Obedience

Sections (TOC) :

• 1
      174 Words; 1,003 Characters

• 2
      151 Words; 945 Characters

• 3
      45 Words; 273 Characters

• 4
      31 Words; 190 Characters

Sections (Content) :

• 1

Since there will be political power there will necessarily be subjects, got up in Republican fashion, as citizens, it is true, but who will none the less be subjects, and who as such will be forced to obey--because without obedience, there is no power possible. It will be said in answer to this that they will obey not men but laws which they will have made themselves. To that I shall reply that everybody knows how much, in the countries which are freest and most democratic, but politically governed, the people make the laws, and what their obedience to these laws signifies. Whoever is not deliberately desirous of taking fictions for realities must recognize quite well that, even in such countries, the people really obey not laws which they make themselves, but laws which are made in their name, and that to obey these laws means nothing else to them than to submit to the arbitrary will of some guarding and governing minority or, what amounts to the same thing, to be freely slaves.

• 2

Elections, concerning which the sophists of the last revolution could prate so much and with such gravity; elections, if afforded priority over freedom, are like the fruit before the flower, like the consequence before the principle, the right before the act; the most po-faced stupidity that could ever have been devised in any age or place. Those who have ventured, those who have dared to summon the people to the ballot box before allowing them to consolidate their freedom have not only grossly abused the people’s inexperience and the frightful docility inculcated into its character through protracted dependency; they have also, by issuing orders and by that very act declaring themselves its betters, ignored the fundamental rules of logic — which ignorance must lead them on to falling victim to their hellish claptrap, leading to their sad meanderings in exile under the lash of the outcome of universal suffrage.

• 3

As to parliamentary rule, and representative government altogether... It is becoming evident that it is merely stupid to elect a few men, and to entrust them with the task of making laws on all possible subjects, of which subject most of them are utterly ignorant.

• 4

...as long as the present system can keep the working class petition-minded, the masters need have no fear of an uprising, and the social and industrial revolution will be far away.

Chronology :

March 12, 2020 : Obedience -- Added.

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