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The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself.
Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington –- it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause.
It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth.
This is your victory.
I believe in a lively disrespect for most forms of authority.
Governments would rather spend their money on another bomber than education, and why do we fear black men when every bit of suffering in our lives has a Caucasian face attached to it?
In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states.
The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
Governmental subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation.
The whole difficulty I think that that we're facing now is the question of who is going to ensure that corporations are accountable. The problem with leaving it to activists and non-governmental organizations—even with the tool of the Internet at their disposal—is that those organizations and those people don't have the legal right to compel corporations to disclose information, and that is something that governments can do. Governments can can send inspectors to companies. Governments can put legal requirements in place to disclose information that consumers and workers and other interested people need. Non-governmental organizations don't have that legal power and to me, that's what imposes substantial limitiations on how far we can go with trying to keep corporations accountable though non-governmental measures.
Today, nobody sees, or wishes to see, that in our time the enslavement of the majority of men is based on money taxes, levied on land and otherwise, which are collected by government from the subjects.
When one uses the simple monosyllabic 'France' one thinks of France as a unit, an entity. When. . . we say 'France sent her troops to conquer Tunis'—we impute not only unity but personality to the country. The very words conceal the facts and make international relations a glamorous drama in which personalized nations are the actors, and all too easily we forget the flesh-and- blood men and women who are the true actors.. . if we had no such word as 'France' . . . then we should more accurately describe the Tunis expedition in some such way as this: 'A few of...thirty-eight million persons sent thirty thousand others to conquer Tunis.' This way of putting the fact immediately suggests a question, or rather a series of questions. Who are the 'few'? Why did they send the thirty thousand to Tunis? And why did these obey? Empire-building is done not by 'nations,' but by men. The problem before us is to discover the men, the active, interested minorities in each nation, who are directly interested in imperialism and then to analyze the reasons why the majorities pay the expenses and fight the wars.
Planning other people’s actions means to prevent them from planning for themselves, means to deprive them of their essentially human quality, means enslaving them.
Every man aims at avoiding what causes him pain; the activities of government ultimately consist in the infliction of pain. All great achievements of mankind were the product of a spontaneous effort on the part of individuals; government substitutes coercion for voluntary action.
Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d’être to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man’s innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.
The institution of the democratic State is a remarkable example of modern idolatry. By ritually celebrating elections that are played out like a great social mass, the State allows us to participate in a religion that will influence the idol in our favour. If we make the idol an offering of the right ballot, it will bring us security, lifetime employment, a guaranteed pension, free medical care, environmental protection and a good school for our children. All these favours will rain down on us. We will not have to do anything to earn them. What could be more magical than that belief?
Democratic law does not say, "Thou shalt not kill". Instead, it designates certain people who have the right to kill -- soldiers and State police. Democratic law does not order, "Thou shalt not steal". It says that only certain people have the right to steal -- tax and customs agents. What does "power to the people" mean when the people enjoy fewer rights than their supposed servants?
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
What is the best government? – That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-ridden, regulated, penned up, indoctrinated, preached at, checked, appraised, seized, censured, commanded, by beings who have neither title, nor knowledge, nor virtue. To be governed is to have every operation, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected.
To be governed is, under pretext of public utility and in the name of the general interest, to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed and robbed; then, upon the slightest resistance, at the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, annoyed, hunted down, pulled about, beaten, disarmed, bound, imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, banished, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and, to crown all, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Money power cannot be separated from democratic power without miscarriage and ensuing frustration - political and economic. Democracy implies the sovereignty of man; and, since man cannot be sovereign without the money power, there can not be democracy under the political money system.
If the government were obliged to come to the people for money instead of vice-versa, the people would keep government under control and operate their economy satisfactorily with prosperity and peace resulting. The peoples of the nations do not make war. For them peace is the natural and permanent order. Wars are planned and perpetrated by politicians and their diplomats; and the money power of government is the means by which the people are maneuvered into wars.
There is an analogy between the patent granting power of government and its money granting power. When a citizen invents a device, the government grants him, through the patent office, a monopoly on the sale of it. When a citizen produces anything, he is at liberty to use it; but, if he wishes to sell it, his ability to do so is dependent upon his ability to find someone who has the money. Since buyers can have only such money as the government distributes through its purchases, loans and gifts (or such substitute money as its creature, the banker, will authorize) it may be seen that buying is subject to grant, just as, in the case of a patent, selling is subject to grant. In the case of patents, the patent holder is the grantee of veto power; in the case of money, the banker is the grantee of the veto power. These two are the breeders of our monopolies and of the two, the money granting and vetoing power is by far the greater. It in fact makes possible the acquisition of the patent granting power from inventors who, not having money power, are obliged to sell to those who have. The government, which promulgates laws against monopolies in restraint of competition, is itself the author of these twin creators of monopolies.
Contrary to popular belief, the banker is neither a money creator nor a money lender. He merely profits from the ignorance of businessmen by charging them for authorizing them to create money, a function that is natural to the buyer and which he can exert without cost if he is intelligent enough to form a reciprocal enabling pact with other buyers. The process involves no cost and, therefore, justifies no fee. Since the money is created only by the act of buying, the banker, of course, does not lend it, and since he is not the buyer, he does not create it. Money cannot be loaned or borrowed until it has been created by the act of buying. Therefore it is correct to say that a savings bank makes loans, but a commercial bank makes no loans. It merely permits "borrowers" to create money. thus increasing the money supply. Non-banking corporations, individuals, pawnbrokers, etc., loan money from the existing supply. Therefore interest may be justified in these cases of actual loans, whereas, it cannot be justified where the "borrower" is the actual creator.
As has been stated, the purpose of money is to split barter into two parts so that the seller is free to find his source of supply later and elsewhere. This is the sole purpose of money. Any effort to use money to serve another purpose is perversive; and this statement condemns the entire managed money philosophy.
Political economy is a fiction. Economy can have but one sphere, namely, in the practice of the individual. Political economy implies that the state can have a separate existance as a creative force, whereas, it is but one of the instruments of the individual's economy. All wealth - all economic planning - can spring only from the individual for his private guidance; and in him resides both the political and economic power. The ballot is his instrument of political power; money his instrument of economic power and the former is futile without the latter. He is a dupe, who believes that government can be both his servant and his patron, i.e., that the state can develop an economy to enrich him. He must govern government as he governs himself; and he must provide for government as he provides for himself. Any power existing outside himself is only that which has been delegated by him, or has escaped from him; for he is the one and only power-house. He cannot delegate his money power, if he would, because it is inseparably linked to his buying wherein he must exert his private discretion. To issue money, one must buy, to buy, one must appraise. Hence, the money issuing power is undelegatable and unusurpable.
Money can be issued only in the act of buying, and can be backed only in the act of selling. Any buyer who is also a seller is qualified to be a money issuer. Government, because it is not and should not be a seller, is not qualified to be a money issuer.
As long as we cling to the superstition that we must look to government for money supply, instead of requiring it to look to us, just so long must we remain the subjects of government and it is vain to follow this or that policy or party or ism in the hope of salvation. We can control government and our own destiny only through our money power and until we exert that power it is useless for us to debate the pros and cons of political programs.
