But this I know that every law
That men have made for man,
Since first man took his brother's life
And this sad world began,
But fouls the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
That men have made for man,
Since first man took his brother's life
And this sad world began,
But fouls the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
Oscar Wilde
The history of civilisation so-called is the gruesome record of the domination of a class or caste over the many. Ever since society threw over communism and became competitive, resting on a property basis, its history has been a bitter class-struggle centering round the ownership of social needs, this ownership of the means of life implying the supreme authority. The King caste, military class, sacerdotal caste, and now. the capitalist clique each obtained the power. Institutions and individuals frequently trading under the cloak of divine sanction or special rights, have tried, by fraud and force, to establish their authority as the supreme dictator over other people's actions and ideas.
From a scientific and human standpoint, individual authority is in direct contradiction to nature's laws, and man is the only animal that does not conform to natural law. Indeed, we have become so degenerate that, in spite of our alleged morality and scientific means of harnessing the forces of nature to produce a superabundance of the luxuries of life, we are the only animal that exploits its young. Particularly in the insect world, research shows that ants, bees and other creatures, living in a highly organised society in which even offspring is mathematically adjusted to the needs of the community, each insect functions independently, yet working in mutual harmony. Capitalists frequently tell the slave-class that, if there was no incentive to gain and guiding authority, everything would be chaos and everybody lazy. Science, on the other hand, proves that in insect hives each member does his share apparently voluntary, and, in case of danger, the ants willingly risk their lives for the welfare of the nest. No necessity to boom a recruiting campaign or try to starve some of them to the fighting-line, for the simple reason that the insects are animated with altruistic consciousness and communal spirit.
Man, with all his wisdom, is narrowly selfish and frequently extremely egotistic, and the idea of class interest begets the lust for domination. This idea of oppression that is responsible for so much misery is not a monopoly of the ruling faction, the slave class are also obsessed with it. That is the psychic reason why men who have risen from the mass become greater tyrants and more rapacious than men born and bred in the exploiting class. The cruelty to animals and children is so common that it is taken for granted that what custom sanctions is correct.
This spirit of authority actuates every institution and determining all actions of the rulers is the basis of exploitation. All sorts of governments were tried in Rome and failed. Whether you have a theocracy, autocracy, plutocracy, or bureaucracy, the class that is economically powerful sooner or later subordinated the state to serve its ends. At the bottom of human nature there is an instinct of revolt against class rule, and time and again this psychological fact has led to rebellion.
Art, religion, law, letters and every means that fraud or force could use with the idea of drilling into the mind the presumed necessity of blind belief and slavish subservience for the fetish, falsely called "Law and Order" have been unscrupulously used. With gallows, lash and torture thousands of humanity's best, have been mutilated and killed because their ideas or actions did not conform to established precepts. Particularly is this applicable to the working class, because, in the interests of the wealthy few, it is essential that the toiler's children be mentally sophisticated with subjective ideas. It is not so much that the wealthy happen to legally own social necessities, as some semi-socialists preach, but rather because the rich control the avenues of knowledge, and thus practically dictate what the masses shall think.
Man, being a perverted animal, whose natural instincts are warped, acts in conformity to conscience or legality. That most of the social, political or religious ideas popular with the crowd are false, does not matter. As long as some conception is believed by the ignorant to be true, it serves the purpose of authority as the means to an end, that end always being exploitation.
The secret of the artificial adulation and perpetuation of authority based on class dominion, and of every precedent, and the reason why authority has been put on a pedestal and worshipped as the absolute truth and standard of right and justice in every institution is due to a false education. Francisco Ferror, in endeavouring to establish the modern school, struck a fearful blow at capitalism.
The child naturally takes what it wants, only to be told, baby mustn't touch. Unconsciously the child is up against private property. Indeed, in infancy the child frequently by force is made to observe this custom or obey that law. That these arbitrary rules will not harmonise with natural desires, economic needs or individual temperament, and cannot stand logical analysis makes no difference. The school-teacher, parson, military officer, and, later, the employer and the State take up the same domineering attitude. This must be done, and that will not be permitted. Our military and penal system still linger in the despotic rule enforced with the barbaric brutality of feudalism, not withstanding all our boasted humanism and progress. The idea of domination is still strong, only we have become a little more refined in penology.
Authority is generally expressed through a judiciary. Legality is supposed to protect society from the individual. In practice legality is the expression of the will of a class imposed by force on some other group. Where class interests clash, it frequently degenerates into terrorism, that is terrorism hiding under the cloak of justice. Greek law forced Socrates to suicide, canonical law burnt Bruno, British law gave Tom Mann six months for telling soldiers not to shoot strikers. We now know that these men were right and law was wrong. All positive law, not based on natural law, is false. For instance, according to positive law, a man can get several years imprisonment for the crime of bigamy. That is to say that because he has exchanged certain words with a female, he must not marry anybody else while that woman is alive. The severe penalties against theft are not so much enforced, because legality is vindictive, but rather for the reason that the rich are frightened that the poor should take it into their heads to help themselves to the commodities which their labor produced. In the case of the rich, the law is never enforced. Generally the affair is discreetly hushed up, and the capitalist press report that Mr. Moneybags suddenly died of heart failure caused by his heavy responsibility and arduous work for the company he so ably managed for several years. The poor man, by killing himself is indirectly robbing the capitalist class of prospective profit. The old Roman law prescribed heavy penalties for slaves who mutilated themselves, our modern anti-suicide law is really an extension of the same idea moulded by legality to suit the exploiters.
This question of authority is very important from a social stand point tor the workers, especially at this time when, owing to the war and economic evolution, the capitalists are endeavouring to organise labor into industrial and military conscription. God is fading from the skies, but a new idea of authority, is enthroned in the minds of the ignorant. This new idol of the idolaters is the State. Many workers, led away with political clap-trap, imagine that State control or ownership leads to socialism. The deification of the State leads to the servile State denounced by Spencer, Nietzche, Kropotkin and other thinkers.
Individually each mind is a kingdom of its own. Society is highly complex, and human types infinite in their variety. With the spread of knowledge, the expansion of industry and other factors, it is impossible and futile to lay down rules and regulations for large masses of people. No being is capable of teaching the absolute truth upon any topic. Most of the accepted ideas of to-day are based upon ignorance, and the lie that is born of the lust for gain. What little we know is the result of past experiment; that which, to our imperfect knowledge, seems right to-day, will probably be demonstrated false to-morrow. Class institutions are mostly concerned promoting superstition and error for economic ends. Any person pretending to infallible authority is fraudulent. Truth or justice never did, nor never will, emanate from a despotic egotism. Reason and experience alone can be trusted.
Veneration for authority is dying; everywhere static (false) ideas are being challenged. Before logic conceptions consecrated by the church, sanctified by legality, established by convention, and backed by the cleverest mental prostitutes that wealth can command, crumble away and melt like fog before the rising sun of reason. People reason more and believe less. A growing minority think that freedom to all, with out distinction and privileges to none, is the scope for the supremacy of natural law as opposed to class law. As far as the workers are concerned, the law of mutuality amongst themselves and the law of the vendetta against hostile classes leads towards the day when the war of the classes will be over and the economic basis of society revert back to communism, its natural state. Authority, with its costly machinery, parasitism, oppression, incompetence, and injustice, must then rapidly dwindle into insignificance. No longer will we need huge penal establishments and judicial bludgers, for, when the psychology of the mass becomes virile, the law of mutuality will be sufficient for society. In that day ethics will be established on a sound economic basis. "Do as you would be done by" will no longer be a pulpit platitude, but born of an economic need and strengthened by altruistic social consciousness, the domination of one section of the community will not be possible, and society will be just, because it is lawless.
AJAX.
Direct Action (Sydney, NSW : 1914 - 1930), Wednesday 15 September 1915, page 3
From a scientific and human standpoint, individual authority is in direct contradiction to nature's laws, and man is the only animal that does not conform to natural law. Indeed, we have become so degenerate that, in spite of our alleged morality and scientific means of harnessing the forces of nature to produce a superabundance of the luxuries of life, we are the only animal that exploits its young. Particularly in the insect world, research shows that ants, bees and other creatures, living in a highly organised society in which even offspring is mathematically adjusted to the needs of the community, each insect functions independently, yet working in mutual harmony. Capitalists frequently tell the slave-class that, if there was no incentive to gain and guiding authority, everything would be chaos and everybody lazy. Science, on the other hand, proves that in insect hives each member does his share apparently voluntary, and, in case of danger, the ants willingly risk their lives for the welfare of the nest. No necessity to boom a recruiting campaign or try to starve some of them to the fighting-line, for the simple reason that the insects are animated with altruistic consciousness and communal spirit.
Man, with all his wisdom, is narrowly selfish and frequently extremely egotistic, and the idea of class interest begets the lust for domination. This idea of oppression that is responsible for so much misery is not a monopoly of the ruling faction, the slave class are also obsessed with it. That is the psychic reason why men who have risen from the mass become greater tyrants and more rapacious than men born and bred in the exploiting class. The cruelty to animals and children is so common that it is taken for granted that what custom sanctions is correct.
This spirit of authority actuates every institution and determining all actions of the rulers is the basis of exploitation. All sorts of governments were tried in Rome and failed. Whether you have a theocracy, autocracy, plutocracy, or bureaucracy, the class that is economically powerful sooner or later subordinated the state to serve its ends. At the bottom of human nature there is an instinct of revolt against class rule, and time and again this psychological fact has led to rebellion.
Art, religion, law, letters and every means that fraud or force could use with the idea of drilling into the mind the presumed necessity of blind belief and slavish subservience for the fetish, falsely called "Law and Order" have been unscrupulously used. With gallows, lash and torture thousands of humanity's best, have been mutilated and killed because their ideas or actions did not conform to established precepts. Particularly is this applicable to the working class, because, in the interests of the wealthy few, it is essential that the toiler's children be mentally sophisticated with subjective ideas. It is not so much that the wealthy happen to legally own social necessities, as some semi-socialists preach, but rather because the rich control the avenues of knowledge, and thus practically dictate what the masses shall think.
Man, being a perverted animal, whose natural instincts are warped, acts in conformity to conscience or legality. That most of the social, political or religious ideas popular with the crowd are false, does not matter. As long as some conception is believed by the ignorant to be true, it serves the purpose of authority as the means to an end, that end always being exploitation.
The secret of the artificial adulation and perpetuation of authority based on class dominion, and of every precedent, and the reason why authority has been put on a pedestal and worshipped as the absolute truth and standard of right and justice in every institution is due to a false education. Francisco Ferror, in endeavouring to establish the modern school, struck a fearful blow at capitalism.
The child naturally takes what it wants, only to be told, baby mustn't touch. Unconsciously the child is up against private property. Indeed, in infancy the child frequently by force is made to observe this custom or obey that law. That these arbitrary rules will not harmonise with natural desires, economic needs or individual temperament, and cannot stand logical analysis makes no difference. The school-teacher, parson, military officer, and, later, the employer and the State take up the same domineering attitude. This must be done, and that will not be permitted. Our military and penal system still linger in the despotic rule enforced with the barbaric brutality of feudalism, not withstanding all our boasted humanism and progress. The idea of domination is still strong, only we have become a little more refined in penology.
Authority is generally expressed through a judiciary. Legality is supposed to protect society from the individual. In practice legality is the expression of the will of a class imposed by force on some other group. Where class interests clash, it frequently degenerates into terrorism, that is terrorism hiding under the cloak of justice. Greek law forced Socrates to suicide, canonical law burnt Bruno, British law gave Tom Mann six months for telling soldiers not to shoot strikers. We now know that these men were right and law was wrong. All positive law, not based on natural law, is false. For instance, according to positive law, a man can get several years imprisonment for the crime of bigamy. That is to say that because he has exchanged certain words with a female, he must not marry anybody else while that woman is alive. The severe penalties against theft are not so much enforced, because legality is vindictive, but rather for the reason that the rich are frightened that the poor should take it into their heads to help themselves to the commodities which their labor produced. In the case of the rich, the law is never enforced. Generally the affair is discreetly hushed up, and the capitalist press report that Mr. Moneybags suddenly died of heart failure caused by his heavy responsibility and arduous work for the company he so ably managed for several years. The poor man, by killing himself is indirectly robbing the capitalist class of prospective profit. The old Roman law prescribed heavy penalties for slaves who mutilated themselves, our modern anti-suicide law is really an extension of the same idea moulded by legality to suit the exploiters.
This question of authority is very important from a social stand point tor the workers, especially at this time when, owing to the war and economic evolution, the capitalists are endeavouring to organise labor into industrial and military conscription. God is fading from the skies, but a new idea of authority, is enthroned in the minds of the ignorant. This new idol of the idolaters is the State. Many workers, led away with political clap-trap, imagine that State control or ownership leads to socialism. The deification of the State leads to the servile State denounced by Spencer, Nietzche, Kropotkin and other thinkers.
Individually each mind is a kingdom of its own. Society is highly complex, and human types infinite in their variety. With the spread of knowledge, the expansion of industry and other factors, it is impossible and futile to lay down rules and regulations for large masses of people. No being is capable of teaching the absolute truth upon any topic. Most of the accepted ideas of to-day are based upon ignorance, and the lie that is born of the lust for gain. What little we know is the result of past experiment; that which, to our imperfect knowledge, seems right to-day, will probably be demonstrated false to-morrow. Class institutions are mostly concerned promoting superstition and error for economic ends. Any person pretending to infallible authority is fraudulent. Truth or justice never did, nor never will, emanate from a despotic egotism. Reason and experience alone can be trusted.
Veneration for authority is dying; everywhere static (false) ideas are being challenged. Before logic conceptions consecrated by the church, sanctified by legality, established by convention, and backed by the cleverest mental prostitutes that wealth can command, crumble away and melt like fog before the rising sun of reason. People reason more and believe less. A growing minority think that freedom to all, with out distinction and privileges to none, is the scope for the supremacy of natural law as opposed to class law. As far as the workers are concerned, the law of mutuality amongst themselves and the law of the vendetta against hostile classes leads towards the day when the war of the classes will be over and the economic basis of society revert back to communism, its natural state. Authority, with its costly machinery, parasitism, oppression, incompetence, and injustice, must then rapidly dwindle into insignificance. No longer will we need huge penal establishments and judicial bludgers, for, when the psychology of the mass becomes virile, the law of mutuality will be sufficient for society. In that day ethics will be established on a sound economic basis. "Do as you would be done by" will no longer be a pulpit platitude, but born of an economic need and strengthened by altruistic social consciousness, the domination of one section of the community will not be possible, and society will be just, because it is lawless.
AJAX.
Direct Action (Sydney, NSW : 1914 - 1930), Wednesday 15 September 1915, page 3
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