cannot impose acceptances of the privileges of the few if it does not pretend to be the guardian of the rights of all." [Anarchy, p. 21]

Therefore, its important to remember why the state exists and so whatever actions and rights it promotes for the individual it exists to protect the powerful against the powerless. Any human rights recognised by the state are a product of social struggle and exist because of pass victories in the class war and not due to the kindness of ruling elites. In addition, capitalism itself undermines the ethical foundations of any society by encouraging people to grow "accustomed to deceiving his fellow-men" and women and treating "his fellow as an [economic] enemy, against whom every means of warfare is justified." Hence capitalism undermines the basic social context within which individuals develop and need to become fully human and free. Little wonder that a strong state has always been required to introduce a free market - firstly, to protect wealth from the increasingly dispossessed and secondly, to try to hold society together as capitalism destroys the social fabric which makes a society worth living in.