Coercion -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sections (TOC) : ---------------------------------- * 1 112 Words; 650 Characters * 2 185 Words; 1,128 Characters * 3 32 Words; 184 Characters * 4 79 Words; 449 Characters * 5 40 Words; 269 Characters * 6 75 Words; 418 Characters * 7 27 Words; 211 Characters * 8 46 Words; 280 Characters * 9 93 Words; 551 Characters * 10 17 Words; 111 Characters * 11 34 Words; 182 Characters * 12 55 Words; 291 Characters * 13 38 Words; 231 Characters * 14 31 Words; 189 Characters * 15 41 Words; 253 Characters * 16 23 Words; 146 Characters * 17 28 Words; 197 Characters * 18 26 Words; 177 Characters * 19 46 Words; 253 Characters * 20 42 Words; 267 Characters * 21 9 Words; 97 Characters * 22 39 Words; 245 Characters * 23 9 Words; 67 Characters * 24 16 Words; 123 Characters * 25 18 Words; 117 Characters * 26 12 Words; 96 Characters * 27 34 Words; 211 Characters * 28 23 Words; 135 Characters * 29 44 Words; 206 Characters * 30 45 Words; 291 Characters * 31 12 Words; 87 Characters * 32 51 Words; 317 Characters * 33 121 Words; 745 Characters * 34 46 Words; 271 Characters * 35 37 Words; 189 Characters * 36 62 Words; 373 Characters * 37 20 Words; 137 Characters * 38 21 Words; 137 Characters * 39 59 Words; 312 Characters * 40 51 Words; 292 Characters * 41 16 Words; 105 Characters * 42 49 Words; 312 Characters * 43 56 Words; 374 Characters Sections (Content) : ---------------------------------- * 1 The State is not society; it is only one of its historical forms, as brutal as it is abstract in character. Historically, it arose in all countries out of the marriage of violence, rapine, and pillage -- in a word, of war and conquest -- with the Gods created in succession by the theological fancies of the nations. From its very beginning it has been -- and still remains -- the divine sanction of brutal force and triumphant iniquity. Even in the most democratic countries, like the United States of America and Switzerland, it is simply the consecration of the privileges of some minority and the actual enslavement of the vast majority. * 2 This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of the State is, from the standpoint of the State, its supreme duty and its greatest virtue. It bears the name patriotism, and it constitutes the entire transcendent morality of the State. We call it transcendent morality because it usually goes beyond the level of human morality and justice, either of the community or of the private individual, and by that same token often finds itself in contradiction with these. Thus, to offend, to oppress, to despoil, to plunder, to assassinate or enthralled one's fellowman is ordinarily regarded as a crime. In public life, on the other hand, from the standpoint of patriotism, when these things are done for the greater glory of the State, for the preservation or the extension of its power, it is all transformed into duty and virtue. And this virtue, this duty, are obligatory for each patriotic citizen; everyone is supposed to exercise them not against foreigners only but against one's own fellow citizens, members or subjects of the State like himself, whenever the welfare of the State demands it. * 3 ...the great and powerful states could be founded and maintained by crime alone -- by many great crimes, and by a radical contempt for all that goes under the name of honesty. * 4 Your government can have but one purpose; to wreak revenge upon its predecessor; just as the one coming after yours can have but one purpose; to be revenged on you. Industry, production, commerce, the people’s affairs and the interests of the multitude cannot flourish in the midst of this contention. Allow me to propose that you be left to your own devices to punch one another’s faces in, whilst we look to our own interests. * 5 ...the State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of everything most distasteful to the modern free creative spirit, the feeling for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. * 6 If we have at any time implied by our criticism that the government could have done other than it did, then we have failed to see the real meaning of government.... Let us be logical, and admit that the government acted in its true character when it took our comrades and strangled them.... A government is organized force, and must itself by force. To expect it to do other than this is stupid and illogical. * 7 "Hey Uppie, did you get arrested?" he [George Brown, Anarchist] shouted. "Yes, thank you," [Upton] Sinclair, [Socialist] replied, "Pleased, I'm sure." "Oh, don't mention it," Brown said. * 8 ...the world that the United States has sought "to create in its image" through international institutions is one based on the principle of the rule of force. And the "American passion for free trade" entails that the U.S. government may violate trade agreements at will. * 9 It is an easy approach to libertarian thinking to express the iniquitous violence of the State, and contrast it with the complete nonviolence of a non-governmental society. Yet it is dishonest to show the goods without mentioning the price, and a free society can only come about through determined resistance. It is not only a question of overthrowing a ruling class, but making it abundantly clear that no rule may exist again. The aim of the free society is not the "rejection" of the repressive organs of the State. It is their abolition. * 10 Who can doubt that the refusal to fight... has caused many men an agony of shame? [Chapter 4.] * 11 For the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through. * 12 ...the leader of bandits at the head of his gang, or by a despotic prince at the head of his troops. When the sword is presented by either, the traveler or the inhabitant may submit from a sense of necessity or fear; but he lies under no obligation from a motive of duty or justice. * 13 ...where the reverence of forms cannot repress disorder, a rigorous and severe police, armed with every species of corporal punishment, is applied to the purpose. The whip, and the cudgel, are held up to all orders of men. * 14 To hold that such issues can be determined by physical force is as ridiculous as the superstitions of our ancestors who made prisoners walk over hot irons to prove their innocence. * 15 ...there is a reasonable probability for life to form and to evolve to intelligent beings, but the system becomes unstable and the intelligent life destroys itself. This would be a very pessimistic conclusion and I very much hope it isn't true. * 16 ...the state relies on the system of private property to survive. So once we abandon private property we will easily overthrow the state. * 17 ...the violence of the religious conflicts the modern state promised to heal paled in comparison to the violence engendered in its attempts to reinforce modern distinctions among citizens. * 18 "You mean, a lot of people would beat up one person?" "Yes." "Why didn't the others stop them?" "The guards had weapons. The prisoners did not." * 19 For if it be asked what security, what fence is there in such a state against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler, the very question can scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you that it deserves death only to ask after safety. * 20 ...the government, which by legalizing the right to property and protecting it with brute force, constitutes a barrier to human progress, which must be beaten down with force if one does not wish to remain indefinitely under present conditions or even worse. * 21 ...where violence intervenes, injustice, oppression and exploitation invariably triumph. * 22 ...the State is incapable of good. In the field of international as well as of individual relations it can only combat aggression by making itself the aggressor; it can only hinder crime by organizing and committing still greater crime. * 23 ...freedom does not mean equal access to coercive power... * 24 ...force alone cannot cope with the mass mobilization of peasant people for involvement in revolutionary struggle. * 25 The Objective of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. * 26 "...firm and vigorous administration..." we suspect is but another term for coercion... * 27 ...the very nature of the state...its monopoly on the ability to define threats to itself as threats to society, only reinforces its inherent advantages in being able to gain autonomy from its subjects. * 28 ...in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples under him. * 29 Force is a physical power, and I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will -- at the most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty? * 30 ...stripped of all pretense and hypocrisy, capitalism shows its fangs of despotism and murder by appearing upon the scene to protect its tottering structure with glistening bayonets and rapid-fire guns to mow down the workers, if necessary, in order to cling to its stolen property. * 31 ...strong compulsory force... power is essential to the nature of the state... * 32 ...the master, who had been flattered with hopes that the abolition of slavery would increase his revenue, has derived no advantage from it. On the contrary, he is ever an object of hatred and distrust to his vassals; and social order, threatened so incessantly, cannot be maintained except by violent means. * 33 The professionals, the privileged, brook no freedom of thought, no thoughts that do not come from the "Giver of all good," be he called God, pope, church, or whatever else. If anybody has such illegitimate thoughts, he must whisper them into his confessor's ear, and have himself chastised by him until the slave-whip becomes unendurable to the free thoughts. In other ways too the professional spirit takes care that free thoughts shall not come at all: first and foremost, by a wise education. He on whom the principles of morality have been duly inculcated never becomes free again from moralizing thoughts, and robbery, perjury, overreaching, and the like, remain to him fixed ideas against which no freedom of thought protects him. * 34 Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. * 35 When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world. * 36 As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence-as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enthralled millions, but not even millions will be able to enthralled a single individual. * 37 ...Government -- holding in its grasp the whole power (the army, the administration, the Church, the schools, and the police)... * 38 The sage, when employed, becomes the Head of all the government; and in his greatest regulations he employs no violent measures. * 39 He who would assist a lord of men in harmony with the Tao will not assert his mastery in the kingdom by force of arms. Such a course is sure to meet with its proper return. Wherever a host is stationed, briers and thorns spring up. In the sequence of great armies there are sure to be bad years. * 40 The gods of the land do not inflict injury upon the inhabitants; nor do those which belong to other lands. The Sage, also, inflicts no injury on his subjects; neither he nor they injure each other, so that the virtue of both unites and converges in one direction, of the Tao. * 41 Experience in world affairs has shown that Americans are more impressed by force than by reason. * 42 Everywhere the weak execrate the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell. A million regimented assassins, from one extremity of Europe to the other, get their bread by disciplined depredation and murder, for want of more honest employment. * 43 It was illegitimate to make a distinction between rulers and ministers; it was illegitimate to proclaim the Shang dynasty. Within the illegitimate Shang dynasty, there was one who was illegitimately known as Xin. As the illegitimate last king of the Shang dynasty, he was illegitimately cruel and illegitimately violent in order to fulfill his illegitimate desires. Events : ---------------------------------- Coercion -- Added : April 09, 2020 About This Textfile : ---------------------------------- Text file generated from : http://RevoltSource.com/