This audio production, was made in collaboration with Audible Anarchist
The state is nothing else but this domination and exploitation
Regularized and systematized, we shall attempt to demonstrate it
by, examining the consequence of the government of the masses of the people
By a minority, at first as intelligent and as devoted as you like, in an ideal state
Founded on a free contract.
Suppose the government to be confined only to the best citizens at first, these, citizens are privileged not by right but by fact
They have been elected by the people because they are the most intelligent
clever
wise and courageous and devoted
Taken from the mass of the citizens, who are regarded as all equal they, do not yet form a class apart
But a group of men privileged only, by nature and for that reason
singled out for election by the people
Their number is necessarily very limited
For in all times and countries the number of men endowed with qualities so remarkable that
They automatically command the unanimous respect of a nation is as
Experience teaches us very small. Therefore
under pain of making a bad choice
The people will always be forced to choose its rulers from amongst them
here then, is society divided into two categories if not yet to say two classes of
which one,
composed of the immense majority of the citizens
Submits freely to the government of its elected leaders. The other
formed of a small number of privileged natures,
Recognized and accepted as such by the people and charged, by them to govern them.
Dependent on popular election they are at first distinguished from the mass of the citizens only, by the very qualities
Which recommended them to their choice and are naturally the most devoted and useful of all
They, do not yet, assume to themselves any privilege, any particular right
except that of exercising
Insofar as the people wish it the special functions with, which they have been charged. For the rest, by their manner of life
by the conditions and means of their existence
They, do not separate themselves in any way, from all the others so that a perfect. equality continues to reign, among all.
Can this equality be long maintained?
We claim that it cannot and nothing is easier to prove it.
Nothing is more dangerous for man's private morality than the habit of command but the best man, the
most intelligent,
disinterested,
generous, pure, will infallibly and always be spoiled at his trade. Two sentiments inherent in power
never failed to produce this demoralisation;
they are contempt for the masses and the
overestimation of one's own merits."The masses" a man says to himself
recognizing the incapacity to govern on their own account,
have elected me their chief.
By that act they have publicly proclaimed their inferiority and my superiority.
Among this crowd of men,
recognising hardly, any equals of myself, I am alone capable of directing public affairs.
The people have need of me they cannot do without
my services while I, on the contrary can get along all right by myself
they, therefore
must obey me for their
own security and in condescending to obey them i am doing them a good turn."
Is there not something in all that's to make a man lose his head and his heart as well, and
become mad with pride? It is thus that power and the habit of command become for even the most intelligent and virtuous men,
a source of aberration both intellectual and moral.
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