This article was originally published by Ryan McMaken at The Mises Institute.
One of the most memorable passages in the memoir of the escaped slave Frederick Douglass is where he describes how one group of slaves would argue with another group of slaves over whose master was richer or stronger. Exhibiting a mixture of Stockholm syndrome with delusions of grandeur, these slaves, according to Douglass, “seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves.” Moreover, Douglass noted that the slaves tended not to judge the behavior of their masters by any set objective standards, but in comparison to other masters. Douglass himself, when a slave, had fallen into this mode of thinking, as recounted in this passage:
I have been frequently asked, when a slave, if I had a kind master, and do not remember ever to have given a negative answer; nor did I, in pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering what was absolutely false; for I always measured the kindness of my master by the standard of kindness set up among slaveholders around us. Moreover, slaves are like other people, and imbibe prejudices quite common to others. They think their own better than that of others. Many, under the influence of this prejudice, think their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some cases, when the very reverse is true. Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the others. At the very same time, they mutually execrate their masters when viewed separately. It was so on our plantation. When Colonel Lloyd’s slaves met the slaves of Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters; Colonel Lloyd’s slaves contending that he was the richest, and Mr. Jepson’s slaves that he was the smartest, and most of a man. Colonel Lloyd’s slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob Jepson. Mr. Jepson’s slaves would boast his ability to whip Colonel Lloyd. These quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the parties, and those that whipped were supposed to have gained the point at issue. They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man’s slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!
We can see here an analogue to countless discussions among Americans in which Americans think themselves quite privileged to be dominated and exploited by the current American ruling oligarchy. Why? It is often because these victims of the regime judge their masters to be less awful than some other masters. But, not content with concluding one set of overlords to be merely less bad than another, these willing serfs then go a step further and attribute to their masters great virtue and kindness.
One often encounters this in discussing the nature of state power, even with those who rather unconvincingly consider themselves to be great proponents of freedom. “They keep us safe!” is perhaps the most perennial refrain, followed by self-consoling words about how the ruling parasites must be given “the benefit of the doubt” because they are supposedly stooped under the burden of “great responsibility.” We must not judge our rulers too harshly, you see, because they “have a hard job.” Moreover, even if we don’t respect those who currently hold offices that wield great coercive power, we must nonetheless sing the praises of their offices and adhere to the command of “if we don’t respect the man, we must respect the office!” By this thinking, even if a political institution is filled with criminals and freeloaders year after year, the problem can never be the institution itself. Thus, we must—or so it is said—” respect” the institutional tools of our own exploitation.
The Language of Voluntary Submission to the State
Those who delight in their obedience to their tax-funded taskmasters will even invent grandiose names for the institutions that perpetuate the captivity of the productive class. The willing servants will call the American state names like “our great experiment” or “our republic”—terms designed to fool the taxpayers into thinking they have any meaningful say in the affairs of the regime. Some of those in thrall to their overlords may even be brought to tears or great distress over the idea that the current American state might someday cease to exist. God forbid the American people be subjected to a different overseer than the current one who so virtuously brandishes the whips of taxation, inflation, and regulation to keep our present crop of generals, judges, bankers, and technocrats living with impunity in a state of privilege and opulence.
But, our masters must be defended, we are told, because they are different from the other masters. Our masters—here in “our” republic where we enjoy the great privilege of casting one vote out of 150 million, and where any election that actually threatens the regime would be judicially overturned and declared to be null and void by the permanent government—are richer and tougher than the masters of the neighboring tax farm. As Douglass put it, those who insist we must appreciate the many great kindnesses of the government ”think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves.”
Under the yoke of the modern administrative state, nearly all of us are reduced to the physical servitude demanded by all states. This is done with all the usual tools of physical domination including courts, jails, and legions of law enforcement officers. In most cases, we either comply, or are imprisoned, or possibly killed. Yet, many of the regime’s victims are not content with mere physical domination by the regime. Many demand to be dominated in thought and spirit as well. They repeat hagiographic regime-approved stories about the “great” deeds of the regime from the past; they pledge allegiance to the state’s flag, and sing the state’s quasi-religious “hymns” while announcing themselves to be loyal servants of popular politicians.
Many Merely Tolerate the State While Others Insist on Praising It
After all, even if one accepts the prudential need for some sort of civil government—a position I won’t dispute here—it is one thing to accept the existence of civil government as something we tolerate for pragmatic reasons. It is something else entirely to attribute to the civil government moral or virtuous qualities.
1,600 years ago, Saint Augustine did not oppose the existence or creation or civil governments. Yet, he also saw governments for what they are—the moral equivalents of pirates. He wrote how the civil governments of men—which can never truly dispense real justice given man’s fallen state—are characterized “not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity.” Augustine continues:
Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.
Yet, even with this understanding of the true nature of political rulers, Augustine, for practical reasons, accepted the existence of civil government “to keep the peace.”
Unfortunately, not even this resigned acceptance of an allegedly “necessary” evil is sufficiently enthusiastic for those who feel the need to actively praise their overseers as instruments of virtue.
Learned Servitude
Much of this is simply out of habit, or borne out of years of “education” promoting obedience and deference to those who wield the state’s tools of coercion. As Étienne de la Boétie wrote in his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude:
Let us therefore admit that all those things to which he is trained and accustomed seem natural to man and that only that is truly native to him which he receives with his primitive, untrained individuality. Thus custom becomes the first reason for voluntary servitude. Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings. Similarly men will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has always been that way. [Emphasis added.]
Boétie wrote this in the sixteenth century and this reminds us that men can be trained to praise any overlord if the training is sufficient. All the more so when men are trained to regard their exploiters as the virtuous architects of safety and prosperity, as so many so-called “citizens” are relentlessly trained to do.
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