INTRODUCTION
A Socratic Dialogue
HYPATIA Socrates! I despair for the world!
SOCRATES Alas, my dear Hypatia, you look as if you just met the monster Medusa! Why do you despair for the world?
HYPATIA The Oracle granted me a viewing through her time-machine, and I saw the future that awaits us two thousand years ahead. Wars that make Troy seem like child’s play, weapons that can set the world ablaze, machines eating jungles and mountains alive, poisons filling the air, land, and sea. There is no hope for us, Socrates!
SOCRATES Surely hope remains, Hypatia. Even the worst of times have always given way to better ones.
HYPATIA No, Socrates, I am certain of it. Only a malignant creature could wreak such havoc upon the world. We are doomed.
SOCRATES Those are strong words, Hypatia. Please tell me the reasoning that makes you so certain.
HYPATIA Very well. If we watch any creature acting naturally in its habitat, we see its nature in its action. Agreed?
SOCRATES Agreed.
HYPATIA Then does it not follow that when we watch our species acting in its habitat, we see its nature too? Does it not follow that the disasters I saw through the time-machine show our violent and destructive nature?
SOCRATES I accept your first conclusion, Hypatia, but not your second one. Before we continue our conversation, perhaps we should ask the Oracle to grant me a viewing through her time-machine.
HYPATIA Let us go then, Socrates.
SOCRATES I see what you saw, Hypatia, and it brought tears to my old eyes. But I do not share your despair. When I watched closely, I did not see our species acting naturally in its habitat.
HYPATIA What do you mean, Socrates? Are your eyes failing you?
SOCRATES Not yet, my dear. What I saw were great multitudes of men and women, toiling at work that caused the destruction. Yet I saw that these multitudes were controlled by very small groups of men who did no work themselves, men wearing strange dark tunics and thin scarves tied around their necks. Without this control, the toiling men and women would never have caused such destruction. The destruction resulted from the institutions these men commanded, not from human nature.
HYPATIA I saw this, too, Socrates. But it must be human nature to live under such institutions. We do so even today here in Athens, as do civilized people throughout the world.
SOCRATES We certainly do, Hypatia. But again, you should not conclude that this is human nature. Perhaps the Oracle would be kind enough to turn her time-machine backward for a moment, so we can view the world as it was four thousand years ago?
HYPATIA Socrates! What was this, the Golden Age? Where were the palaces, the temples, the fortresses? Where were the rulers living in luxury? The armies, the slaves?
SOCRATES Indeed, Hypatia, none of those existed in that time. And as you saw, the people were not living in squalor and violence. Those sheep grazing over lush green fields, the towns and villages, trade ships and caravans—this society was as civilized as ours, thriving without rulers and their destructive institutions. Yet these people were human beings like ourselves. Therefore, the institutions we saw destroying the future world result from something other than human nature.
HYPATIA But what else could it be, Socrates? Our institutions must become destructive when societies grow and mature, the way a young man’s face sprouts a beard.
SOCRATES Perhaps so, Hypatia. But I believe there is another explanation, one that allows us to keep our faith in human nature, and therefore our hope. When you watched that ancient society at work, did you see what made it possible? What made it more than small tribes like those that still wander in the mountains, foraging and hunting for a meager living?
HYPATIA You no doubt mean the fields and livestock, Socrates.
SOCRATES I mean that and more, Hypatia. The fields did not grow themselves, the sheep did not gather themselves into flocks. They were deliberately cultivated and tamed by the people. And the people could only do this through brilliant innovations, with the help of ingenious tools—the plow, and the shepherd’s crook. What sets the shepherd apart from the sheep is his knack for making tools and harnessing external sources of energy. That is truly human nature, Hypatia, our species acting naturally in its habitat.
HYPATIA I wish I could think so, Socrates, but this society did not last. Human nature brought forth rulers and slaves, and walled cities and war. How can you dispute this?
SOCRATES Human action certainly brought them forth, Hypatia, so they were possible for human nature—but not natural and necessary like a young man’s beard. Let us think more closely about those traits that set the shepherd apart from the sheep, making tools and harnessing external sources of energy. Suppose that some restless shepherd sat atop a hill, gazing down at the scene we just saw. He admired the great advantage he and his people enjoyed from having cultivated the crops and tamed the animals. He watched the people in the fields and villages working at their tasks, drawing this bounty from Nature. Now, suppose that in a fateful vision, he imagined himself taming the entire community, so he could live at the advantage of their human energy and the bounty they had created—a shepherd of men and women.
HYPATIA Socrates, you shock me! What a monstrous idea!
SOCRATES I shock you, Hypatia? Do you not see that this is precisely what our rulers in Athens are today? And those future men with the scarves tied around their necks?
HYPATIA Such ideas can get you killed, my friend.
SOCRATES I have reconciled myself to that long ago, Hypatia. Let me continue. Suppose this man and some cohorts decided to make their dream come true, with the same ingenuity that created the village and fields. It took thousands of years to invent the tools and techniques for domesticating plants and animals. In order to make their dream come true, these shepherds of men and women would have to invent new tools and techniques for domesticating their fellow human beings. In particular, they would have to create new institutions that gave them control over others—a shepherd’s crook for their human flock. Agreed?
HYPATIA Agreed.
SOCRATES Then, given that people were so ingenious as to tame other powers of nature, surely their ingenuity could tame communities of human beings! These new institutions would become the greatest tool ever invented: a tool for making tools of human beings. Thus, what we see today and in that future world is not our species acting naturally in its habitat. We see captive creatures and their captor, bound in an unnatural struggle, wreaking havoc upon the world. Hypatia, my dear, are you all right?
HYPATIA You have shaken my understanding to its foundations, Socrates. The disasters I saw through the time-machine are not a result of human nature at all. Instead, they were caused by institutions that do violence to human nature and the world, grown mighty enough to terrify Zeus himself! Yet once this tool has been invented, what hope is there of stopping it?
SOCRATES Sometimes a little hope is all the gods give us. We must make do with what hope we have. If our nature is violent and destructive, we are doomed, as you thought at first. But if our ingenuity created this tool, the human flock may find a way to escape its shepherds and run free again—before it is too late.
HYPATIA Then what can we do to overcome these disastrous institutions, Socrates?
SOCRATES You and I, my dear? Nothing. After all, we are only characters in a dialogue. But those who ponder our words may work wonders even the Oracle cannot foresee.
NARRATION
There you have the first major idea in my theory of political power. The world is in terrible trouble today: war and the threat of nuclear war, destruction of the habitat, huge populations crowded into cities vulnerable to pandemics, even the threat of a global corporate culture degrading the human spirit. This situation is so grave that I call it the Human Emergency.
It’s tempting to blame the Human Emergency on human nature, as Hypatia did—to think only a malignant creature could wreak such havoc upon the world. But I think that’s a fatal mistake. We’re actually an ingenious and cooperative species. Only a very small part of our species is wreaking the havoc, and the havoc would be impossible without certain institutions. Would tens of thousands of men arm themselves and travel to distant lands to wage war if there were no nations and armies? Would hundreds of workers equip themselves with bulldozers and chainsaws to clear-cut pristine forests if there were no corporations? Would they build factories and powerplants that contaminate the air, land, and sea? Would half the world’s population build huge cities and move there if they weren’t driven off the land by their rulers? I think not. The Human Emergency is a result of violent and destructive institutions that act contrary to human nature—the institutions we call political power.
Of course, this assumes the Oracle’s time-machine was right. As for the future—our world today—that’s clear. The institutions commanded by men with thin scarves tied around their necks are destroying the world. But what about the past? Hasn’t it always been this way?
When we watch other species in nature, we see balance and harmony with their habitats. It would be extremely bizarre if one species out of millions was violent and destructive enough to cause the Human Emergency. In fact, the archeological evidence shows that before the Bronze Age, communities notably lacked armed central authority, privileged elites, and war—that is, political power. There were no distinguished graves stocked with riches, no palaces or temples. The communities were seldom strategically located—on hilltops, for example. Their art doesn’t typically show weapons and fighting. It may not have been a Golden Age, but compared with our world today, these communities were remarkably peaceful and egalitarian, living in the same balance and harmony we see in other species. The Oracle’s time-machine was right.
Our species lived this way for a quarter of a million years. During that time, our ancestors migrated over most of the planet, survived three ice ages, and advanced from subsistence foraging to agriculture. Then a dramatic change began six thousand years ago with the so-called birth of civilization—the birth of political power. So the institutions that caused the Human Emergency have only existed for less than three percent of our human family history. It hasn’t always been the way it is today. And again, it would be extremely bizarre if a species suddenly mutated into violence and destruction after living in harmony so long.
I think this dramatic change was an innovation, not a natural development like a young man’s face sprouting a beard. The distinctive traits of our species are tool-making and harnessing external sources of energy, especially domesticating plants and animals. To domesticate an animal means to tame it, to train it to be useful—to harness its energy for one’s own purposes. These traits made it possible for small groups of men to domesticate entire communities. Like plant and animal domestication, that innovation required new tools, and I think political power is best understood as a tool: a tool for making tools of human beings.
This idea puts our situation in a much more hopeful light. If the Human Emergency is a result of human nature, or even if it’s a result of destructive institutions that inevitably develop at some stage, there’s no hope for humanity. But if we’re basically an ingenious and cooperative species, and the Human Emergency is the result of a tool in operation, then it may be possible to stop the destruction. We can’t “uninvent” a tool once it’s been invented, but we can condemn the purpose it serves, and forbid its use.
Now we come to the second major idea in my theory of political power. Is it only a pretty metaphor to call political power a tool? No, I think it’s an accurate description, and I can show you in detail how this tool must work. A tool doesn’t have to be a physical object like an axe. Language is a tool, and so are social institutions. They’re devices that accomplish a definite purpose in a reliable way. The tool of political power is a system of institutions that reliably accomplish a definite purpose.
Any tool is defined by its purpose and operating principle. The purpose of an axe, for instance, is to chop wood. Its operating principle is to use a levered wedge. Without the intention to chop wood, the axe would never have existed. Given this purpose and operating principle, you can only build an effective axe in certain ways—you can’t use a blade made of wood. This explains why all axes have similar designs. It isn’t human nature that makes an axe an axe, it’s the tool’s purpose and operating principle. Further, any tool enables the purpose it carries out—once the axe is invented, more wood will be chopped.
For the same kind of reasons, you can only domesticate human communities in certain ways. This explains why all power-structures have similar designs. Remarkably similar systems of institutions appeared first in Mesopotamia and northeast Africa, then in the far East and the Indian subcontinent, and much later in Mesoamerica. It isn’t human nature that makes political power what it is, it’s the tool’s purpose and operating principle. Further, once a tool for making people into tools is invented, more people will be made into tools. And without the intention to domesticate people, political power would never have existed.
I think this tool is best understood as an engine—a device that converts energy into useful work, like a windmill converting the energy of wind into forces turning a mill wheel. The energy to be converted is the human energy of a community. The useful work is human action that serves the authority and privilege of the rulers. And the rulers are simply the people who operate the engine.
Clearly, this means the rulers’ intentions must control their subjects’ action. And that can only be done in certain ways. If I want you to clean my catbox, I can ask you to do it. If you say “no, thanks,” then I can offer you a dollar to do it. If you still say “no, thanks,” I can pull a gun on you, or even mention that I have a gun in my pocket and I’m in a very bad mood. Or, leaving the gun aside, I can promise that if you clean my catbox, the angels will send you a miraculous blessing tomorrow.
In other words, I can get you to clean the catbox voluntarily, with or without an incentive. Failing that, I can threaten or deceive you into cleaning it. This exhausts the possibilities. Of course, it would be nice if you could domesticate a community with only the voluntary cooperation of the subjects. But remember, we’re discussing a tool for making tools of human beings. A tool can’t say no. So the rulers must also use threats and deceit to make their subjects comply in a reliable way. I call these hard subjugation and soft subjugation. Hard subjugation captures the subject’s energy by the threat of violence, against the subject’s will. Soft subjugation captures it by deceit, distorting the subject’s will.
Now I can define this engine, by stating its purpose and operating principle. The purpose is to domesticate entire communities. The operating principle is to capture the subjects’ human energy through incentives and both kinds of subjugation. I call the engine Domination, with a capital D, and I call the ways it uses incentives and subjugation the components of the engine, like the blade and handle of an axe. It has seven components: landholding by force of arms, the command-structure, the destruction industry, forced labor, the class-structure, thought-control, and human sacrifice—the institutions that make the tool of political power.
To see how these components function, let’s do a thought-experiment. Imagine we’re those shepherds of men and women Socrates described, creating their shepherd’s crook for the human flock. How would we have to use incentives, violence, and deceit to domesticate a community? Domination was really created in a long process of trial and error, like most great innovations, but this thought-experiment will explain how the engine finally had to work.
First of all, we need a community to domesticate. How can we get one? We can’t just ask for volunteers. Unfortunately, the solution is simple. All we have to do is take a community’s land by force. This captures the community, because they depend on the land for life-support. They’re also bound to the land in their kinship, traditions, and history. Then we can take our subjects’ lives hostage by denying them life-support if they don’t obey us, and we can force them to provide our own life-support. I call this landholding by force of arms, the engine’s fundamental component. To put someone in need of life-support, or deny life-support to someone in need, are obviously acts of violence. All political power rests on that violent foundation, from the dominion of ancient kings and emperors to the elaborate systems of state land-management today.
This fundamental component can only function with the help of three further ones. First, we can’t hold the land and coerce our life-support from our subjects unless we’re highly organized. Military action, in particular, requires strict discipline. So we need a mechanism that rigorously transmits orders from superiors to subordinates—a command-structure. And a command-structure needs a supreme authority at the head of the chain of command. Until recent times, the authority was usually a monarch. We can stabilize our command-structure with a system of written law, specifying commands and punishments in a reproducible form.
Second, we need weapons to hold the land by force and force our subjects to comply. If mischievous space aliens suddenly seized all our weapons, we’d be powerless. Without weapons, Domination vanishes. We also need secure quarters, living implements and clothing, vehicles, confinement for prisoners—not to mention luxury items. In short, we need a large amount of hardware. We must therefore create organizations that produce this hardware. Since weapons are tools that destroy, I call these organizations the destruction industry. The United States corporate economy is essentially one gigantic destruction industry.
Third, to obtain our life-support and our destruction industry hardware, we need labor on demand, labor done under hard subjugation. This is forced labor. Historically, it’s included slavery, serfdom, draft labor, prison labor, military conscription, wage labor for life-support, and taxes. European serfdom continued for over a thousand years. Slavery was only finally abolished early last century, so it served Domination for all but one hundred of its six thousand years. The other kinds of forced labor still thrive today.
These four components make a basic engine of domination. But we can do better. Three added components will improve our engine’s performance.
It takes a lot of force to run such an engine, and the more hard subjugation we use, the greater the chance of rebellion. But we can get a sector of the community to willingly cooperate by offering them incentives: nicer living conditions, easier labor, even some power. This creates a class-structure, rewarding the most loyal and helpful subjects with the largest incentives. It also internally divides the community, since the upper classes have a vested interest in the system and the lower classes don’t. Then we can let the classes fight each other, confident they won’t unite in a rebellion against us. Further divisions would enhance that effect, above all, patriarchy, restricting women to a lower status than men.
But we only have so much wealth to give away in incentives, and naturally we keep the lion’s share. If we deceive the community into thinking we’re some kind of superior beings, or we represent the highest moral principles, then they’ll believe it’s a virtue to obey us, that we deserve our luxury, and they’re lucky to be parts of such a wonderful system. This is thought-control, the systematic soft subjugation of a community. The class-structure stabilizes our engine by dividing the community; thought-control stabilizes it by standardizing and unifying the community in our favor. Until the last two centuries, thought-control mostly operated through state religions. Today, it’s become far more subtle and effective through mass media and compulsory public education.
One final component will complete our engine. Although the more force we use, the greater the chance of rebellion, we must use deadly force at times, if only to make the threat real—and that means killing the innocent. We’ll have to justify our violence to our subjects, especially the loyal ones. We should insist that killing is good when we do the killing, that some people must die for the good of others when we say so. I call this human sacrifice. It can involve ritual murders like those in ancient regimes, capital punishment, the slaughter of war, or even setting “acceptable” fatality rates from contamination or drug side-effects. That puts the human flock in its proper place. The people must never forget we are killers, and our human tools are expendable.
Functioning together, these seven components let us domesticate an entire community. It’s clear that my theoretical engine closely resembles how real systems of power work, so the idea of political power as a tool is more than a metaphor. But that’s just the beginning of the story. Using any tool causes unintended consequences—like the pile of wood chips when you use an axe to cut kindling, or the ruined river valley when you put in a dam. If we look at the unintended consequences of Domination, we’ll see how the engine in action has caused today’s Human Emergency. There are four kinds of unintended consequences.
First, our desires and needs will eventually outgrow the limits of the community we’ve domesticated. There’s no such thing as “enough” privilege and luxury. Privilege means more, and the community only has so much for us to take. We’ll deplete its resources, and require more forced labor than it can provide. The obvious solution is to domesticate an external community by seizing its land and human energy. This is war and conquest, the first unintended consequence of the engine in action.
Next, once war is underway, better weapons can give a decisive advantage, so our destruction industry must create more destructive weapons, along with better countermeasures against them. I call this the race to destruction, the second unintended consequence. Given the power of human ingenuity, it will ultimately create mythic powers of destruction, mighty enough to terrify Zeus himself—the hydrogen bomb, for example. As I’ll describe shortly, the race to destruction has profoundly shaped Western history.
Further, communities threatened by war must arm themselves and reorganize under a command-structure, which will make them resemble our aggressive regime. That is, war will create new engines of domination, so power must intensify—more subjugated regions and populations, more effective means of subjugation. This is the third unintended consequence of the engine in action. Local regimes will expand into regional empires, regional empires into global ones.
Finally, as the engine grows more powerful and the dominated regions grow larger, the habitat will pay a greater price. Natural communities live in balance with their habitats, or perish. Under Domination, a regime can compensate for damaging one region by conquering another. And the larger the regime, the more hardware and construction it needs, so the more severely it damages the habitat—in particular, the construction of great cities as seats of power. This is the fourth unintended consequence, destruction of the habitat.
To sum it up: together with human domestication—the intended consequence of Domination—these unintended consequences inevitably cause mass human suffering and destruction of the habitat. So again, the idea of political power as a tool is much more than a metaphor. It predicts the kinds of violence and destruction that have caused the Human Emergency, given only the intention to domesticate communities. This clearly shows that human nature is not the problem. How many people does it take to ruin a party? A few small factions of men running their engines of domination can ruin an entire planet.
But the story goes on. Refining any tool makes it more effective. Domination has been brilliantly refined for thousands of years, domesticating larger and larger populations, with worse and worse unintended consequences. If we had time, I could show you how the race to destruction has changed the engine’s design through Western history, from the Roman Empire to European feudalism, then from mercantile capitalism to industrial capitalism, and corporate capitalism today. Each change followed harnessing a new source of destructive energy: horsepower, gunpowder, the steam engine, high-explosives, and nuclear energy. Domination is a function of its destructive potential—the greater the destructive potential, the more powerful the engine.
This is important, because many people think technology has caused the Human Emergency. What do we mean by technology? It’s often defined as “the application of science to practical affairs.” But in a wider sense, technology is simply systematic ways of making and doing things. In this sense, technology is much older than our species. Homo habilis used stone tools, or instance, and Homo erectus used fire. Before the Bronze Age and Domination, technologies included clothing, containers, buildings, cooking, musical instruments, painting, sculpture, jewelry, cosmetics, carpentry, stone-working, brick, metallurgy, pottery, the wheel, drill, plow, and sickle, sewing, spinning and weaving, ship-making, plant and animal domestication, irrigation, and medicine. So technology is a natural part of human ingenuity serving human well-being.
But starting in the 17th century, the Scientific Revolution opened new horizons for technology—and for the engine of domination. Those in power quickly realized how scientific knowledge could greatly serve their interests. In 1620, the English statesman Francis Bacon wrote that science should “relieve the estate of man” by “enlarging the bounds of the human empire.” “The seal and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches.”
Inspired by Bacon, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge was founded in 1660 under a charter from the King. Its first committee met “to consider and improve all mechanical inventions,” so the Society’s purpose wasn’t just a quest for pure scientific truth. In Bacon’s famous words, “knowledge is power”—an idea that proved dreadfully true. Three hundred years later, “mechanical inventions” would include the hydrogen bomb, and Bacon’s “human empire” would become the global corporate empire ruled by the United States.
If technology means systematic ways of making and doing things, then the crucial question is which people are making and doing what things? And for what purposes? This unholy marriage of science and Domination made technology an accessory to the destruction industry—human ingenuity serving political power. Through the Industrial Revolution and the 20th century, the race to destruction accelerated dramatically. The two World Wars killed over eighty million people—twice as many as lived under the Roman Empire at its largest, more than all the previous wars in history combined. A nuclear war could kill that many people in minutes. The race to destruction has almost reached the finish line.
Thus we have today’s world and the Human Emergency. Exactly as Socrates said, it’s not the expression of a violent and destructive human nature. Instead, it’s the inevitable result of engines of domination working their institutional violence against human nature and the world. And thus we come to my theory’s conclusion: our only hope for the future is to shut the engines down. Political power must be abolished.
Impossible, you say? I think not. If human ingenuity was great enough to create the engine, why shouldn’t human ingenuity just as well abolish it? But to make this possible, we must correctly understand the problem we’re trying to solve. As the engineers say, understanding the problem is ninety percent of solving it. The problem is not human nature, not better or worse systems of power, good rulers versus bad rulers. The problem is political power itself, the domestication of communities. Debating about rival systems or rulers is like debating about better and worse ways to have slavery. There is no good way to build or run the engine. The intention to dominate and live at the community’s expense must be condemned. The institutions needed to accomplish that intention must be abolished. Our problem is whether we can do it, and if so, how.
Before I discuss that, what would it mean to abolish Domination? Domination is a tool for making tools of human beings. Abolishing it would mean liberating people from the status of tools to the status of free men and women. Abolishing it would mean the end of armed central authority, the end of war, the end of privileged rulers living at the expense of humanity and the habitat. Abolishing Domination would simply mean a world of cooperative peaceful communities, thriving in harmony with their habitats. There’s a word for such a world, a word corrupted almost beyond repair. But I insist it’s the right word, and one we should use with pride: anarchism.
Now I don’t think anarchism should be some utopian blueprint. I think it’s an ideal: a standard of human relations that can guide us in creating a better world. The standard is simply that communities don’t need subjugating institutions, and they’re best organized by relations among equals, not between superiors and subordinates, rulers and subjects. Communities with the least subjugation are closest to the ideal. The Greek word anarkhós means “without rulers.” Instead of a few people living at the expense of the rest, all living for the common good of all.
If human nature is violent and destructive, then anarchism is a fantasy at best, violence and chaos at worst. But if human nature is ingenious and cooperative, then anarchism is the only way humanity can thrive—and the way we did thrive for a quarter of a million years. Until Domination began, the human flock ran free, so freedom’s just another name for anarchism.
But how would anarchism work? Don’t ask me! That’s for the people of the world to decide. The idea that some people can tell others how to live is the opposite of anarchism. For six thousand years, more and more of the world has lived under Domination. Even under this burden, communities everywhere have adapted brilliantly and made as fit a way of life as possible for themselves. If their adaptive brilliance were freed from Domination, people would create ways of living that work better than anything we’ve seen for ages. Anarchism simply means they should be free to create them.
Now, back to the question of abolition. If it seems impossible, we must ask why. No one’s ever tried to abolish Domination, so history hasn’t shown that’s true. In fact, the feeling that Domination is inevitable comes from domestication. Any animal trainer knows the animal must understand who’s in charge, and there’s no alternative. We’ve lived under human domestication for hundreds of generations, so naturally we’re brought up knowing who’s in charge, and there’s no alternative. But that is precisely domestication: to accept our captivity and learn to live under the yoke. The first and most important step is to believe we can be free, and we have every right to throw off the yoke. The feeling that we’re powerless is Domination’s greatest weapon against us.
Since no one’s ever tried to abolish Domination, we don’t know whether it can be done, or how. But the men who created Domination didn’t know how to build the engine when they began, either. In other words, abolition is an experimental question. We can only find out the answer by doing the experiment. And that means we have to begin a long process of trial and error, trying our best, learning from our mistakes, and trying again. But not a random process—we must first restrain Domination by popular force, to reduce the Human Emergency’s worst threats: nuclear war and destruction of the habitat. If we impose these restraints with the ultimate goal of abolition in mind, we’ll learn a lot about our experimental question.
I hope you noticed that I’ve never mentioned government. If government means the institutions that maintain peace and order within and among communities, then Domination is obviously the worst possible form of government. We can reorganize governments worldwide to serve human well-being, not power and profit. As we struggle for nuclear disarmament and protecting the habitat, we can throttle corporate power. This will greatly reduce military conflict, since most of that conflict results from the drive for profit. Economies worldwide can liberate their human energy to serve human well-being. Every restraint we put on Domination will create a better world, and move us closer to the anarchist ideal.
Much farther down the road, we must eliminate Domination’s fundamental component, landholding by force of arms. The land can only be held in common for the common good, or seized by force. We won’t finally abolish Domination until the world’s people regain control of the land. And that will require general disarmament—the demilitarization of the world. Without weapons, Domination vanishes. Disarm the shepherds of men and women, and the flock will run free.
Is this just a dream? Maybe. But I believe Domination began with a dream—a few men dreaming they could domesticate entire communities. And look what they accomplished! Their dream not only came true—it’s almost destroyed the world. What made their dream come true? The same thing that brought our ancestors from subsistence foraging to agriculture, that brought music from the bone flute to Beethoven’s Ninth: human ingenuity, and an effort of will sustained generation after generation. The same thing can make our dream of a peaceful cooperative world come true.
The human flock vastly outnumbers its shepherds. Ruling elites are a few percent of the population. If these tiny factions could cause so much violence and destruction, then why shouldn’t we work wonders even the Oracle can’t foresee? Wonders like new institutions that make Domination impossible—engines of liberation?
Our rulers have only had two advantages over us, beyond their weapons. First, they’re highly organized. Organization gives human action a superhuman power. And second, they’ve always acted with a precise intention: to dominate their fellow human beings. If we act with as much organization and an equally precise intention—to abolish Domination forever—then I’m sure we will finally succeed. Why? Because beyond our greater numbers, we have one decisive advantage over our rulers. While they’ve always done violence to human nature, we have human nature on our side.