Here is an interesting account from Devil’s Knife of his participation in a public discussion on Freedom and all that.
I can imagine that his account of the end of Friendly Societies had some people bemused, but it is an interesting story:
As in other things where the state starts to provide a service, they crowded out the Friendly Societies. After all, if you were a relatively poor manual worker, you could not spare your three shillings per annum to the Friendly Society and the three shillings that the government was taking directly from your pay.
And so the Friendly Societies all but vanished, along with the communities they nurtured. And with them went the libertarian model of welfare—of people getting together as a voluntary collective in order to look after themselves. And so the model of state as mater and pater—the state in loco parentis, with all the intrusive hideousness that concept has spawned—was started…
It’s the actions of regular people that are the most significant, serious, and worthy of respect, and they don’t deserve to be treated like dolls when, in reality, the only truly and moral libertarian proposition is that they should be masters of themselves.
They did so in the past, and their aspirations were crushed by corporate whores and political shills: and in removing the ability of people to organise themselves, these evil people also removed the desire for them to try.
It is this that has led to our "broken society"—the cynical ambitions of the vested interests, backed up by the monopoly of violence that a corrupt and venal state willingly brought to bear upon its people.
Hmm.
If I am forced to work for someone against my will, that form of oppression is called slavery.
Slavery is a priori Bad, for various reasons:
- it creates a relationship of arbitrary pseudo-superiority imposed by violencce
- it belittles the slave – what sort of life is worth living in enforced servitude to someone else?
- it degrades the moral sense of the slave-master – why take responsibility for anything when you can beat a slave into doing the work?
Hence the famous line (emphasis added) of Satre in the preface to Frantz Fanon’s furious attack on the psychology of colonialism, Wretched of the Earth:
The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels a national soil under his foot…
Of course, it is one thing for the slave to use violence to free himself/herself. That requires strong nerves and, perhaps, a willingness to die in the attempt.
But maybe it is even harder for someone to resist the temptation to want to be a slave-owner – to free oneself from the very wish to live at the expense of others.
As described in this peerless line – the far other side of Sartre’s insight:
"I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
Hence, a question.
If I am forced by the state under threat of violence (arrest/imprisonment) to work for other people who do not work, am I not a slave?
This is another way of looking at Devil’s Knife’s point.
The fact that so many people these days get money in the form of benefits extracted by force from others for merely existing is wrong.It sets up every possible bad incentive system.
And above all it degrades self-reliance and self-respect.
As Steve Biko said:
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed…