HOW CAN GOVERNMENTS BE ABOLISHED?
SLAVERY results from laws, laws are made by governments, and, therefore, people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of governments.
But how can governments be abolished?
All attempts to get rid of governments by violence have hitherto, always and everywhere, resulted only in this: that in place of the deposed governments new ones established themselves, often more cruel than those they replaced.
Not to mention past attempts to abolish govemments by violence, according to the Socialist theory, the coming abolition of the rule of the capitalists-that is, the communalisation of the means of production and the new economic order of society-is also to be carried out by afresh organisation of violence, and will have to be maintained by the same means.So that attempts to abolish violence by violence neither have in the past nor, evidently, can in the future emancipate people from violence nor, consequently, from slavery.
It cannot be otherwise.
Apart from outbursts of revenge or anger, violence is used only in order to compel some people, against their own will, to do the will of others.But the necessity to do what other people wish against your own will is slavery.
And, therefore, as long as any violence, designed to compel some people to do the will of others, exists there will be slavery.
All the attempts to abolish slavery by violence are like extinguishing fire with fire, stopping water with water, or filling up one hole by digging another.
Therefore, the means of escape from slavery, if such means exist, must be found, not in setting up fresh violence, but in abolishing whatever reuders governmental violence possible.And the possibility of governmental violence, like every other violence perpetrated by a small number of people upon a larger number, has always depended, and still depends, simply on the fact that the small number are armed while the large number are Unarmed, or that the small nuinber are better armed than the large number.
That has been the case in all the conquests:
it was thus the Greeks, the Romans, the Knights, and Pizarros conquered nations, and it is thus that people are now conquered in Africa and Asia.And in this same way in times of peace all governments hold their subjects in subjection.
As of old, so now, people rule over other people only because some are armed and others are not.
In olden times the warriors, with their chiefs, fell upon the defenceless inhabitants, subdued them and robbed them, and all divided the spoils in proportion to their participation, courage and cruelty; and each warrior saw clearly that the violence he perpetrated was profitable to him.Now, armed men (taken chiefly from the working classes) attack defenceless people: men on strikes, rioters, or the inhabitants of other countries, and subdue them and rob them-that is, make them yield the fruits of their labour-not for themselves, but for people who do not even take a share in the subjugation.
The difference between the conquerors and the governments is only that the conquerors have themselves, with their soldiers, attacked the unarmed inhabitants and have, in cases of insubordination, carried their threats to torture and to kill into execution; while the governments, in cases of insubordination, do not themselves torture or execute the unarmed inhabitants, but oblige others to do it who have been deceived and specially brutalised for the purpose, and who are chosen from among the very people on whom the government inflicts violence.
Thus, violence was formerly inflicted by personal effort, by the courage, cruelty and agility of the conquerors themselves, but now violence is inflicted by means of fraud.
So that if formerly, in order to get rid of armed violence, it was necessary to arm one self and to oppose armed violence by armed violence, now when people are subdued, not by direct violence, but by fraud, in order to abolish violence it is only necessary to expose the deception which enables a small number of people to exercise violence upon a larger number.
The deception by means of which this is done consists in the fact that the small number who rule, on obtaining power from their predecessors, who were installed by conquest, say to the majority: "There are a lot of you, but you are stupid and uneducated, and cannot either govern yourselves or organise your public affairs, and, therefore, we will take those cares on ourselves; we will protect you from foreign foes, and arrange and maintain internal peace among you; we will set up courts of justice, arrange for you and take care of public institutions-schools, roads, and the postal service and in general we will take care of your well-being; and in return for all this you only have to fulfil those slight demands which we make, and, among other things, you must give into our complete control a small part of your incomes, and you must yourselves enter the armies which are needed for your own safety and government.
And most people agree to this, not because they have weighed the advantages and disadvantages of~these conditions (they never have a chance to do that), but because from their very birth they have found themselves in conditions such as these.
If doubts suggest themselves to some people as to whether all this is necessary, each one thinks only about himself, and fears to stiffer if he refuses to accept these conditions; each one hopes to take advantage of them for his own profit, and every one agrees, thinking that by paying a small part of his means to the government, and by consenting to military service, he cannot do himself very much harm.
But, in reality, submission to the demands of government deprives him of all that is valuable in human life.
And when the soldiers are enrolled, and hired, and armed, they are subjected to a special training called discipline, introduced in recent times, since soldiers have ceased to share the plunder.
